Setting the tone: Yoga is about raising your vibration in tune with the whole world. At the root of every asana is a calm & steady connection to the earth. When your connection is calm & steady, you feel ease in the mind, body & spirit.
Mantra: Mother Earth Goddess prayer
Sarva Mangala Mangalye
Sive Sarvatha Sadhike
Sharanye Trambake Gauri
Narayani Namosthute, Narayani Namosthute
I salute the 3-eyed Divine Mother, Narayani, who brings total auspiciousness & wh fulfills the desire for liberation. Realization arises with her blessing. She is the world itself. Only through the experiences of life can the world itself. Only through the experiences of life can the soul be perfected. Honor this gift, your life.
Asana:
Leg Stretches: hamstrings, quads & psoas (hip flexors), inner thighs & hips.
Sun A with Vrikshasana & with tree leg in Vashistasana, chatarunga with tree leg.
Sun B #1: Panther-style Kung Fu. Build a relationship with the ground by falling in & out of Utkatasana (Chair), Virasana (Hero), Extended Scorpion & Triangle(Trikonasana).
Sun B #2: Balancing Compass: The direction of our attention is always toward the divine. Drishti at Divine. Cobbler’s pose -2- (Baddha Konasana) -> Leg Lift -> Compass Pose - 5- (Konasana) -> Compass Pose -5- (Konasana wrist grab) -> Compass Pose -3- (Konasana Balance) -> Extended Compass -5- (Visvamitrasana)
5 Backbends
Playtime
Warm-down
Kriya: Nauli
Quotes/Readings:
“Don’t try to get out of the World, get into it.” - Bhagavan Das, What Is Yoga?
“To find out what is truth there must be great love and a deep awareness of man’s relationship to all things - which means that one is not concerned with one’s own progress and achievements.” - J. Krishnamurti
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the earth. If forests were our church. If holy water-the rivers, lakes, and oceans.
What if meditation was our relationships. If the Teacher was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” - Ganga White
“Peace is every step. The shining red sun is my heart. Each flower smiles with me. How green, how fresh all that grows. How cool the wind blows. Peace is every step. It turns the endless path to joy.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
“I am water. I am the thorn that catches someone’s clothing... There’s nothing to believe. Only when I quit believing in myself did I come into this beauty... Day & night I guarded the pearl of my soul. Now in this ocean of pearling currents, I’ve lost which was mine.” -Rumi
Meditation:
Reading: Agganna-Suttana of the Digha-Nikaya (ancient Buddhist text on the descent into darkness & fear)
In the past we created spiritual beings nourished by joy. We soared through space, self-luminous & in imperishable beauty. We thus remained for long periods of time.
After the passage of infinite times, the sweet-tasting earth rose from the waters. It had color, scent, and taste. We began to form it into lumps and to eat it. But while we ate it our luminosity disappeared. And when it had disappeared, sun, moon, stars & constellations, day & night, weeks & months, seasons & years made their appearance.
We enjoyed the sweet-tasting earth, relished it & were nourished by it, & thus we lived for a long time. But with the coarsening of the food the bodies of beings became more & more material & differentiated, & hereupon the division of sexes came into existence, together with sensuality & attachment, But when evil, immoral customs arose among us, the sweet-tasting earth disappeared, & when it had lost its pleasant taste, outcroppings appeared on the ground, endowed with scent, color, and taste.
Due to evil practices & further coarsening of the nature of living beings, even those outcroppings disappeared, & other self-originated plants deteriorated to such an extent that finally nothing eatable grew by itself & food had to be produced by strenuous work. Thus the earth was divided into fields, and boundaries were made whereby the idea of “I” & “mine,” “own” & “other” was created & with it possessions, envy, greed, & enslavement to material things.