Lift Your Heart To Your Prayers: Yoga with Erin at PS108 in Bedminster, NJ: June 24, 2016

"Lift your heart to your prayer" was my favorite instruction today. The class was mainly about sutra  2.46, sthira sukham asanam and teaching the balance between effort and ease, with an emphasis on ease.

Ever since I began the practice of yoga I've been trying to find ease in effort. The play lately is to find the strength and awareness in ease. One way to do that is to have to strength to lift my heart to the ideals of my prayers. Which means I have to change. 

I pray a lot for peace. but we can't give away what we don't have, for real. We have to experience peace within in order to send it out to others. And for me this is practice, this is the continual effort.

The cosmic irony is that peace takes a lot of work of relaxing into what is.

And its super hard to do when holding plank for several minutes. 

But in the tough spots is where the practice is super juicy. And when I don't think I have time to practice, well that's the perfect time. And finding the freedom from the play of opposites, finding what the Buddhists call the Middle Way.

I loved the opening sequence:

sit
twist
cross arms and lean
back to center eagle arms
forward fold
sit up and straighten arms overhead, palms away, back of hands together
switch sides

I also love half lotus tree and a lotus play seated practice

And I loved sharing peace with each other by chanting shanti three times at the end of class.

Namaste