The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we opened ourselves to the sky, the earth, the sun and the moon.  We freed our awareness, our breath, and our love.  We listened to the language of Body, heart and mind.  We embraced life.  I can’t say it better than Ross Gay’s Unabashed:  Thank you. Every day!

We heard Eagle Poem: Joy Harjo’s instructions on prayer.  The poem asks that we pray by opening our whole selves to nature.  The circling eagle is held aloft in moving circles of air.  We, too, are sustained by moving currents of breath.  We are nature and our lives are bound by the ongoing cycles of birth and death.

We heard Haemin Sunim’s thoughts about love.  Haemin Sunim is a Korean Zen Buddhist teacher, writer and founder of the School of Broken Hearts. In his book, Love for Imperfect Things, he writes that truly offering our attention is love. He believes “we can love completely, even without complete understanding.”

Poet Ross Gay writes about joy and loss almost within the same breath.  We heard from the essay on joy from his Book of Delights.  He observes how we are joined by an “underground union” and by the shared knowledge that everything and everyone we love will pass away.  We also drew from his poem, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.  It is a long lyrical poem that alternates between celebrations and sorrows.  This collection is full of images that are earthy and fertile, teaming with life.  You can hear the poet’s exuberant voice reciting Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude to the music of Bon Iver. (It’s really worth listening all the way through!)

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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today’s practice was about appreciating our bodies.  We allowed felt experience  to draw our awareness more intimately to presence.  We experience feeling and time differently in the spirit of allowing.

The flowers of Being open in their own time given the right conditions.

We drew inspiration from Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.  Mark describes this work as a “spiritual daybook.”  I have drawn on its beauty for nearly twenty years.  

Sufi poet, Rumi, encouraged us to appreciate the wonder of embodiment in his poem, Bird Wings.  In Wild Geese, Mary Oliver reminded us “to let the soft animal of [our] body love what it loves.”

Our Embodied Awareness meditation was inspired by Alan Fogel’s excellent Kosmos Journal article:  Embodied Thinking and Embodied Feeling.  Alan is a somatic therapist whose work invites us to allow felt sensation to call our awareness home.  His article describes “the thinking and feeling components of Embodied Self Awareness.” He lists our bodies’ primary felt experiences and their related feelings.  It helped me to appreciate the different gifts of thinking and feeling.

We ended with a few of Erin Geesaman Rabke’s blessings from her Embodied Beatitudes.  A more complete list from her “work-in-progress” is like a prayer of appreciation for our amazing bodies.

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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored how the inner light of our awareness can help light our way through darkness. Our seeds of potential open and grow toward the light.

We move through this manifest world only in relation.  We change each other and in so doing we we are changed.

We heard Robert Penn Warren’s poem, the Heart of Autumn.  He describes the intimate and uplifting experience of taking in wild geese migration.  He describes how, unquestioning, they follow paths across the sky.  We struggle with knowing ourselves – and still – can lift our gaze and feel joy.

We drew from Tracy Wulfers’ Kosmos Journal essay, Meeting Mugwort.  She draws from Earth Wisdom by encouraging us to open, relax our protection so that we can grow.  In opening we can offer our life’s potential to the world.

We hard David Budbill’s ode to All of Us.  In the simplest lines he describes how we are expressions of what Taoists call the ten thousand things.  We come to being from the undifferentiated in relation to one another:  human and more than human beings.

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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We reflected on the tenderness that makes our lives possible.  Offering and receiving tenderness requires openness and vulnerability.  These are magical heart qualities are what the world needs now.

We drew inspiration from Trui Snyman featured in the short film Tenderness.  The film is part of an excellent series produced by Green Renaissance.

We heard Julie Cadallader-Staub’s poem Blackbirds.  Julie invokes the beautiful imagery of a murmuration:  the synchronous flying patterns of birds.  She reminds us that we, too, live and move in a curving and soaring world.

We heard Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Small Basket of Happiness.  Naomi reminds us of how our loved ones’ loving lives in those moments when we tenderly bend and listen.

We closed with Yahia Lababidi’s poem, Breath.  Underneath the busyness of our lives, nature pulses  – ready to be felt, heard and seen.  Life waits quietly for our attention and care.

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