The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored our inter-breathing with the world.  We reflected on all we take in and give out.  We considered the many kindnesses of Earth and Sun making our lives possible.  We are a constellation of relationships emerging moment by moment, breath by breath.

We drew inspiration from poet Arnoldo Garcia’s Meditation on the Breath.  Arnoldo’s work is inspired by Earth and social justice.  You can find more of his beautiful poetry at:  La Carpa del FEO: Fandango en East Oakland.

We heard Zen priest and poet Norman Fischer’s teachings on the self, relationship and compassion.  You can read more in the Tricycle Magazine article, We Are Our Relationships You can hear Norman’s recent Upaya dharma talk series, When You Greet Me, I Bow. This is also the name of his latest book of on relationships, culture and engagement.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem, Belonging. Rosemerry teaches and performs poetry for addiction recovery programs, hospice and mindfulness retreats. Continue reading →

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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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We reflected how we “weather” life experience in our bodies, hearts and minds. We wear that weathering on our faces which we offer to the world.  When we truly “receive” a face our hearts open.  As part of our natural world, we live through seasons of change subject to the forces of Earth and Sky.  In our practice we cultivate compassion for our lives of ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.

We drew inspiration from Thomas Merton’s collection of essays Raids on the Unspeakable. Merton, a trappist monk, spent twenty-seven years in Abbey of Gethsemani. He wrote over sixty books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.  Today’s reading describes his experience of listening to the talking rain and learning the rhythms of life.

We heard poet Barbara Crooker’s poem, Sometimes, I Am Startled Our of Myself.  The poem speaks to hope borne on wings of geese and the cycle of leaves. In her Quartet Journal Interview, Barbara reminds us that “. . . [p]oetry brings us back to our senses, makes us more fully alive, teaches us to pay attention.”

Finally we heard Kenji Miyazawa’s poem Unbeaten by the Rain. Miyazawa was born on the north-east coast of Japan in 1896, just two months after the Meiji-Sanriku earthquake and tsunami destroyed about 9,000 homes and caused more than 22,000 deaths in the region. His work expressed a keen interest in the relationship between mankind and nature. The literary world he created reflected not only the awe-inspiring beauty of nature, but also its merciless brutality and terrifying force. During his short life, he wrote fiction, poetry, and children’s stories.  He had an ecological vision well ahead of his time. Drawing on his training as a scientist and a practitioner of Buddhism, Miyazawa developed a vision of interdependence among all forms of life at all times.  You can see a whimsical Anime recreation of his life story as told by cats in the film, Spring and Chaos: The Life Story of Kenji Miyazawa.
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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  What a joy to share practice as if for the first time.  A thread of creativity and playfulness seemed to be woven through our classes today.  How sweet shared happiness can be.

We reflected on how The Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers inform our practice and how they can help us respond to the world with open minds and hearts.  The Peacemakers are a worldwide movement of people who practice meditation, do social action as a path of awakening and service. You can learn more about their fascinating story and work at Zen Peacemakers International.

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s poem, Directions to You, affirms the essence of what it is be consciously alive.  The poem reminds me of how our essential nature is revealed in meditation.

Mary Oliver’s poem, Bone, speaks of the limits of our knowing and the boundlessness of our loving.  Mary’s experience of finding an ancient bone on the beach evokes the long passing of time and the ungraspable nature of the universe. Continue reading →

The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we investigated the truth of our experience in the present moment.   If we can bring loving awareness and patient curiosity to experience we can learn a lot about our human condition.  We can cultivate a sense of being grounded and allow perspective to emerge.  Perspective often yields understanding about ourselves and others.  Understanding helps to connect with our inner resources of compassion and loving kindness.

We drew inspiration from David Whyte’s poem Working together.  This poem is drawn from his collection, The House of Belonging.  His poem is a meditation on how we are shaped by the world.  So many of life’s miracles arise from the interplay of what we see and what goes unseen.  The poem reminds me of the many times we choose to trust in life’s ordinary offerings.

We drew from meditation instructor Oren Jay Sofer’s course on mindful communication meditation.  Oren reminds us to be aware of how we approach meditation.  Whatever we practice repeatedly informs the way we approach our life. You can learn more about Oren’s upcoming class: Say What You Mean.

We also heard from, The Conscious Effort True Love Requires, an essay written by meditation instructor Sharon Salzberg. Sharon suggests that challenging our habits, judgments and stories opens the door to loving.

Finally, Philip Booth’s poem, How to See a Deer, Philip Booth describes the qualities we need to see something wild and beautiful:  kindness, interest, patience and curiosity,

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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we explored being present for what surfaces in body, heart and mind.  Abiding in stillness allows an intimate awareness of life’s continuous change.  When we feel safe, we can touch this vulnerability within. We can tend to our hearts.

We drew inspiration from poet Jane Hirshfield.  Jane’s poem, Standing Deer, poignantly touches the ephemeral nature of life.  She describes how our hearts fill and empty having to hold onto and then let go of what we love.  Her writing encourages us to bring our awareness and engagement to life so we can receive its fleeting blessings.  Her poem, Ripening, evokes the ease with which can let go and let ourselves care about the world.  As in Standing Deer, we ripen into opening our hearts.

We were encouraged by guiding teacher of Common Ground Meditation Center, Mark Nunberg, to ask questions about caring, belonging and loving.  In his talk, The Teachings in Brief for Troubled Hearts in Troubled Times, he affirms as truth that we are all deserving of these vital experiences.  It is that truth that inspires us to care about the human and more than human world. Continue reading →