10/14/12

Ganesh Playing Sitar, painting on fabric 
(from Exotic India website)

Heading to Charlottesville, Virginia where UVA has set up a Contemplative Studies program featuring  Ashtangi John Campbell. My Asheville teachers John and Naomi are working with him - I believe as assistants  - and Naomi is taking classes in Religious Studies. Cool!

Report of this trip, the Tim Feldman workshop of a couple of weeks ago, to come. And as always, a report on the troublesome back and thoughts about an over 60 years old's body/mind response to this practice....and life.

In the meantime from Richard Freeman:
When we practice the yoga of observation and we pay close attention to something, there is a residue of clarity and relief that is discernable in the breath and is actually felt in the body. It is similar to the sensations you might experience when you have been struggling to understand something and then finally "get it," or the feeling you have when you have been deceiving yourself about something and then at last admit the truth; it is a feeling of relief, openness, cleanliness, and joy. We experience this when we pay close attention to things as they arise because we are directly perceiving, rather than distorting out observation by imagining that things are the way we expect or want them to be.