I wish I knew the beauty in leaves falling.
To whom are we beautiful when we go?
David Ingnato
And to whom are we beautiful as we go? This poem seems to point to the fact that even in our failing, there is a part of creation and therefore a part of ourselves that can grant a magnificence to any loss. Such a beautiful concept. Such a bittersweet truth. And perhaps this is why Autumn is so colorful: it is the opulentfuneral procession of the death of so much. It is the rush of fireworks before the quiet stillness of winter.
Many of the Hindu icons tell stories. The Dancing Shiva is a story-telling icon depicting Shiva, the creator of the universe, and illustrates the five acts of Shiva. The concept is the same whether you call the creator, Shiva, God, the Universe, or Krusty the Clown. In this statue, these 5 acts are depicted by his many arms, one of which is celebrating creation, another that is sustaining his creation, another is allowing death, and another that is not only inviting things back to life, but to live again with a higher consciousness than before. This statue reminds us that our job is to allow Shiva to lead in this dance of life, to follow along as we are slowly refined into greater beings. It reminds us that death is a part of life and with a broader perspective, we can, to some degree, appreciate it as a necessary part of the cycle.
Mary Oliver writes about learning to accept death and loss in her poem, Maker of All Things, Even Healings. I love the title of the poem because it suggests that the healing, the bringing back to life for a fuller measure of life as in the Dancing Shiva, comes only after accepting death which she does so humbly.
All night
under the pines
the fox
moves through the darkness
with a mouthful of teeth
and a reputation for death
which it deserves.
In the spicy
villages of the mice
he is famous,
his nose
in the grass
is like an earthquake,
his feet
on the path
is a message so absolute
that the mouse, hearing it,
makes himself
as small as he can
as he sits silent
or, trembling, goes on
hunting among the grasses
for the ripe seeds.
Maker of All Things,
including appetite,
including stealth,
including the fear that makes
all of us, sometime or other,
flee for the sake
of our small and precious lives,
let me abide in your shadow--
let me hold on
to the edge of your robe
as you determine
what you must let be lost
and what will be saved.
As we celebrate the panoply of fall colors, may we, too, remember the beauty of leaves falling, the beauty and magnificence of this amazing dance in which we are all twirling, living and dying.
Scott
A Moveable Feast
"We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other." Excerpt from Earnest Hemingway's A Movable Feast
In Paris, we rented a very small and completely perfect half-room apartment on the third floor. To call it a one-room apartment would be to grossly exaggerate its scale. Our only window looked out onto a common space, a sort of chimney of light that allowed each apartment both the pleasure of natural night and the pleasure of being a voyeur into the lives of our neighbors. For breakfast we ate warm omelets with fresh melted goat cheese that Seneca cooked on the hot plate. Seneca said the cheese was too strong and tasted like a sheep's utter. I loved the strong cheese and we both swooned over a small salad of fresh arugula and the freshest tomatoes and strawberries so flavorful that it made me feel like I'd never before eaten something called a strawberry.
After breakfast we left the apartment and descended the old but sturdy stairs down the narrow, winding staircase and made another day of walking the streets of Paris. Walking down our street I again felt like a voyeur looking into the lives of the people around me, like those sitting outside in the small seats of the Café Italien on the corner that served fresh-squeezed orange juice and delicious smooth coffee by the owner who was as warm as her coffee one day and as cold as her orange juice the next. Sitting in his usual seat was the middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and neat moustache who seemed not to mind to run the errands on his scooter, nor mind being readily criticized by the other regulars of whom there seemed to be the same three or four, always with their commentary of the goings on in their petite corner of the world. We walked along the Rue Du Pont Aux Choux to Rue Vieille Du Temple, the small road which seemed to my navigational senses a main artery into the colorful quarter of the Marais and 3eme Arrondissement with its small, bright shops, historic buildings and boulangeries. This road led us directly to the Rue Des Rosiers, the small jewel of a street, like a vein of gold in the rough, that was home to the both the orthodox Jews and the gays, a street that served the finest falafel from boisterous Israelis, and where you can find the tidy shop of the most master crêpe-maker I believe I will ever know.
Later that day as we left the Musée d'Orsay, the canvas of our mind painted by the colors of Cézanne, Monet, Van Gough, and Renoir, we walked down the narrow streets searching for the artisan pâtisserie and some mineral water. Looking around, the thought entered me that people are just people wherever you go. Whether in Paris or anywhere else, people need to belong. We all need to be loved. We all need to find purpose and beauty in the world whether that is through art, music, architecture, numbers, teaching, children, nature, or all of it.
And looking around at this city showed me the miracles that people can perform when they believe in something. Everywhere I turned, I saw a spirit of strength and determination and capacity for beauty and meaning. I saw it in their architecture, their cathedrals and palaces and their houses and most poignantly by simply watching them live out another day in their regular lives. I saw it in the way they decorated their little shops and showed great care about their cafés and restaurants, the prim waiter with his pressed shirt and manicured mustache and his full-length apron, standing at elegant attention hoping to show off his mastery of service because that was his art, to impeccably serve un café and croissant and make correct change and whisk you away when you were finished with a polite "Merci. Bonjour!"
The next evening we sat in the small wooden pews of Nôtre Dame at the free organ concert. Here, I felt the beauty and strength of the human spirit, past and present, like a weight in my heart and lump in my throat as the deep pedal tones of that organ shook that holy palace at its foundation and opened my eyes perhaps for the first time to the height of the ceiling and light of the stained glass windows, a peach sunset at our backs making color dance upon the giant grey stones. I felt the strength of those rough hands that built that edifice of solid rock hundreds of years ago which stands in the form of a giant cross to remind us all what is directly in the center of vertical and horizontal, that magical place between what is spiritual and what is temporal, that place that is now. And whether on the yoga mat or at Nôtre Dame, presence allows us the same vision into the divine part that is within all of us.
Whether it's the tourist who snaps a photo of the Mona Lisa on their phone and rushes off to something else hoping somehow to take it now and maybe look at it some other time, or it's the local who never takes the time to get up into the mountains because there will be plenty of time later, it all speaks to the same thing: presence. It's about this moment which if lived fully might express itself into something that could last into centuries or if wasted by living too much in the future or past never really happens. Without presence, we will never have our movable feast, we will never taste the cheese, see the stained glass, or feel the beauty of anything.
I invite you to come to yoga this week and practice presence. I invite you to move about your daily life with presence and experience your own movable feast.
Yoga Emergency!
It's a few years back. I'm traveling home from Lander, Wyoming after a weekend of teaching some fantastic workshops. I’m riding with my friend Tam and we’re traveling over the pass toward Rock Springs when we hit a full-assault blizzard with 65 mph winds which trying its best to blow us off the road. We decide to call this stretch 32 miles of hell, especially after we saw the trailer that had just flipped. White knuckled at the wheel, Tam tries to calm her nerves by singing along to The Grateful Dead (irony isn't lost on me). She is breathing sighs of relief between choruses. After we reach the summit and start to head down the other side of the hill, the worst part is over and Tam turns outright giddy with relief.
Whether it's a tricky spot in winter driving or something else in life, sooner or later we are bound to run into a tricky sitch. When these inevitable crises do occur, what do you have in your yoga first-aid kit? Here are a few suggestions of things you might want to have as a quick go-to that could help in tricky times to keep you going in the clutch moments when you've got to be on or when life's throws you a curve.
First, off: presence. Open your eyes. Times like this make you wake up from that anesthetized state. There is no cruise control, here. If you've practiced presence in meditation or yoga, it will be easier to really be on when you need to be. If not, no time like the present (I have a pun permit, so back off). Notice what's going on around you. Even when things are really tough, notice what's going on in your body. Take a moment, close your eyes (unless you're driving through a blizzard) and allow yourself to actually feel all of your body's sensation, all your emotions, thoughts, etc. without the need to change it. It's always surprising to me how readily this practice of seeing things objectively, even for a brief moment, helps me develop a clearer perspective of my problems.
Second: breathe! Ujjaiyi breath, the whisper breath we practice in yoga, is done by breathing in and out through the nostrils and slightly constricting the breath in the throat to feel and hear a whisper. It is one of the most effective things I know to lower anxiety levels and oxygenate the body to perform optimally. If you want to watch a video on YouTube of the one and only Matt Newman at the old Prana Yoga space demonstrating this technique, click here.
Third: do grounding poses like forward folds and seated or lying-down twists. They ground the nervous system and reduce tension from the body. Any poses that reduce muscular tension (stretches) are great to reduce stress and make you feel good. Remember body and mind are connected, so release tension from your muscles and watch how tension leaves from other parts too. Stretchy poses send endorphins running through your body and give you a mega-dose of Feel Good when life is crazy.
Fourth: take care of yourself. Even if you feel like you don't have time for anything superfluous, keeping yourself emotionally, mentally, and physically well is not superfluous. Too much relies on you being on and therefore you must keep your body/mind/spirit happy. This might mean taking the morning off and strolling through Red Butte Gardens or take a jaunt into Hatch Family Chocolates (8th Ave between D and E St.) for a Peanut Butter Truffle. Eat well with simple and nourishing meals (with occasional chocolate). Get enough sleep. Especially in times of crisis, do something for yourself to replenish the source so you have something to give back to everything that needs you. Otherwise, others will have to take care of you. Do it for yourself.
Fifth: simplify. Kindly say no to that extra social engagement. Stop trying to be perfect. Minimize and simplify.
Sixth: if you ever need a yoga 911, go to my web site and click on the yoga nidra tab. You can listen immediately to a recording of a guided mediation that will calm you down and give you some clarity to help you go on through your day with grounded clarity.
Finally, The House Martins help. If you don't know this band, check them out here. When I feel like life has slapped me down, this band has always helped me get back up. M-m. Love that band.
What is in your yoga first-aid kit? Please comment here and add let us know what you do in a yoga emergency. See what others are saying.
Take care of yourself!
Woo-Hoo! Can I get a witness?!
Welcome to Scott Moore Yoga!
Friends! I! Am! So! Excited!
This website represents a new chapter in my teaching, in my career, in my life.Friends, I'm looking forward into my own future and I gotta tell ya, it's lookin' goooood!
I've grown immensely in these last few years. Phew! I've learned volumes about myself, about yoga, about business, about people, about how incredible y’all are, and how good and beautiful this world is.
Instead of pencil marks on the kitchen wall, my growth is being measured in part with my brand new website. There is so much I want to offer and this site is now a hub for all of it. On my site you can stay up to date with regular offerings on my blog. You can sign up for my newsletter. You’ll see info about retreats that I'm thrilled to be offering, including day-retreats at Snowbird, a yoga retreat with Kim Dastrup in Spain, and other exciting retreats that are in the planning stages. You can see my different offerings from private sessions, private group sessions, Girls’ Night Out sessions, etc. I'm also ecstatic to be offering a Teacher Mentoring section on my blog. I'm always growing and learning both as a practitioner and as a teacher. I'm passionate about learning to teach well and would love to engage other teachers in doing likewise.
In the near future, I will be traveling to teach more and I’ll be posting about that and listing those places and dates. You'll soon have a plethora of audio and video offerings on the web, too. And I continue to be committed to teaching awesome public, local classes at Centered City Yoga . Please join me.
Welcome and stay tuned, friends. Thank you for all your support and love currently and over the years. It's been a wild and fun ride and I'm happy to have had you with me at my side.
I invite you to go to my site and take a cyber stroll. It's not perfect or complete but it's there. Stay tuned as things evolve!