“Life will break you. 
Nobody can protect you from that, 
and living alone won't either,
for solitude will also break you with its yearning. 
You have to love. 
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth. 
You are here to risk your heart. 
You are here to be swallowed up. 
And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. 
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” 

 ― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

fragments from my kitchen

Satya

Is it true?
Is it necessary?
Is it kind?

These three short but very powerful questions have been attributed to Socrates, Sufi, Buddha and different people who all believe in enlightenment.

Three very useful reminders when we communicate with others.
And three questions you can ask yourself when you speak about other people and most importantly when you speak about yourself.

I believe that the words we use about ourselves are like written affirmations – they confirm what we believe about ourselves – and give permission to other people to treat us in the way we describe.

Satya – Commitment to Truthfulness
In the Yoga Sutra (Chapter II, verse 30), Patanjali presents to yoga students the concept of satya (truth) 
Read more about the yogic practice of satya (truth) in Yoga Journal here.

Satya means "to speak the truth," yet it is not always desirable to speak the truth on all occasions, for it could harm someone unnecessarily.
We have to consider what we say, how we say it, and in what way it could affect others.
If speaking the truth has negative consequences for another, then it is better to say nothing.

I´m preparing for six days study of  Zen Coaching, which, also includes the teachings of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), developed by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D.
So far it`s been a great support for deepening my practice and understanding of satya on and of the mat.


To speak from satya is to bring out the very best in others and in ourselves.
Both on and off the mat.
When we speak from a place of awareness , we are creating the universe we want to be in for the rest of our lives.

In Love M

Google pic wisdom

contrast create our light

Let`s surf a little bit more on this colourful rainbow...
In my rainbow, the colour black is also represented.
Of course.
I believe that we need the darkness to really embrace and enjoy the light.
Like day and night.
The pearls and the junk.
Like the tides.
Hot and cold.
The sweet and the bitter.
The up`s and down`s
In my experience life becomes quite hollow without that pulsation.
Like this: ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Instead of this: ^^^¨¨^^----^-----^^^^***^^^¨¨¨¨^¨¨¨¨^^----¨^-----^^^*^^^¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨*****
Something like that ;)

Spanda is the idea of all things existing in a rhythmic state of expansion and contracting

 "Spanda is a Sanskrit term for the subtle creative pulse of the universe as it manifests into the dynamism of living form. Spanda can be translated to vibration, movement, or motion.
Spanda is the movement from darkness to light.
It is the energy of creation.
On a more personal level, spanda refers to consciousness as it orients through thought and intention to organize into authentic action.
You may experience spanda as a desire to live according to your own innermost urging, act in line with your interest, follow your curiosity, and attend to your body’s natural rhythms as they harmonize within the grander scale of natural life seasons and cycles"
written by Jamie Stover Schmidt

Spanda is the desire to love and be loved.
Contracting and expanding.
Spanda moves love from the ideal, the fairytale, into action.
When we actively give love, when our heart’s pulses with humility and compassion,
we design the possibility for thriving and for a life that is wild, abundant and rich.

I believe that contrasts create inner light.

In Love M.

family

my kind of balance

tinymomentsofpeace

When life gives you lemons - eat rainbows

----
me


Ever since I was a little brown-eyed girl,
I believed that I could find a treasure in the end of every rainbow.
I still do.
And I also know that eating rainbows can be a good thing to do.
Especially when life taste more like like a big squeeze of lime than a soft chocolate cake.
It gives me balance.

Imagine life like a rainbow.
A wide, colourful wave to experience.
Taste.
Witness.
With all that implies.
With both pearls and junk along the way.
Sometimes the junk transforms into diamonds.
Sometimes it`s just junk.
It´s a huge, rockin`wave.
With treasures, to beautiful to ignore, along the way.

One important thing to notice:
balancing on a huge rainbow wave can be tricky sometimes.
Some waves are smoother, some quite rough.

How do you keep balance in your life?

Contemplate, or just have a big bite of the rainbow itself.

I found one

Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.

"The Yoda Sutras"


Yoda, the wise little man in Star Wars, comes close to something we also can read about in The Yoga Sutras:

Aparigraha
This last yama is usually translated as non-greed or non-possessiveness.
An easier way to think of it might be learning how to deal with our innate desire for more – or at least, to sit with the desire, observe it in a nonjudgmental way, and, hopefully, watch it subside,

Greed, or wanting more, often comes from two misapprehensions.
One is that ‘I lack something,’ The other is "that you have what I need"

We do have phycial needs, so it’s not about our basic, fundamental needs.

Often the problem comes from the sensation that
‘I don’t have enough,’ or ‘I`m not enough.’
And that’s where it can be destructive.
It’s a paradoxical effect, because getting more almost always stimulates wanting even more.
We are constantly bombarded with images of excess from the media,
which essentially works to “whip up our desire for more.”
And this becomes a cruel cycle.

Me myself are saying yes to desire! 
I say yes to Life.
To abundance.
But I say no to  w a n t i n g .
And I´m curious about how we can be more aware of what we desire.
And why?

And use our yogapractice to really merge with that question.
And be careful not bringing the "lack" to our mats.
Not straining for more excitment.
Do your own practice.



You can read a great article about Aparigraha here where my text in the beginning also comes from.

grounded

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver

lifelines