Flying dreams

News from Mysore:

It is official. A new heir to the ashtanga throne has been born! Today after the opening mantra, Saraswati announced that Sharath is the proud father of a baby boy!

On to the blog:

We often forget our dreams. The dreams that we remember sometimes stick with us, especially those where we are flying. I've read that dreams of flying are categorized as "lucid dreams", which are dreams where the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. We are aware that we are doing the impossible, we are soaring through the sky, or hovering over the earth, or gliding above the ocean. When we are flying, everything is possible. These dreams are often described as carrying a feeling of freedom and joy.

Lying in bed after class, I was taking an extended savasana (rest). I stared from underneath the blanket, up into space. I was daydreaming of birds. (Maybe the sound of the early morning tweeting and squawking planted some images.) I dreamt of trees towering above the ground with warm nests filled with the anxious, flapping wings of baby birds ready to figure out what they were made for. The mother bird pushes them out one at a time. There is no lesson, just a push, and the confidence that the little creature will be able to figure it out. Yes, there is technique involved, but really, the point is just to stay in the air, the point is to fly and it doesn't matter how the little creature does it, so much as he or she does.

I saw Rachel standing up from urdhva dhanurasana today. She did it for the first time yesterday. I watched as she negotiated the weight distribution between her hands and feet. I watched as she inched her way to the very edge. For a second, I thought she would give up even though she was so close. I wanted to shout across the room, "go for it! you got it!" And then, all the hesitation washed away and she stood up, just like that.

What I love about ashtanga (and what a lot of people don't like) is that it is so much about just doing it. Just stand up. Just lift up. Just jump back. Just fold. Just...fly. Over time, as you soar, you figure out that you can twirl and dive and spin and a million other things once you conquer everything that tells you "no" and you are doing it--you are flying. It is like constantly looking into your own face as a child when you figured out how to do something. Little you gazes warmly up at current you and exclaims, "I did it!" Maybe, big you can do the same thing. Sometimes in practice, we are all like happy little children shouting, "I did it!" As I write this, I can honestly say that I'm smiling because it is so simple and because this little drop of happiness is such a gift.

I've found myself in a few conversations recently about how people wish they were birds, and in particular, eagles.

Sometimes in flying dreams, we feel like we are beginning to lose altitude or that we will crash into something. This happens to me when I realize not that I'm flying, but that actually, I can't usually do this in real life. For me, its the "possibility" or lack there of that I cling to and allow to weigh me down all the way to the ground.

I want to remember a dream in the back of my mind where I begin to lose altitude but then, I do the impossible and I "pick it up!" "Pick it up" just happens to sound familiar because that is what Saraswati and Sharath will tell you and those around you who begin to lose altitude in flying poses such as headstand or uthplutih. Today I had the feeling that Saraswati was pushing all of us out of the nest and now it is up to us to fly.

Daniel Johnston

Worried Shoes - Yip / Jump Music (1983)

I took my lucky break and I broke it in two

Put on my worried shoes

My worried shoes

And my shoes took me so many miles and they never wore out
My worried shoes
I made a mistake and I never forgot
I tied knots in the laces of
My worried shoes
And with every step that I'd take I'd remember my mistake

As I marched further and further away
In my worried shoes

My worried shoes

And my shoes took me down a crooked path

Away from all welcome mats

My worried shoes

And then one day I looked around and I found the sun shining down

And I took off my worried shoes

And the feet broke free

I didn't need to wear

Then I knew the difference between worrying and caring

'Cause I've got a lot of walking to do

And I don't want to wear

My worried shoes

Links to dream dictionaries (when is the last time you tried to analyse a dream?):

http://www.mysticalblaze.com/DreamsFlying.htm

http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/

http://www.dreamdoctor.com/dictionary/

The practice of practice and no practice of practice

Last night we all took advantage of today being a day off and as we mumbled at each other across the table at Tina's, the evidence on our tired faces was amusing.

I went to this crazy Indian take away restaurant after watching a disastrous amount of television. (Which, by the way, isn't half bad. There are plenty of American channels if you get cable.) They put rice in a little metallic baggie and sealed it. They did the same for a gooey potato dish. You have to see some of this stuff to appreciate exactly how much the mind freaks out when it sees something new like innovative food packaging.

Again, I'm here at Rishi's listening to music on the Internet with a determination to spread good music:

DEFIANCE, OHIO LYRICS
hear the song here
"Chad's Favorite Song"

do you remember passion? it's buried beneath a concrete world. have you forgotten compassion? are you in the middle of an ugly war between yourself and a giant machine? are you so tired you can't even dream anymore?

fuck this city, and fuck this filthy air. let's build a-frames in the woods and just live there. we'll all eat berries and build fires every night and forget this mistake we call modern life.

i believe in something, but i don't know what it is. it's either the future or the end. it's every reason that i do or don't get out of bed.

we live in the unhappy shadows of skyscrapers freight trains and malls to a soundtrack of nuclear warheads and bombs. addicted to power, addicted to authority, money, and success ... so far gone, without our addictions, do we even know how to live?

the sun is shining thru distance, bitter clouds that make me choke and cough and scream. sitting here along watching acid raindrops fall, this is not the life i want to lead.

Have you ever heard of Daniel Jonston? Good stuff. This is life changing.

Today I am half-determined to be semi-productive, although quite honestly I'm avoiding anything like it at all times. I woke up today when I felt like it and sat on my bed and played the harmonium for a little while. The sun was coming in through the window and I could feel the tan spread on my arm. There is nowhere I have to be, no one I have to see, nothing I really have to do. Just me sitting on my bed, playing my harmonium with the sun beating down on my arm. Life can be so different, and yet exactly the same.

We were sitting around a table talking and laughing and someone asked what I was doing today. I said something like "I'm trying not to think too much about it." We just kind of looked at each other and were like, "yeah."

Yoga Sutra

1.2 yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ

“Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind”