Practice Notes & Schedule // Week of 6.1.26
realizing emptiness through form
“Real emptiness will be experienced -- not experienced, but realized -- by good practice.” - Shunryu Suzuki, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai
First off: emptiness. Exhale completely, spill the contents of your container. There is nothing “in there” and yet there is still “there”. The breath waits but a short while before it must pour in again. But the container could wait indefinitely, still, holding space, ready to receive.
Our bodies are often conceptualized as a container. One of many Sanskrit words with a common-use meaning of “the body” is ghaṭa, which references a large pitcher or watering pot. The breath is an easy place to explore the connection - the inhale fills up our pot to the brim and then the exhale tips it over, watering the garden. This every moment experience is realizable, but just the tip of the iceberg. Our ghaṭas receive, exchange, absorb, release, and carry all of life’s contents. We are space to be filled, in a sense, thus our practice becomes to not only experience this (which can be done while passive and unaware) in all of its movements, but to realize (real-ize) it.
A 17th century compilation of Hatha Yoga texts offer us this aim for our practice to keep under consideration (while also remembering that in the Vedic/Buddhist conception of things, mind & body are not separate):
“to achieve purification (śodhana), firmness (dṛḍhatā), steadiness (sthairya), constancy (dhairya), lightness (lāghava), direct perception (pratyakṣa) and liberation (nirlipta) of the body (ghaṭa).”
This week’s practice:
Monday, 7pm, Candlelight Flow // Highland Park Yoga
Tuesday, 9:30am, All Levels Yoga // Crescent Yoga *$20 walk-in community rate!
Wednesday, 8am, Yoga Level 2 // Highland Park Yoga
Wednesday, 5:30pm, Community Practice // Zoom, freely offered
Friday, 9am, Meditation Meet-Up // reach out for details, freely offered
Saturday, 8am, All Levels Yoga // Highland Park Yoga
Tuning in:
Practicing: Meditation on poetry (I’m working with The Sandokai). Backbends from solid feet. Nadi Shodana.
Reading: Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai by Shunryu Suzuki.
Listening: So much good new music right now! This week: Vila — Fabiano do Nascimento’s new release in collaboration with Vittor Santos e Orquestra
This week’s photo: Springtime mountains, Andalusia.
Liberation for all beings!
Reach out to be my guest in-studio!
x Julia