Wanderlust108

From today's yoga triathalon (5K walk/run, hour of yoga, hour of meditation, sprinkled with other fun events like hula hooping, slackline yoga, and dancing, and tribal body painting by Tribal Markers).

A day of joy to be sure, but a beautiful somber note during the meditation delivered by Noah Levine (refugerecovery.com) from the "Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society,” who posited:
"Can you be compassionate about what is unpleasant or even painful...?"

Here is a link to a video of a few hundred of my closest friends Om-ing together with Chelsey Korus.

You can't see but DJ Drez is spinning on stage

MC Yogi was leading this flow

Just had to come out of the pose to click a pic

These ladies wanted to practice with their new body markers

The results (1)

The results (2)

Less painful than a real tattoo but one heck of a suntan line

I'm a yoga slacker!

Poseur :)

Dream self, yoga self, authentic self

In this dream I had the other night I was teaching an unusually large yoga class, discussing how to come into a yoga state of mind to start our practice. One person spoke up and said "Oh, so we should put on our yoga personas?"

I gave it a thought, and then with much gesticulation energetically responded "Actually, think of it like peeling off the persona(s) you put ON everyday, to get back down TO your yoga self.  Take off all that outer shit, the stress of your job, the thick shell of negative interactions and defensiveness and sarcasm. Let the heaviness of responsibilities and obligations for the outer world, just for now, fall away. Shed that overprotective skin and allow the real, authentic you to be presented, to be present. Yoga is what is essential, at the heart of you, what is always there, what is true.

So, no, don't put on your yoga face, take off what obscures it. Get back to the authentic YOU.