Tag Archive for: Spirit

The Practice of Mindfulness Has a Shadow, and There’s More to the Story

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There is an interesting Tucson connection to the Atlantic article, The Dark Side of Mindfulness, and I have several responses to what it says about the dangers of mindfulness practice.

In 2004, a young doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Arizona, just up the road from us, recruited twenty-six people for a sleep study. Her name is Willoughby Britton. She was a devoted meditator and she was certain, the way we are all certain about the things that have saved us, that she would show meditation improves sleep. She put her participants in a lab overnight and measured their brain waves.

The meditators slept worse. More awakenings. More micro-arousals. More time in the lightest stage of sleep. And the more they had practiced, the worse it was.

She did not publish it. She was confused by the findings and by what they meant for her, and she worried that publishing would mean harming the dharma, criticizing the very teachings that had reordered her life.

I have been teaching yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and MBSR for the entirety of my professional life, and I want to say plainly that I understand that hesitation to bring forward evidence against something so sacred and so hopeful. I also think she was wrong to keep it in a drawer, and she clearly came to terms with that, because she has spent the twenty years since then doing the harder thing.

What the research now shows

Britton eventually published, and then she and her colleague Jared Lindahl did something almost nobody in our field had done: they asked meditators what had gone wrong. Their 2017 study, “The Varieties of Contemplative Experience,” and the body of work that followed it, tell us roughly this:

Something like one in ten people who take up meditation experience an adverse effect. The most common are fear, anxiety, panic, or paranoia, along with shifts in motivation so pronounced that practice stops feeling like practice and starts feeling like drifting. In her data, the difficulties lasted a median of one to three years. Other research groups, working independently and often from a firmly pro-meditation position, land in the same neighborhood: nine percent, thirteen percent, a quarter reporting at least one particularly unpleasant experience.

These are not, mostly, people who arrived with a psychiatric history. Many of them are high achievers, which is the finding I find most instructive, and I’ll come back to it.

The strongest single signal in the data is dose. More time on the cushion, more difficulty. Britton puts the practical threshold at about thirty minutes a day. Beyond that, the risk curve begins to bend. The other strong signal is intensive retreat: somewhere between half and three-quarters of the people who come to her nonprofit for help began having symptoms after one.

There is more I will say about dose and intensives at the end.

Why none of this should shock us

Here is what I feel is important to emphasize. The mindfulness traditions of the East knew about this, and they had ways of understanding it and working with it. We are the ones who have been experimenting with it, removing it from its context.

The Satipatthana Sutta, one of the key texts on the practice of mindfulness, is not a stress-reduction protocol. It is a set of instructions for dismantling your relationship to your own experience, for the greater goal of lessening or ending suffering. Pierce Salguero, a historian of Buddhism and medicine quoted in the article, points out that an eighth-century Chinese text has the Buddha warning of fifty “demonic states” that a contemplative can become trapped in: hallucinations, sorrow, anxiety, suicidal thought. “Meditation sickness” is not a modern Western complaint. It is old enough to have a literature of its own.

What is new is the delivery system. What was once a specialized practice, undertaken by people who had renounced ordinary life, supervised closely by someone who had gone that way before, is now framed as a commodity or an experience one can simply have on one’s own terms. I have been part of mainstreaming mindfulness meditation and practice, and I have great regard for the teachers and the teaching I have received, from both the secular and the Buddhist perspectives. And context and container, wise and caring support, mean a good deal more than we sometimes afford them.

Also, concentration practice is stimulating. That is the whole point of it. It is not a sedative. When we sit for long periods on our own, or choose to attend a retreat, we can find ourselves vacillating between checking out and freaking out. There is a line from the writer Anne Lamott: “My mind is a bad neighborhood I try not to go into alone.” So yes, the challenge to nervous system regulation with intensive practice is very real.

The part that is our responsibility

The hardest passage in Khazan’s article is not about neuroscience. It is about teachers.

Over and over, the people in Britton’s studies brought their symptoms to a teacher and were told: It gets worse before it gets better. What you resist persists. Everything arising is an opportunity. One teacher, asked why his dharma books never mentioned any of this, is reported to have said: Well, it’s not good advertising. When Britton described her own dissociation, months of feeling like a bird perched on her own shoulder, of walking into a creperie and thinking oh my God, I forgot that I am a person, she was congratulated. She had seen the truth of no-self. She should keep going. She did, and it got worse.

Britton calls these responses thought-terminating clichés: statements so unanswerably wise-sounding that they end the conversation.

I have probably said versions of some of that in the classroom, hopefully in the attempt to normalize a fuller range of present-moment experience, rather than as encouragement toward the insight of no solid self. That is not my purview.

There is the reality that meditation disrupts the status quo. Discomfort is often the doorway, and equanimity toward what arises is the practice. That is what we aim to communicate and fortify. The trouble is that a true teaching used to close a student’s mouth becomes a false one. And when the only diagnostic tool a tradition has is “keep practicing,” it cannot tell the difference between a student who is working through something and a student who is being set back.

Which brings me back to the high achievers. I think the reason so many of Britton’s harmed meditators hold graduate degrees is that they had been rewarded, their whole lives, for overriding the signal that something is wrong. They came to meditation and they tried to ace it. Meditation is not supposed to be about achievement, and yet it sneaks in again and again and again, for teachers and students alike.

Also, what a lot of teachers were missing in the early romance with mindfulness were the equally important trainings in compassion and self-compassion, along with the evolving understanding of trauma-informed teaching. These are things that are better understood and better integrated now than they once were.

Six things I want to say to our community

  1. The research indicates that more than thirty minutes can be activating. In our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction curriculum and on many modern retreats, forty-five minutes is often used as a typical period. In the right context this has value, but in the reality of your personal practice, always adjust to what is tolerable, doable, and leaves you with a generally positive feedback loop.
  2. Different practices do different things to different nervous systems. In Britton’s work, noting practices (labeling thoughts and sensations) skewed toward anxiety, while sustained breath-anchor concentration skewed toward low mood. If you are already exquisitely attuned to every sensation in your body, a body scan may not be your medicine right now. Come talk to us about a different practice. This is precisely what our individual mindfulness coaching sessions are for.
  3. A long retreat with an experienced leader is a great gift, and you have to be ready and have your own sincere intention. I go on retreat to unwind and unplug, and to get a clearer sense of how I can meet life with care. In MBSR we train people for six weeks to be able to endure a “Day-Long Retreat.” It can be a lot for people, but it can be the turning point too, where they feel both a deeper calm and a willingness to ride the waves of their moment to moment experience. It is also a good group experience, being together but not socially on. This may be enough. Multi-day meditation retreats are not needed in order to apply mindfulness well in life.
  4. If your practice is going badly, tell someone, and tell someone who will actually listen. Say it to me. Say it to your teacher. Say it out loud in the room. If the answer you get is only keep sitting, get a second opinion, and know that asking for one is not a failure of faith or of understanding.
  5. You are permitted to stop. Britton says many of the people who come to her seem relieved when she tells them it is okay to stop meditating. Her framing is characteristically blunt and I think it’s right: treat meditation like a relationship. If you consistently feel worse with that person, maybe it’s time to break up, or at least to spend some time apart. A balanced practice has an enormous toolkit. Movement, breath, mantra, chanting, singing, dancing, service. Walking in the Rillito in October. Prayer. Sleep. Contemplative practice is a very large house, and the silent, still room is only one room in it.
  6. Bring a professional in when a professional is needed. Dissociation, depersonalization, intrusive imagery, and psychosis are clinical events, not attainments. Yoga and mindfulness practice sit alongside good clinical care beautifully. They do not replace it, and we will always tell you so.

The middle way, again

Khazan ends her piece where I would end it. The Buddha’s first teaching after his awakening was not a technique. It was a warning about extremes: against indulgence on one side, and against austerity so severe it immiserates you on the other. Avoiding these two extremes, the Realized One understood the middle way of practice.

We are, culturally, in an era of contemplative maximalism. More minutes, more days, more silence, longer retreats, higher states, and a quiet competitive hum underneath all of it. Britton’s twenty years of unpopular research are, read generously, an empirical rediscovery of the middle way. She paid an enormous price to hand it back to us: she lost the community that had been her whole life, and she no longer meditates at all. She takes care of her plants and chops wood in Vermont.

There is something in that image I find true and beautiful. The article mentions the example Britton’s parents set for her, that a person should find a problem nobody is solving and embrace it as their niche. She did, and I for one am grateful. I still think of her as a Tucsonan, and this city’s practice community is part of what her work came out of.

I love the practice. I love the teaching. I believe in this work with my whole heart, and I believe the benefits are real because I have watched them arrive in real bodies in this building for years. Believing that is exactly why I want us to be the kind of practice community that speaks frankly about both the light and the dark sides of the process.

Awareness is like the light of the sun. It reveals what is there. Sometimes what is there is hard, and the practice is to look anyway, and to know the difference between looking at something hard and doing yourself harm.

If any of this is describing your experience, please come find me. We will sit down together, and we will figure out what your practice should actually be.

Ungated reading for the The Dark Side of Mindfulness

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Yoga Paradigm

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One way I address the Yoga paradigm in comparison to the Western paradigm is to simply say that Yoga never separated mind/body/spirit.  There are many, many, many schools of Yoga, so it is often inaccurate to talk about Yoga as any one thing- but I think it would be safe to say that all schools of Yoga would agree that mind/body/spirit are inseparable and while different focuses can be useful- they are completely interwoven dimensions of our being.

In the West, we separated and compartmentalized these elements more and more.    It began most obviously in the 1600’s, the periods described as the Age of Enlightenment or Reason.  In these times a pronounced separation occurred- particularly regarding the subjects of religion and theology from other fields of inquiry such as philosophy and material science.  There is so much interesting history here, history that very much has modern relevance- but to keep it simple, our Western paradigm does not create a platform that necessarily integrates mind/body/spirit or is comfortable with their associations.

I believe this is why average, stressed out people are often so delighted by yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices.  When they “click”, when they seem to “work”, for people- what they are experiencing is an integrated state that is not fostered in our daily life and not easy to come by accidentally.  Without questioning it too much, thinking about it too much, something happens when we practice that gives us relief and a deeper sense of grounding. This integrated mind-body-spirit approach shapes the yoga classes offered at the Sol Center.

In my teaching I think of this as the spiritual dimension of practice- the transition from a thinking state to a feeling state to an aware state.  I’m not trying to facilitate a spiritual experience, I am simply encouraging you to fully experience this moment as it is unfolding.  Bare awareness.  This is both purely rational and scientific- pay attention to the present moment without reacting to whatever appears in the field of awareness- and a total surrender to the holy mystery.  If I let go of the controls that normally mediate my direct experience, what will happen to me?

While the life of the mind and intellect and the exploration of the natural world can be deeply fascinating and fulfilling, it can likewise be perplexing and exhausting and unreal too.  What Yoga reminds us of through practice and through its holistic perspective is that the mind needs to be connected to the body and the heart and the reality of the present moment. And this moment, when we bring bare awareness to it, is precious and holy and significant for reasons we will never be able to fully explain or rationalize.

The openness to Life Itself that we cultivate frees us from a great deal of conditioning and many inherent, and inherited assumptions…Life is not about answers.  It is about learning to live in the middle of complete uncertainty, and doing so gracefully. ~Swami Chetanananda

 

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Sleep of the Yogi: Finding the Rest & Recovery We All Need

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Join wisdom speaker Natasha Korshak as she brings her teaching to Sacred Space on Saturday, August 10th at 4:15pm, with Tucson musician Stephen Pedone, principal of Edgewater Guitars accompanying live on guitar to set the tone for the practice.

Natasha will guide us through the foundations of Yoga Nidra, also known as iRest (not an Apple product!), and lead us in real, hands-on practice of this profoundly restorative technique. Though it’s often described simply as “yogic sleep,” Yoga Nidra is really a state of conscious, deep relaxation, one where the body rests as fully as it does in sleep while the mind stays quietly aware. It’s one of the oldest tools in the Yoga tradition, and also one of the most accessible: no flexibility required, no strength required, just the willingness to lie down and listen.

What makes this practice so powerful is its reach. Research and clinical use alike point to Yoga Nidra as an effective support for anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, and PTSD, among other conditions where the nervous system has gotten stuck in patterns of hypervigilance or exhaustion.

Natasha will help us understand:

  • How the practice works with the body’s natural relaxation response
  • How it creates enough safety and stillness for the nervous system to finally downshift out of fight-or-flight,
  • And how that shift alone can begin to loosen the grip of chronic stress on our health.

But Yoga Nidra isn’t only about relaxation. At its heart, it’s a practice of intention. Through the use of sankalpa (a resolve planted at the deepest, most receptive layer of the mind) it reminds us of what we’re here to do and who we’re capable of becoming. It offers a doable, repeatable way to meet the limiting beliefs and old perceptions that generate our stress and tension, and to gently, steadily, begin breaking through them.

Natasha will also help us bring this off the mat (or cushion) and into daily life: how a short Nidra practice can reset a hard afternoon, support better sleep, or become a steady anchor we return to whenever we need to come back to ourselves.

Sacred Space at the Ward 6 Chill Space 3202 E 1st St, Tucson, AZ 85716

 

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Reflections: The Week Of My Birthday 2020

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At the time I was born, my mother was 29. She was now the mother of 3 living in Hyde Park, Illinois. She often said she missed the 1960’s because she was already with child by age 18; but she was still a woman of her time. She was an artist and writer, she had been a playboy bunny in the clubs, she married a Jew when her family had never met one, she befriended and often housed unusual, interesting, radical, struggling people, she was anti-war, she was gay friendly, had campaigned for Kennedy.

She is gone now so I can’t ask her to refresh me, but I imagine she was devastated by the assassinations of President Kennedy and years later, in my third term in her womb, Martin Luther King. I was born the day Robert Kennedy won the California primary for their Democratic Presidential Nominee, he was killed the next day. And we lived minutes away from the riot scene of the Democratic National Convention. I was probably in her arms when she watched the TV those days and heard the city around her in chaos.

Flash to now: I watch, listen, and sense into the events of these past weeks. The tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery. The knee on the neck of George Floyd. The ridiculous responses of our president, who has fanned racial tensions flagrantly all along. What am I to do? How am I to meet the moment? Me, a babe of the civil rights era, the daughter of a performance poet, and an ordained minister?

Looking around my life, I am aware, more than ever, that it is lily white. No black friends or neighbors, very few places where I come into contact with any diversity. I had not noticed. It happened gradually as I left work in organizations and focused on creating something of my own. Like my mother, who was sucked into domestic and suburban life; only worse because I don’t even have children to draw me out into the community they might have, or make me think about the youth perspective.

I attended the “Black Lives Matter” event on the U of A campus this past weekend and thought of her, my mother. She was more socially active than I am. More dramatic. She would have carried a sign. She would have known some of these performers on stage, or their equivalents in her day. She was someone who could get up on stage and speak and sing of the aches of the wounded heart and the ravages of oppression. She was someone who would affirm anyone who tried to as well. She wasn’t political, but she was a champion of truth and justice and the power of the spoken word.
Two of the speakers at the rally spoke of the need to stand up, the need for all marginalized people to raise their voices, the need to risk offending the powers that be. I heard them. And then heard them again, when they said that those who are standing here will turn away again. White people in particular. Will retreat. Will collude. Will comply. Again. They were scolding us and I felt it, and deserved it. They also were voicing their despair; you might feel good about being here letting us be us, but you will forget about us tomorrow….

A client I had been with earlier in the day- grieving deeply the wounds of her family combined with the grief of our country and world, likewise had doubted that any protest would matter. Not just this but in general- all that has been trampled these last 3 years….
It’s too big and pervasive. All the brokenness. And the Powers That Be, that serve themselves and their kind alone.

And yet: Something finally does seem to be happening. Moving the needle. Shaking the status quo. What can I do? How can I contribute to the moment? How will I remember, tomorrow and in the weeks, months, years to come what is happening and what is needed to help others up and out of not only personal despair (which I am trained to do), but systemic oppression (which I am not)?

Please know this reflection is primarily personal. I am sharing it to expose my own process rather than to wave a sign of any kind. As a contemplative, someone who is more introverted than extroverted- more emotional than intellectual- more spiritual than practical- I am searching for my authentic response to how will I remember and act.

I will take heart and inspiration from those I see standing up, speaking out, calling out, crying out. One of the presenters yesterday, sang a song about the places she can’t go because of the risk of being killed by police. It was stunning and at one point she screeched and screeched and it was just, right. Just as we would hope in our grief workshops when people connect to the rage or fear or desperation that really was a natural way to react, but most likely was repressed to stay alive. We have to allow ourselves and others to grieve, which includes rage and anger properly directed.

I will continue to listen and care and beam a deep faith in the potential of individuals to connect with deeper powers than the powers that be. As a black minister said of Trump’s photo op at St. John’s Church, “The God I serve is higher than that.”
I will continue to commit to my own contemplative path of Yoga. Prayer. Meditation. Not as an escape or evasion, or personal pursuit of health or wisdom, but as a form of purification and the innate desire to provide places of refuge and processes of insight for others. Refuge, that Thomas Merton referred to as necessary to make active work “fruitful.”

And I l will commit to learning more about systemic oppression, about my own bias, about what is now referred to as white fragility. I truly don’t understand these things- have not felt it was relative to me yet. Now it is.

All this does not alieve the pain of those actively oppressed, the real suffering of so many, but it is something I can and will sincerely do. From a black president to a racist president to the unknown future. We each have plenty we can do that matters.

While the moment is ripe for change, while the situation is dire for so many, while hope is sincere, it will not be easy. In the words of Thomas Merton again, and in the spirit of the long view, and the contemplative I am, “concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. ” Thomas Merton

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We are all feeling so much right now

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We are all feeling so much right now, processing a lot of news, figuring out how to prepare and how to adapt- at home and at work.  What we may not realize is that we are grieving as well.  Grieving for what is unfolding, for what will not be, and also for the unknowns of the future.

While this situation is enormously complex, and the effects of it all will affect us each differently, there is also something surprisingly unifying.  We are all in this together, it is not just one country or state or city or family.

Here are some tips and tools from my yoga, mindfulness, and grief practices to support your mind/mind/spirit in this trans-formative time.  I hope they can help, and I know personally they do.

  • Elisabeth Kubler-Ross laid out the 5 stages of grief:  denial, anger, sadness, bargaining, acceptance.  They were not her last words about the process and often are taken too literally, yet they are good signposts.  Notice what you are thinking and feeling- which one might apply to your current state of being with all this?
  • This is a chaotic time, whether your life has come to a full stop, or you are actively engaged in an essential function.  What can you do that helps you personally calm down, slow down, tune in, pause, and be present.  Ask yourself, “what am I aware of right now?…How am I relating to myself and the moment right now?…What is needed, if anything?..
  • One of the most powerful self-compassion tools is to bring your awareness to your heart center, or to breathe into your heart center, or to put your hand or hands upon your sternum.  Sometimes, this is enough.  Feel the sensations. No words needed.  Just the feeling of connecting to your heart center can be soothing. Think of this as stocking up on compassion, kindness, and patience too.
  • Find safe ways to express your feelings and ideally to feel them through for a few minutes at a time.  The more we deny, distract, project, suppress our feelings- the more problems they create in our body and in our relationships.  In lieu of a safe person, there is always pen and paper- write them down, let it rip, and rip it up or burn it if you are worried about it being read.  The point is to get it out, externalize it.  Sometimes it is pure catharsis (it is a good sign if you cry while you are writing), sometimes it leads to insight (it doesn’t have to), let go of analyzing why or problem solving (you can talk back to the voice that goes there quickly).
  • We all have different ways of processing our feelings:  exercise, dance, art, music, nature, talking, meditating, praying, playing.  You don’t have to put words to them, but you do need to feel them, honor them, let them flow rather than simply sit.  Emotion implies motion.  Give yourself permission to feel what you feel and see where it takes you.  There is a short poem by Mary Oliver that expresses this perfectly:
    We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
    What a time they have, these two
    housed as they are in the same body.
  • One practice I have been doing spontaneously lately is simple breath awareness, or conscious breathing.  Just being more aware of my breath coming and going throughout the day, as I am doing what I am doing.  Letting it be and appreciating what it is.  I am thinking of this as breath affiliation.  We all need to breathe to be alive.  Breath is the symbol of our birth and death.  For now I am indeed alive and well.  I can breathe well for all those that may be struggling.  Jon Kabat Zinn often said “practice as if your life depends on it, because it does.”  I always marveled that he made the mindfulness practice truly seem so critical. Today it truly is.

Take care

Natasha

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Vedic Astrology Highlights and Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse

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Vedic Astrology Highlights Fall 2015 & Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse September 27th

 

We have a Solar and Lunar Eclipse this month.  Here are the Highlights of what is UP.

The Solar Eclipse will occur later this night that I write.  It is partial and will not be visible to us in the USA.  Yet the energy of an eclipse effects the whole planet, perhaps more so where they are visible.

This occurs in the sign of Leo, in the later section of the constellation called Purva Phalguni- it is associated with wealth so there is some buzz in the astrology community about this having impact on the global economy.  Some say the wild ride the stock market just took is indicative of this energy fluctuation.  Particular effects may be felt for 6 months.

Eclipses are considered inauspicious periods to initiate new endeavors.  They are auspicious for spiritual attunement and refinement.  As we know, life often insists we do things in spite of the signs and omens.  Truly, the key is to have a daily practice that purifies your heart and mind in some way.  This is the key to weathering whatever will come.

It is also considered helpful when the solar eclipse happens before the lunar.  We always have eclipses in pairs and this time the lunar eclipse will follow and be fully visible for us in Tucson.  It is quite powerful as it is a total eclipse and the moon is close to the Earth in its orbit- this is called a super moon.  It is also interesting as it happens early in the evening- it will be fully eclipsed around 8pm Tucson time.  Easy to witness and meditate upon.

Again, there is lots of lore regarding everything and it is said that it is not good to be outside during an eclipse- that you are personally negatively affected by it.  But in this day and age, when we are disconnected from so many natural rhythms, I sense it is a remedy; a way to honor the subtle and the shadow element of life, to witness the celestial phenomenon and strengthen our commitment to light.

The lunar eclipse occurs Sunday night, September 27. It occurs in Pisces, in the section called Uttara Bhadra Pada.  It is associated with the flow of water, purification, renewal, and release from long held patterns.  It is the water that smooths the stones.  I hope you get to experience and enjoy this event in some way.

Lunar Eclipse Tucson

Mars in Leo: September 16-November 3

Mars is leaving its 2 month sojourn through the sign of Cancer, which is its sign of debility/ difficulty.

This is a big shift for Mars energy.  In anyone’s chart Mars signifies raw energy, courage, power, brothers, and land.  In the fire sign of Leo the King it regains its sense of being a spiritual warrior.  This is very significant if you are Aries or Scorpio Rising or Moon by birth. You will feel empowered again.

Sun in Virgo: September 17-October 17

The Sun will soon change signs- from Leo to Virgo.  There is quite a bit of intensity in this yearly visit as Rahu is here and Mercury turns retrograde this same day. September 22-24 are very intense Solar days.  Be extra mindful and curious.

Mercury Retrograde: September 17-October 8

Mercury is retrograde in its own sign of Virgo, that is good in ways as it spends more time in one of its places of power and amplifies all kinds of Mercury and Virgo related things:  intellectual and organizational activities, service and healing matters especially.  It backtracks right into the Sun, full combustion, September 29-30. These are days that Virgo or Mercury people could feel inspired yet depleted.  It retrogrades into Rahu October 7-8 and then goes direct.  These could be interesting days for Mercury’s mental energy- creativity and innovation abound.  But be careful with important decisions.  Rahu is a trickster energy!

 

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Vedic Highlights July August 2015

In the Vedic understanding of macrocosm and microcosm, our connection to the universe comes from within.  The energies of the universe flow through our consciousness and being from the causal to the astral to the physical level.  Therefore, in some ways thinking about astrology as up – as an outer phenomenon – is inaccurate. Chew on that as I move on to the news.

One piece of important news is that Jupiter has changed signs.  Jupiter takes one year to transit one sign of the zodiac.  So we get a different flavor of Jupiter every year.   Jupiter is a general signifier of children, teachers, knowledge and wealth.  Its natural energy is positive, expansive, joyful.  For the last year it was in the sign of Cancer, which is the sign of the moon, mother, emotional nurturance.  This is a powerful transit of Jupiter that only happens every 11 years.

Jupiter has now moved into the sign of Leo, the sign of the sun, father, self-expression.  Cancer is a water sign, Leo is a fire sign.  They are both royal signs, both sattvic signs, meaning when planets are there at birth or by transit- they are inclined towards the good, towards their best nature.  So Jupiter in Leo could be very positive for us all.  It brings some fire to our minds and our visions, it could improve relations with our father or shine light on our issues with masculine power structures.

It always depends on how your personal chart operates, but reflect on the last year- from last July to now- what was the flavor of Jupiter in Cancer?  And envision what it might be this year- something similar but more masculine.  Also, if you want to explore how the planets affect your subtle energy- what was the recent period of July 8 to July 18th like?  This 10 day period Jupiter was passing over a sensitive knot in the zodiac- it can confuse us energetically and bring up deeper issues.  I activated a back injury during the time.  I knew the dates and was attempting to pay attention, but it wasn’t until my back ached and stopped me from doing that I got the real message. Don’t stir the pot, slow down and feel deeper, otherwise you will be forced to listen.  Nothing serious for me, just another reminder of how this subtle energy practice works.

The other news right now is that Saturn is preparing to change course.  It is currently transiting the sign of Scorpio.  It had moved to 10 degrees and then stopped and turned retrograde in mid-March.  Saturn is the slowest visible planet, it takes 30 years for it to transit the entire zodiac, requiring 2 ½ years to transit one sign.  When Saturn moves retrograde, things seem to go even slower.  It can make us feel like we are standing still in some way or losing ground.

Saturn in Scorpio is not an easy transit in general as Scorpio is the sign related to our deepest karmas- in yoga what is called our vasanas- and it is ruled by Mars.  Saturn and Mars are both difficult energies, so in a way the entire transit brings them up against each other in our own being.  Saturn is more an old, withholding, cold, critical energy, Mars is more youthful, brash, hot, and reactive energy.  This is a great time to be looking at this in your life.  What has felt stuck or blocked since March?  How may it be related to a core psycho-emotional issue for you?  As Saturn slows, stops and turns direct July 30-August 4 you have the potential to get new traction.  Things will start to move a bit again, take this time to clarify what is the right direction.

One other briefer planetary happening is Venus is stopping and turning retrograde in Leo, July 25. This intensifies Venus energy for a while. It will also be in exact conjunction with Jupiter in Leo on August 2-7.  When you look up in the night sky, you will see the 2 bright planets merging, almost looking like one bright star.  When planets optically connect like this, we call it a war in Vedic astrology, the 2 energies battling each other.  It can bring extra brilliance but it more often brings dissipation on some level- one energy vanquishing another.  So these are days to simply be extra mindful.  Like I was noting with my Jupiter experience in mid-July.

One final thought about Venus, if you know your chart and you are Taurus or Libra rising or moon, you are more affected by Venus’s transits.  August 11 to 15 are also tricky Venus days.

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Vedic Astrology Highlights: January 2014

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Hello and Happy New Year!

Here’s the current planetary information for the next several weeks.  Please remember this is all viewed from the sidereal perspective- all planets fall back about 24 degrees from the Western astrology placements.  You’ll hear from me again in early March for great news about Jupiter!

Mars’ long transit of Virgo

If you are Virgo Ascendant or have birth planets in Virgo you may want to pay attention here.  Mars began transiting Virgo in late November and will continue along as usual until February 4 when it enters Libra.  This would be its usual transit through a sign, taking about 2 months; but in this case it will stop at 3 degrees Libra and then move retrograde back into Virgo.  Retrograde motion means that the planet appears to be moving backwards through the zodiac.  This will take Mars back into the middle of Virgo until May 20th and then it will move forward again and through leaving finally July 14th.  This means the whole first half of this year Mars is affecting this one area!

Mars in Virgo is a volatile transit in general. Virgo is the sign related to perfection, our urge for things to be done properly.  Mars here could generate an extra dose of frustration and annoyance about how things and people are performing.  Virgo is the sign of health as well, and Mars here can create health disturbances.  The volatility has to do with the fact that Virgo is a sign ruled by Mercury- which is the spark like energy of our mind.  Mars is like a flame to Mercury’s spark thus, handle with care.

I have Ketu in Virgo and have been watching as Mars just transited the exact point.  Like I tell you to do, I note the dates and watch what arises, both within my body/mind and externally.  The first day of the transit I experienced an intense confrontation with someone I work with.  Even before it started I sensed something was going off.  When it was happening I was also aware of the energy and did what I could to be clear and non-defensive.  When it was over I did a little extra to clear up the disturbance between us.  This was my way of being responsive and proactive and keeping the impact minimal.  In addition to this situation I ended up with extra responsibilities during a meditation retreat I was supposed to simply attend, and then got the dreaded chest flu and passed it on to my husband too!  The good news is that I feel like the transit really escalated my meditation experiences and I hopefully now have my immunity in place for the rest of the season!

Ok, there’s a personal story, but the thing for us to remember, is that Mars now is a warm up for Mars later this year!  If you are curious how this affects your chart feel free to contact me for a check in.

Venus Retrograde

We began the year with Venus moving retrograde back through Capricorn.  It will continue this direction all through January.  When any planet is retrograde its energy is disrupted in some way.  It will express itself in a more obvious and yet unusual manner.  *This same principle applies to Mars retrograde discussed above.   Venus’s usual energy is about enjoyment, pleasure, relationship, creative connection so we could say that while retrograde this month you might explore finding enjoyment in something unusual or that it is a good time to reconnect with something or refine something rather than seek out something new.  If you are Taurus or Libra ascendant this retrograde affects you most- things seem to be going a bit slow.

One interesting moment in the transit occurs at the end, on February 1st Venus will station, which means it stops moving backward or forward, and it will be almost exactly opposite Jupiter in Gemini.  These are both the benefic planets, related to what we desire and cherish in this life,  yet they represent different avenues for fulfillment.  Venus is more about material satisfaction, Jupiter intellectual or spiritual fulfillment.  Some astrologers say this opposition can trigger a sense of opposition in us personally regarding these paths, and also some indulgence.  Last time this transit occurred in November I was with 3 great yoga teachers- and there was some opposition going on regarding their teaching methods!  It was interesting to see it through the planetary lens and it was all fine.  Again, February 1st is the upcoming date, see what it brings you!

Also, note that Venus will move forward from there and be in some of its most auspicious zones for the next several months.  This is good news for Taurus, Libra, Capricorn, and Aquarius ascendants.

/by

You Need 2 Naans

My Peter says I should mention my praise for a little Indian restaurant in Tucson.  So here I go- never wanted to be a person who blogged about what they are eating…

Let me back up for a moment and say that I recently met a dear friend at another local Indian restaurant- that shall be nameless.  It has been in operation for many years.  Peter and I had our first meal together there.  The food is decent and the woman who owns it is, well, cranky.  Peter calls her the “cranky lady” and we accept that when we go.  He even enjoys it, being from New Jersey were cranky proprietors are quite acceptable, I am told, if they do a good job with their product or service.

I have not been to this restaurant in a while, and I thought intentionally of going this day to patronize them.  It was cold and rainy and I was early for my meeting.  No greeting or seating was offered so I simply sat down and waited.  Nothing.  I went and found the lady and she was true to form, cranky, when I asked for tea.  Tea was delivered, not particularly good.  My friend arrived and it was expected we would eat the buffet and no service would occur.  We ate, it was decent.  We visited a long while and only once perhaps was there service- she came and removed our plates.  I wanted more tea but was uncomfortable asking.  It seemed like she was annoyed we were there so long but it was pretty empty, so we weren’t taking up valuable real estate.

When I got home I didn’t feel well.  I don’t think it was the food but the whole experience was distasteful.  Why go there at all?  Why feel uncomfortable when I am patronizing her?  Why was it so empty?  Does she treat all of her customers this way?  If so, no wonder there is so little business on an ideal day for Indian buffet lunch.  Was she mad because her business was slow?  If so, this was not helping.  If I was unusually brave and kind, I would tell her what I am thinking- which is I do not feel inclined to come back there.  I would give her a chance to understand the effect her attitude had on me and her business.  Instead I will simply chronicle it for us all to consider- how are we behaving that may be adversely affecting what we hope for?

Now on to the delightful surprise I had at lunch yesterday.  A small restaurant formerly called “Amrutha” and currently called the “Curry Leaf”.  It opened a while ago and we patronized it a few times.  What was unusual is that they served some South Indian food, which is more uncommon- dosas, idili, sambar.  The décor was odd and the food was only alright then, but you could sense there was an Indian family determined to succeed.  With the name change and some renovation and a new menu it felt like a new place, yet the same owner was there which made me happy.  The food was delicious, the service warm and friendly, the prices perfect for a weekday lunch.   Next time I know where I will suggest my friend and I meet for our long visit over our meal.

Try making your mealtime harmonious by avoiding upsetting discussions.  A nicely set table also adds to the pleasure of eating.  So does a smiling face, a cheerful word, a beautiful flower or a picture.  Bless your food, and enjoy it. ~ Indra Devi

/by

Karma

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I am not going to be overly technical or philosophical here.  It is a big subject, karma.  It is at the heart of yoga and meditation practice, whether we know it or not.  It is very central to the practice of Vedic Astrology, this is more clear.  For some reason, it’s on my mind lately, so I’ll attempt it.

There are of course various teachings on karma that are similar and different. What I will say here will be my own interpretation and contemplation of what I have learned over time.

My yoga teacher Rama often uses an image of a tree.  I thought it was a common image, but after looking for it elsewhere have come to discover that it is not. She draws (a pun!) this interpretation partly out of her study of the Yoga Sutra’s of Patanjali- a seminal text of the Yoga Philosophy.

At the base of the tree, the ground and roots, are 2 types of karma referred to as Sanchita and Prarabdha.  Sanchita is the sum total of karma- what we have accumulated.  Prarabdha literally means undertaken, and is the portion of karma we are living out.  These karmas are understood to be “fixed” in that they are happening, in process, for reasons we will never be able to totally rationalize or alter.

This brings up the issue of “fate” which can upset people- but suffice it to say that we all have to admit that there are many things that do fall into this category.  I’ll use myself as an example.  I am white, a woman, born in the USA.  This is unalterable and I did not make a rational decision about it.

The body of the tree depicts the 2 other types of karma, Kriyamana and Agama.  Kriya means action and refers to our capacity to act and create.  Agama refers to the new actions you contemplate, your ideas or vision for the future.  These are the karmas that are more malleable, that we can affect through our free will.

The tree is what we see, what is most obvious.  The roots and the soil are invisible unless we dig.  Yet they are one and the same.  The tree comes from the roots, the roots require the soil.  To get more specific:

Sanchitta Karma is the soil and represents the deep past, the mysterious depth.
Pradabdha Karma is the roots and affects the form and function of the tree, our spiritual DNA
Kriyamana Karma is how we relate to our internal and external circumstances, how we are able to use our free will.
Agama Karma is the vision and intention we hold for future action, the unconscious and conscious seeds that we plant.

I told you I wouldn’t be too technical or philosophical so I want to wrap up on a practical note:    We don’t really know what we are doing here, we don’t know why we have the circumstances that we have- it’s interesting and uniquely human to consider it all and I truly appreciate karmic theory.  This theory says that there are reasons for our present circumstances and we do have the ability to work with the present and affect the future.  What you sow NOW through your thoughts, words, and actions is what truly matters.  As my mom’s guru Goswami Kriyananda says with a little laugh and smile “Attitude is Everything.”

/by
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