Triple Training Tuesday

Cancer season. High summer (Hochsommer). Long days. Moody moon mother. Approaching New Moon. Moody Monday. Monthly female biology taking place. First day of bleeding crying liters of tears. Yearning for dead mother. Searching for memories. Remembering Alzheimer's as a slow losing, detaching, letting go. This feels spiritual somehow. Makes me think of Buddhism, Yoga, Vipassana and Zen. Mother was a philosopher, a mystic, a spiritual creature. Why remember? To cry in the present and laugh at the past? If memory serves. Why not serve the present moment instead? Anatomical onslaught massaging the entire flesh with yoga and study and dance and more yoga. And a lot of activity at home. Duties of the house like cooking, washing, rearing children, and tending to marriage/partnership demand attention. Forgetting all the bawling from the day before. Thankful for the passing of another wave. The worst is over -- when the eye-sockets make waterfalls. The bleeding will naturally follow its course. The breasts feel less heavy thanks to training and brasiers. I did feel odd with them at ballet today. Then I try not to pay attention. But the body never stops paying attention. Now I know this. So I cannot help but look again and again. Look at the breath. Feel the sensations. Becoming aware of the inner strings that hold it all together. Oh, and there are countless strings! And we (humans) try again and again to paint a picture of this magnificent, mysterious and transparent body - individually, collectively and universally. Mapping the famously little known human body that is actually well known by all. Only if you look. But don't you get caught up with it! Except when you are training for the moment. For that moment, that one instant, no matter how fleeting, that flash of all-knowing. Complete awareness of the body interwoven with the threads of time and space, of fractals and movement and stillness threading through emptiness. Complete absorption. 

Iyengar says: "Repeated effort made with a thorough understanding of the art and philosophy of yoga and with perfect communion of body, mind and soul is not a mechanical practice but a religious and spiritual one."* What does it take to understand the art and philosophy of yoga - or anything for that mattter? It takes study. To look repeatedly, to search, to practice, to remember with religious fervor. 

And it also demands detachment. Iyengar goes on to explain, that Hatha Yoga blends the forces of practice (remembering) and renunciation (forgetting). Ha, the sun, is the "life-force, the seer, the very being". Purusha? Tha, the moon, is "consciousness, the reflected light of the seer, citta" (consciousness = mind + intelligence + ego). Prakriti and the three gunas? The three fates (Greek mythology) threading the destiny of human kind? Yes, like a moody moon. Sometimes visible, sometimes gone. Hatha yoga blends these forces, which are merged in the seer (Iyengar, 2002). In order to see, one must look. And on the night of the New Moon neither moon nor sun will be seen despite their presence. Purusha, why look at all?

Because if you're not observing, you don't exist. Since you have to see to be, then might as well study yourself until you realize yourself as you really are.

Llorando a solas en compañpía, asi te veía.

In company crying alone I saw you.

In Begleitung alleine am weinen sah ich dich.

Martes de Multiples Musas

Es la temporada de cáncer. Alto verano, Hochsommer en alemán. Los días son largos y cálidos. Launische** Luna Madre. Se avecina la Luna Nueva. Cambiando de humor el lunes. Sucede la biología femenina mensual. El primer día del sangrado derramando litros de lágrimas. Añorándo a mi madre muerta. Busco memorias. Recuerdo al Alzheimer como una perdida lenta, como un proceso de soltar y dejar ir. Lo que me parece algo espiritual. Me hace pensar en el budismo, el yoga, el vipassana y el zen. Mamá fue filósofa, mística y una criatura espiritual. ¿Pa ra qué recordar? ¿Para llorar en el presente y reirse del pasado? Si te sirve la memoria. ¿Porqué no mejor servirle al momento presente? Una avalancha anatómica masajea la carne entera con el yoga, estudios, baile y más yoga. Y con muchas actividades caseras. Los deberes del hogar como cocinar, lavar, criar y cuidar del matrimonio, de la pareja demandan mucha atención. Trantando de olvidar todo el llanto del día anterior. Me siento agradecida que otra ola ha pasado. ...

*Iyengar (2002). Light on the Yoga Sutras. p.62

** launisch - alemán, que con frecuencia cambia de humor