by Hilary Lindsay | Mar 28, 2022 | Asana, nashville yoga, Social Commentary, Yoga, yoga class, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
I have less than an hour to get through to a group of college students. They are not consistent here at Vanderbilt. There’s no way to deepen a practice when every yoga class has to be an experience for new beginners. A journalist checklist creates a strong foundation for yoga that anyone can relate to. I offer it to them as a way to consider themselves as they take the plunge. Who What Where When Why How Taken out of order this makes most sense. How do I do this, where do I feel this, when do I feel it and how can I change it, what is the process, who am I in this context. If the yoga experience is informative or enlightening, when and why will be answered by the other questions. But every question must be answered for the story to reveal the facts. ...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jun 26, 2018 | Healthy Living, medical yoga, Meditation, nashville yoga, Nature, Physiology, Pranayama, Social Commentary, society, therapeutic yoga, Tradition, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
You are human and you think about the future. The future is a mystery that is scary. We are wired for danger. We are born for stress. It’s how we survived as a species. Now it seems to be killing some of us. People tell you to live in the moment. What does that mean? Of course you live in the moment. The moment is the life. You also consider the next moment. That way you have food. And a roof. Or at least a raincoat. You learned about that because of the past. There is so much to consider in a microwave life where every moment presents an opportunity to slide into sloth. I mean, you don’t consider consequences but live in the moment. A pint of ice cream and a bag of chips seemed like a good idea in that moment. So did the next drink or the trip home with a stranger. There is that too but is that what the new age pundits are recommending? Before you beat yourself up for succumbing to what seems the less enlightened version of be here now, consider that there is no such thing as the present because you are a compound of past present and future happening all at once always. You can’t live in just one of those things because they are not separate. What you can do is manage your reactions by observing them. Managing your reactions may result in better choices. It’s all about observation and ironically desire to be free of desire or a victim of your past. You are frustrated...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jul 21, 2015 | nashville yoga, Tradition, Yoga, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga History, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Before you take those hands to your heart…… Namaste is the yoga student’s salutation that allows our similarity below the surface. We feel beneath our skin and say we recognize you beneath yours. Here we share DNA that makes us kin. It is a gesture of respect. There is benevolence to that greeting that tames the mind from critical thought and soothes the ego from needing to show. It makes the instant significant. It is momentarily unifying. Collective moments become a manner of thinking unless the greeter becomes careless and speaks without thinking, without authenticity. Then habit overcomes intention. Ironically, habit like this is the veil of illusory behavior that yoga aims and claims to conquer if the doer is sincere. Namaste offered in sincerity is yoga’s domain. It cannot abide the popularity of the offhand “love ya” which has merit as it is a spoken offer of love however lightly or fleeting. As yoga’s greeter, Namaste might better be delivered as Sincerely,...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jan 15, 2015 | Asana, Meditation, nashville yoga, Nature, Poetry, Prose, society, Tradition, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga History, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
It exploded from comets To begin as the oceans, And borders of seas, Becoming the vapor, the clouds and the rain, And one with the earth, Becoming the rivers, the lakes, and the streams, To become most of me, I breathed it out to become part of you. Altered, transformed, shifted, ripened In time and beings, Its sparkle drew my searching eye and quenched a thirsty palette. Is there a broken line in the lineage? Does this drop contain the residue of the first drop? Some has been burnt away for sure but most remains. Like water, this yoga: To know it with intellect is a lively chase for a living art from an ancient time. Not my favorite game, but one I’ll play when the players arouse, Uninterrupted on more peaceful days I’ll stand in sensation. This yoga like water whose chemistry would not matter if the proof was my health, Would bear further examination should it rouse suspicion. I was curious and explored something apart from me, Until it was no longer apart but a part. ...
by Hilary Lindsay | Nov 13, 2008 | Ethics, Family, nashville yoga, Nature, Prose, Religion, society, Tradition, Yoga, Yoga and Religion, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
We Are Our Stories “Oh the hands of my mother watch and keep over me And the hands of my grandmother are the hands you see on me From the house of great grandfather rivers run down to the sea And my sister’s mother’s husband’s father’s grandchild is me Don’t you see?” Sung by Mark Bailey to my children long ago in California It’s snowing. It hardly ever snows here. And I’m sick. I’m rarely sick. I’m peaceful in that snowing and not feeling well kind of way and staring out the kitchen window. Leaning on the sill I stare into the frozen garden. Twin two foot tall bare twiggy trees are nestled between shrubs. I’m harvesting seedlings from the front yard of my husband’s next door neighbor from his childhood home. We had gone back to hold a memorial service for my mother-in-law in the place she and my husband, Rob ,had lived most of her life. Tom’s house and Kitty’s house sat closely together on a dead end street in a seaside village of Long Island. Tom was as close in age to Rob as he was to Kitty and was as close as family got. That’s why I took the seedlings from Tom’s tree that he offered me as I marveled over it’s unusual beauty. Here take some, he said as he plucked handfuls from the ground. He filled a small plastic sandwich bag with seedlings and dirt and I hopefully carried them back to Nashville in my suitcase. Three years later Tom is dead. And Rob tells me that not a...
