by Hilary Lindsay | Mar 28, 2020 | Ethics, Healthy Living, Meditation, nashville yoga, Prose, Social Commentary, society, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, Yoga and Religion, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
We identify ourselves with some certainty. Smart, twitchy, resourceful, stubborn, kind, hard working, easy going, generous, like that. Is that it? Is it absolute? Seeds of change are dormant in all life forms. Both possibilities and pandemic. Stress forces them to mutate. Forces adaptation. All life forms wired to survive. Dis-ease threatens and unease arises. We change our habits. But also our behavior. What happens in reaction? In yoga, once dormant comes to life with deliberate breath and movement. We name it “consciousness”. Knocks on the door and then breaks it down. This knowingness challenges our opinion of truth. Forget who we were before this terrible tempest. Crisis now an opportunity. For curiosity. Respective human and humaneness magnified. Who are you? Close your eyes. Repeat “I am” to yourself again and again. I am…….. What shows up? Keep going until nothing else comes up. Until “I am” is all. And...
by Hilary Lindsay | Sep 20, 2016 | medical yoga, nashville yoga, Social Commentary, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
The expression Monday morning quarterback refers to assessing how things should have been done after the fact. You know what was best after things went south by a wrong direction. I learned the hard way that a physical practice could be disastrous down the road. I learned at least a dozen times in a dozen ways with a dozen parts of myself. As I observe the group of beginning yoga students before me, I consider the path I will send them on. I know that much of what I say will be lost to many of them no matter what I say. Still, there is something I can tell them of taking care of themselves in a group experience. This class is an elective and should be treated that way. No tests. No grades. No pressure. You do not know how you will respond to a particular movement until you have done it. That is fundamental and ironic. Therefore, you should proceed thoughtfully even though you have no thoughts that pertain to this except mine as you follow my directions. You will trust me more than yourselves. Until I’m vetted do not do that. In fact, don’t ever do that. My directions are specific for the sake of form but not specific to you. I don’t know you. You will have to meet yourselves. The way to start is to breathe intentionally and follow the thread of breath with your movement. No breath, no movement. No faking. As you figure out the best way to organize your poses, you will notice that this is not absolute....
by Hilary Lindsay | Dec 22, 2015 | nashville yoga, Nature, Poetry, Prose, Social Commentary, society, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga community, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teaching |
She approaches me after class. Tells me she’s in law school. She and her peers are suffering from P.T.S.D. she says. From life. She’s responding to a comment I made in class. I consider it pure luck that I have a positive position on the life we share at the moment. Things need to break. The shit storm of happenstance and wrong actions that are instigating an onslaught of information on disaster is also precipitating a wellspring of solutions. That is a wellspring of love. That is the breath we choose. The human condition shifts with awareness and it changes with our reactions. I see many hopeful reactions despite the barrage of sorrowful scenarios. We are looking for ways out. We are wielding sledgehammers. We are scraping peeling paint. As radical politicians move the conversation from the usual banter, awareness grows. As spokesmen, leaders and newscasters inform people on pollution, poverty and violence against each other and the planet, quiet numbers choose to make things better in small and large ways. It’s a life of small steps. We just step faster now. Diverse paths are rapidly emerging. Some of us will be sacrificed no doubt. It was never easy to be aware. But it would be less glorious to not be. To blame nature’s weather or planets for our discomfort is shortsighted as well. Instability is nature itself. The perfect day will not last no matter how we pray for that. Welcome to your place in the world. To smash and break it until it is right for you without harming any creature is artful. Perhaps that’s why the...
by Hilary Lindsay | Oct 11, 2015 | Asana, medical yoga, nashville yoga, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga class, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Students of yoga benefit from a teacher’s eyes upon them. Teachers don’t usually see their students naked (just skate over that statement please) and seasoned teachers don’t need to but you can learn volumes observing your naked body in front of a mirror. Before I knew I my hip had become arthritic and before I had herniated a disc doing a backbend with a secretly too stuck hip and before I had torn the rotator cuff opposite the stuck hip pulling vines, I watched my body shift and ignored it. I wasn’t in pain. My image was just less symmetrical. When did that happen? I chose to ignore it as I am a steadfast practitioner of denial. A massage therapist noted my ribs shifted right and hips shifted left. A chiropractor’s x-ray revealed a compromised sacrum but it didn’t feel like much until I just misused myself up. Pain forced me to take action. Naked in front of the mirror I stood in Tadasana. My front line veered right. The inseam of my right inner thigh rose several inches longer than the left. My right hip was higher, my right waist shorter. My right foot turned out and dropped in the interior arch. My right collar bone was shorter. Tree pose, Extended Angle, Warrior I and II shined light. I added a rearview mirror to see my lumbar spine snake right before it disappeared in Ardha Uttanasana. (Half forward fold.) I was turned and twisted. I stood at ease to view the habits of my form and reintegrated my structure from the ground...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jun 27, 2015 | Cooking, Healthy Living, nashville yoga, Recipes, yoga teacher |
Here is my recipe for an uncooked fresh fruit pie for the Fourth of July that will delight. I am not giving you a crust recipe because I use Whole Foods Organic crusts these days. They also have spelt or whole wheat…. Neither appeal to me but you may like them. When I make my own crust I always use whole wheat pastry flour for a quarter of the crust because it has a nutty, flakiness that seems lovely to me. Pastry flour is lower in gluten so it doesn’t hold together as well and may not be as pretty but you know pretty only goes so far. You can substitute a vegan crust or for you folks who are both non-gluten and vegan you could make a crust using nuts and seeds but I don’t know how to do it well enough to share yet. I change this recipe to suit my moods or guests as I do all things eaten, worn or done! Slice and mix approximately: One pint of blueberries or blackberries or both One pint of strawberries One large banana (Room temperature) Heat about a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice. Today I’ll use organic orange strawberry banana as that’s what I have. (Do not eat conventional strawberries, they are pesticide sponges!) Dissolve about a TBLSP Agar Agar (you can substitute kanten) into cold juice and bring to boil Heat crust at 375 degrees for 10 minutes (My chef friend Bett likes a browner crust. If she’s coming over, cook yours longer) Pour fruit into hot crust Pour hot juice mixture over it...
