an endless summer...

Abundant sunshine warms the skin, lifts the heart. Tinkling ice cream trucks troll the neighborhood. The garden rages its quiet fury. Squeals of delight emerge from backyards. It's summer--full on.

Our conception of summer was formed in childhood, when the season brought day after glorious day of freedom and ease--interrupted only by the early morning torture of a swimming lesson in an unheated pool!

There was little to do and gobs of time to do it. Summer was when we learned to whistle around a long blade of grass; learned to turn a cartwheel; learned how many ripe cherries we could consume without a belly ache. (Well, maybe we had to learn that one again every year.)

Summer was filled to the bursting brim with fun. Camping, berry picking, water skiing. Picnicking. Skim boarding. Softball. But mostly, it was just pleasantly topped off with nothing: lazy days and long, long evenings--when there was no place to go and no time you had to be there. When laying on your back and gazing at the sky constituted a full schedule. Giggling with friends, dissolving yourself in a book--that was enough. Summer was a time when you could simply dig a hole in the sand for no other reason than to watch the sea refill it. Catch bees in a mason jar. Open a lemonade stand and chat with whoever cared to stop. Walk all the way to the corner store just to share a popsicle, licking it with delicious precision, then admire one another's raspberry red tongue.

You could BE. HERE. NOW.

Sometimes we speak of yoga as our "work" and in the sense that it's an exchange of energy, this is true. It has meaning for us, it's important, and that can seem like Serious Business. But in the sense that we do our yoga for its own reward, it more rightfully belongs under the "play" column, doesn't it?

So when we're on our mat, we seek ease. We attempt to lighten the load, drench ourselves in freedom. We aim to make our yoga fun. How do we do that?

First: we drop our expectations. Next: we forget that our yoga has a time slot between this and that. Then: be here now, in our bodies. With our breath. It's as straightforward as that. Just us--and maybe some friends--getting out of the limited territory of our heads and expanding into our whole being.

Finding the way to an endless summer on our mats--even in mid-December.

Don't sigh heavily with fatigue.

Seek passion! Seek passion! Seek passion!

~Rumi

mow your lawn...

Flop down in it. Nap on it. Picnic. Play. Lay back and watch the clouds dance their transformation above you, the sky as blue as a dream.

Grass.

Soft and inviting, cool and green--a wide open expanse of lawn calls to us, entreats us. We run across it with wild abandon, joyous and free as summer itself.

But begin to tread just one path, and the grass underfoot will become crushed and ragged. It doesn't take long before your route looks tired, clumps of dirt showing, maybe a rock or two. The rest of the yard turns weedy, overgrown, and will no longer beckon an invitation. Instead, we avoid deviating from our chosen path; we stick to it, and it becomes even more worn, the rest of the yard more impassable.

This very thing happens in the body. We pick a path: call it routine, call it habit, call it injury. We use the same muscles, in the same way, and avoid others. We wear ourselves a pathway--physically and mentally--our minds guiding us over a terrain of least resistance, this Common Ground.

But everything is retrainable. Our bodies are constantly creating new cells, but they make the cells we (unconsciously) demand. If we sit around and don't do anything, our bodies will create fibres that are quite capable of sitting around and not doing anything--thank you very much!

For sure, if you have an inflamed injury, you want to wait until that inflammation cools. But then, the best therapy is to use those injured muscles--skillfully. With awareness. When we strengthen underused muscles, we relieve compensatory action. We release connective tissue, refining our alignment. We develop different muscles, deeper muscles. Fresh synapses in the brain fire as we explore new territory, create new neural pathways.

We alter our habit.

Cautious activity will keep scar tissue from forming and impinging movement. It will put out the call to cells to start building active, able fibres (order up!), and muscular atrophy will be warded off. Your transition back to full health will be swifter, more easeful.

How do we do this? (Awww...cummon...you know what I'm gonna say!) Yes, yoga. Alertness to the body, a "getting to know yourself," is yoga's greatest gift. It begins by becoming sensitive, by listening with attention, yearning to know yourself better.

As we increase our awareness, we find revelations around the corner of every conscious breath. Are you ready to find out who you really are, what you're really capable of accomplishing? Of diving deeper into consciousness?

The breath unites us, helps us coalesce mind, body and spirit. A thoughtful breath calms the chatter in the mind and encourages concentration. It releases connective tissue enabling us to move freely, without pain. And breath builds the prana, enhancing our energy. We soften, become mindful, listen to our breath, then find renewed integration, renewed vitality.

Mow your lawn, and feel free to step off the path.

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beyond the senses are the objects.

beyond the objects is the mind.

beyond the mind, the intellect.

beyond the intellect, the self.

beyond the self, the non-manifest.

beyond the non-manifest, the Infinite.

beyond the Infinite, there is nothing...

this is the end: Pure Consciousness.

Katha Upanishad