As a Homework Mentor at Chop’s, a member gets to spend an hour at play after an hour of supervised homework. This is the reward from my first day’s work.
Aug27
Mentoring at Chop’s
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Aug27
How to Stop Suffering
Like trees, our physical body is changing. It’s born, grows, stabilizes, declines, and will die. But what about ‘this,’ in which our awareness of these facts is arising? Various names have been designated as pointers to ‘this’ — concepts like God, Pure Awareness, the Unconditioned, Pure Being, or the Great Mystery. These concepts are pointers to the ineffableness that comprises our unchanging essence.
Suffering arises when we refuse what’s changing. It’s never the event that causes suffering, but our attachment, aversion, or feigned neutrality to it. What’s astounding is to realize that suffering, attachment, aversion, and neutrality are changing movements within a vaster background of unchanging essence. When we’re willing to shift attention from foreground to background, we realize ‘this’ that’s always present, but all to often ignored and forgotten.
So what happens when we relinquish attending to the ever-changing foreground movements of our body, senses, and mind -— to sensations, emotions, and thoughts -— and instead turn our attention to realizing ourselves as the unchanging, which has no defining characteristics, is outside of time and space, is never in need, yet is one of the most vital inquires we can make during our lifetime.
Richard Miller, Ph.D
http://www.irest.us/
Aug25
Be Kind To Your Webfooted Friends
Free concert by USAF Band of the Golden West from Travis AF base to mark the reopening of the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa. The place was packed!
Aug25
Anusara Yoga Meredith Rom
Photo of Meredith Rom by Meredith Rom
I knew this style emphasized flow and feelings of love. Meredith moved through the room with fluid grace and gently connected with each student, quietly asking about injuries and introducing herself by name. She asked us to create an intention for the class and suggested love, compassion or beauty. We briefly chanted OM and went through several rounds of down dog, plank and cobra to open up the front of the chest. While the postures were mainstream for an introductory class, the vibe was distinctive. Very loving, both toward the inner self and the all the people in the class.
I was especially touched by her guidance as we slipped into a brief moment of shivasana. Meredith said, “Connect with your inner core of goodness.” Wow! This is so different from the Catholic indoctrination “You’re not good enough for God. You came into this world stained with original sin” and the repetitive chant at Mass, “Lord I am not worthy that you should come into my house. Say but the word and my soul shall be healed.” Catholic children are taught that they are, by definition, stained and unworthy.
This Anusara Yoga proposes a profound shift. I found two really interesting posts by Meredith on Elephant Journal.
- 10 Ways to Know if Yoga is Working
- Her review of several powerful books and an elite class for yoga teachers
Tip number 5 in the second link above is a quote from Mathew and Terces Engelhart’s book, Kindred Spirit.
I make powerful requests as an exercise in worthiness and remember that “no” doesn’t mean anything. I build my self-worth by making powerful requests and get at least one “no” everyday.
I am starting to see it is important to keep the concept of worthiness in my mind. It’s not just what I put into my body, it’s what I hold in my mind too. I am learning that toxins are not limited to food and beverages. Consciously choosing loving thoughts is as important as choosing to breathe into the discomfort in yoga. I am going to continue to check out Meredith Rom’s Insights.
Aug24
Goat Rodeo at Green Music Center
Getting onto the SSU campus and finding a parking place was a Goat Rodeo. Forty-five minutes before showtime, I got on the end of the line of cars on Rohnert Park Expressway waiting to get in the single lane campus entrance closest to the Green Music Center. The line of cars crawled all the way to a parking lot near the front of the campus and I had to sprint to make it to my seat in time. Next time I will arrive MUCH earlier and have dinner there, or I will enter through the multi-lane front entrance, because it is closer to last-minute parking.
The music was fabulous, as I knew it would be, having listened to the CD so many times, and re-watched the Colbert Report show featuring them. I was in the hall (as opposed as out on the lawn as for Pink Martini) upstairs in the balcony facing the performers. There is another raised seating area behind the performers. My location had been described in the Press Democrat as acoustically optimum. I was distressed that I did not hear the acoustic version of the CD by burping up $80 for a ticket. It was amplified, and my friends who were on the lawn, and enjoyed the excellent video coverage, heard exactly the same thing I did.
I was hoping that this string quartet, which is what it is, could be heard unamplified in the hall. It was a great performance, wonderful stage presence by Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Thile. My favorite performer, both on the CD and live, is Stuart Duncan, the fiddler. Must purchase more CDs of his work.
I think Edgar Meyer, the bass player and composer of most of the work, will become considered a classical modern composer. His work is elegant. The Strings blog published an interesting interview with them about the technical aspects of their work. My favorite piece, however, was his transcription of a Bach piece for two flutes and a continuo. It was performed on the Bass, Cello, and Mandolin. Only Yo-Yo Ma used music. And he pointed it out.
Aug9
High Blood Sugar Linked to Dementia
What you want to see on your glucose meter.
“We found a steadily increasing risk associated with ever-higher blood glucose levels, even in people who didn’t have diabetes. There’s no threshold, no place where the risk doesn’t go up any further or down any further.” The association with dementia kept climbing with higher blood sugar levels and, at the other end of the spectrum, continued to decrease with lower levels.
This held true even at glucose levels considered normal. Among those whose blood sugar averaged 115 milligrams per deciliter, the risk of dementia was 18 percent higher than among those at 100 mg/dL, just slightly lower. The effects were also pronounced among those with diabetes: patients with average glucose levels of 190 mg/dL had a 40 percent higher risk of dementia than those whose levels averaged 160 mg/dL.
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/09/high-blood-sugar-linked-to-dementia/?smid=pl-share
Aug7
You Are What You Tweet
“The New Digital Age” by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen points out that, “by 2025, the majority of the world’s population will, in one generation, have gone from having no access to (uncensored) information to accessing all of the world’s information through a device that fits in the palm of the hand.”
Eric Schmidt is the Executive Chairman of Google and Jared Cohen is the Director of Google Ideas, coming from a State Department and Security background. They have so many interesting scenarios of how things could be in the future that on page 53, I came up with a Movie of the Weeks idea about a fearless war correspondent working secretly because the system is set up so that even his editor does not know his/her identity. She was recruited “Charlie’s Angels” style by the senior editors who recruit and vet correspondents.
The focus of the book is quite international and the policy implications fill the last half of the book. They end with this thought:
the virtual and physical civilizations will affect and shape each other; the balance they will strike will come to define our world. In our views, the multidimensional result, though not perfect, will be more egalitarian, more transparent and more interesting than we can even imagine.
Aug5
First Weekend in August
On Saturday we hiked along Brush Creek where we found this plaque which reads:
Santa Rosa
To perpetuate the legend
that on the Feast of St. Rose, August 30, 1829
Padre Amoros
Beside this stream
baptized an indian maid from which
the city took the name
Santa Rosa
I also went on an Art Walk on Sunday and tried on a crown of twigs and enjoyed some of the wall art.