Deep Ground / Deep Heart

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Deep Stillness / Shinshi, 2011

A killing frost has swept away so much life.

Biota have gone underground and under leaf fall.

The floral book of the year is closed. 

But flora have not ended.

 Leaves have become a living page in the book of the Earth

 And flora have gone into their deep root-heart 
And have sealed up in seeds.

IN THE EARTHEN yin-yang sway of the seasons, it is spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

In the Northern Hemisphere, it is a muted landscape of the leaf fall and frosts of autumn.  The natural world is not some backdrop to human life, but rather, immerses human life, and offers rich provocations.

Globally, there is a spiritual/metaphysical sense that everyday life is an expression of the known universe and vast unknowable cosmos, and every event is a mini-universe.  And in a scientific sense, this more esoteric sense is expressed in our growing ecological literacy.  And so, there is an enduring recognition that there is a deep, longer reach of self, and the practical implication of this recognition is that the “little universe of self” is optimized when it is in harmony with the vast cosmos.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the environmental changes are dramatic.  The entire landscape transforms it coloration and the daylight continues to appreciably shorten, and the sun lowers still further in its arc across the southern horizon.  And human activity begins to make major shifts to match these changes.  Jackets and thicker coats appear, especially in the mornings.  Kettles begin to simmer with the slow cooking of soups and stews.  Outside, ice-cold rains come now and again, sparingly.  And the window may begin to frost.  The more that ice appears, the more that fire seems to balance it.  We counter the chill with the fireside hearth and perhaps kindle a rich ember within us, provoked by salving the elemental hunger for fire before the hands.  In the increasing coolness or in the Yin reduction of rain and humidity (that might generate its Yang counterpart in monsoons in the Southern Hemisphere), there may be an increased sense of “fire” in the heart in the form of a radiant ember deep within body and soul.

Wintering birds begin to gather in rookeries in bare-boned treetops and in non-rookery out-of-the wind yews and hedges.  Trees become skeletal, but there is a rich life that has gone down into the roots, deeply grounded. 

There is a sense of melancholy—a tinge of sorrow—at the loss of the flora and the cold that precedes the coming winter, but also, a strong opportunity to be “mellow” and calmed.

In body-mind practices, the quality of deepening autumn in either Hemisphere may begin to be reflected in our slowing and quieting even more.  The autumnal retreat of flora within and underground may encourage a deeper grounding within our experience.

Frost on the windowpane becomes a magical looking glass that may peer far deeper than the terrain outside the window.  Gazing into it, we may come more inside ourselves, and mellow, and simmer and slow-cook and then savor complex melds of feelings and deep time that are lost in the fast dance of life that is “summer.” 

If you amble outside the parameters of sidewalks—if you step even just slightly off the sidewalk, the heart of the forest opens, and we can amble there more easily. Each step there is rich ambrosia in our crush of the leaf fall.  The all-ness or alikeness of the landscape—gone from viridian to ochre—may be soothing in its simplistic appearance.  The insects are gone, and the sound is closer to silence than before, but marked occasionally by the sharp caws of a gathering of crows.   

In a killing frost, in the small view, we see the demise of exquisite life, but if we stand back far enough, we see the transformation of life, wherein on a very high level, there is really no birth or death, just this ongoing creative flow.  Our personal life is somehow there.

By calming and quieting, we connect with the tempered pace of the world itself.  And we have an opportunity to discover that this world is flowing through us.  As the physical world cools, we root deeper, kindling an ember deep inside ourselves against the ice.   Everyday, we are wont to go fast, to reduce experiences to quick flashes.  Deep autumn can provoke a value in slowing down, in “slow-cooking” and “stewing,” of going deeply inside, of deep grounding, of coming closer to the heart of practice.

In the autumn and winter of our year, anywhere in the biosphere of the Earth, we are offered this opportunity to “come inside,” and to listen more deeply to that which is somehow “within.”  And in going there, we find that “within” stands to become a doorway to everything rather than an island that walls us off from the world.

So come now, in November in the growing darkness of both mornings and evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, and open the growing “lightness” from that powerful ember of energy that emanates from within us.  This same light awaits us in every season, in every day, and in every moment.   

Pathway III: Gateway

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Gateless Gate / Mumon, 2011

A CONSISTENT BODY-MIND practice forms a pathway that begins somewhere in the past and reaches into the future.  Consistent practice might be likened to an upward trail around a mountain.  If we have practiced for a while, we have likely encountered points where the pathway offers new perspectives.  Looking back to where practice began, things that once were large are now small—as if on a mountain trail and gazing back at an outspreading moraine below where roadways are reduced to thin lines and details are lost.  And looking ahead, there is a vast, opening terrain, where the present moment of practice is somehow a tiny facet of the vast—as if gazing into an archipelago of clouds and the tips of numerous summits of a range of mountain uplift.  And ahead on the pathway, there are turns that will offer views now hidden.

While the depth of our practice will grow with consistent returns, it is also possible that we might travel a good distance and fall far short of what the pathway offers us.   This occurs when the pathway becomes routine, and we hold to narrow expectations rather than calm.  In yoga, for example, we may settle for a little more strength or flexibility or familiarity with the routine.  And our practice may then become a walled tunnel rather than an opening gateway. 

When we come to a body-mind practice session, we cross a threshold.  We might believe that we are simply stepping from the face pace of everyday into a still space for some moments of respite.  But when the body-mind practice optimizes calmness, we might cross over into an unwalled landscape that is almost like finding another world inside the everyday world.  This newfound world is not an esoteric escape, but rather is a step inside the deep work that buoys up the everyday.

  

In everyday time, we might say, “It is 1PM—time for restorative yoga to begin.”  However, by 2 PM, the practice room will have rotated perhaps one thousand miles to the East as the Earth rotates and, in our everyday vision, the sun appears to move West.  By 2 PM, on our matts, we have journeyed well over one million miles as a dust speck aspect of the Milky Way Galaxy—flying carpets of sorts!  All of this might go unperceived since we find comfort in creating distance and boundaries as a “nectar” of familiarity that offers comfort, while each moment, cosmos sweeps through our actions, and we, almost unknowingly and not wanting to know, express cosmos.

Coming for a physical workout or for relaxation or for respite, we likely will find walls where there is a gateway.  When we do not calm, this gateway is likely to remain hidden.  But when we calm, where there once seemed to be a wall, a pathway may open an enduring child state that offers a sense of wonder.

Copyright Paige Andreas, age 8, The Door At The End Of The Rainbow, 2011

Soft Power: A Remarkable Outcome of Restorative-Yin Yoga Practice

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Rivers Into Islands, 24”x48, 2006

THE QUIETNESS AND SUSTAINED poses of restorative yoga may not be just an adjunct to more active yoga:  Restorative yoga practice may influence the direction of general yoga practice. 

Restorative-Yin yoga practice suggests taking a strong look at the value of slowing down.  In slowing down, there is a rich opportunity for power [strength and flexibility], subtlety, deepening, centering, and receptivity.

The longer time spent in restorative poses may begin to be reflected in spending longer time in familiar yoga sequences that focus more on muscular strength and flexibility, as well as encourage more attention to Yin Yoga that holds poses longer to focus on connective tissue.

Yoga sequences involving longer time spent in poses [and that are repeated several times weekly(i.e., regularly)] might accelerate increases in flexibility and strength.  Staying in the pose for longer duration may allow for gravity to do its work, as well as further relaxation of tension that, in turn, allows for participants to release a little further into the pose to increase flexibility, as well as increase muscle strength that might be missed in shorter-held poses.  

In “Soft Power Yoga,” holding a pose for a longer duration is further amplified by doing variations on that pose before proceeding to a new pose.  For example, Wide Forward Bend [Prasarita Padottanasana] might involve a sequence of variations including:

• support on hands,
• followed by placing head on matt,
• followed by clasping hands behind back with head on matt and extending forward/overhead,
• followed by extending a hand to the right and then to the left for a twist,
• followed by a pose involving hands extended out from the sides of the body and then forward in “prayer hands” and, finally,
• followed by lowering down to elbows and lowering the central body to extend legs even wider. 
•  

The “heart” of Soft Power Yoga involves an extended stay in a core pose with variations.  This practice may accelerate the strengthening of muscles and flexibility.  Further, variations on a single pose, continue to reinforce previous and ongoing work such as opening the upper back, twisting, and so forth.  Occasional counter-poses such as child [Balasana] allow enough recovery to sustain the intensity rather than compromise the continually held poses.  Finally, holding poses longer may really optimize stretching and strengthening connective tissue that responds best to sustained poses as Yin Yoga capitalizes on to strengthen lumbar and hip fascia.  In Soft Power Yoga, connective tissue is engaged throughout the body.  One place this may become evident is in the upper back and chest.

“Soft” essentially references  “slow,” and is a quite different experience than a more rapid flow.  This is not to say that doing sequences of poses much slower is better that moving faster.   Since each is different, each offers different qualities.  And since each is different, poses such as lunges, warrior variations, and triangle variations may be done in routine sessions, while other poses might be stressed in Soft Power sessions, enriching overall yoga practice.  However, doing vinyasa involving, for example, Sun Salutation variations, very slow, and holding each pose longer may produce rapid qualitative and quantitative gains in strength.  Doing the same, for example with seated variations— such as Standing Forward Bend, followed by a sequence of seated variations such as Head-To-Knee [Janu Sirsasana], Marichyasana A&B&C, Tortoise [Kurmasana] and Seated “West” Intense Stretch [Paschimottanasana]—holding poses for longer durations—may produce more rapid gains in flexibility.

One optimizing advantage of slowing down sequences of poses as well as doing variations on each major pose is that it provides time to stay in the pose and “listen to the body” in that pose.  Physiologically, a practitioner may experience the relaxation of tension and the ability to go a little further in the pose for increased flexibility or strength.  This conclusion is rather rational and anticipated.

Likely to be less recognized but just as rational, the stillness provides a contemplative quality that might be missed in the process of frequent postural shifts in vinyasa sequences.  A “Soft” [Pelava] “Power” [Zakti] orientation is quantitatively different from either a popular and dominant vinyasa sequence or a “Power Yoga” that involves rapidly shifting postures or that may quite athletic/gymnastic, involving shifts such as rollovers from plank to bridge poses.  In general, all “yoga” practices tend to be described by participants as consummating in a spiritual quality that basic exercise does not provide but, often, there is a sense that the practices may too-closely mimic the fast pace of modern life, and have their strongest appeal as “physical fitness workouts” that may be more appealing than traditional fitness options, but still be essentially popular, alternative “fitness” models.

Appealing to a general exercise population, “Soft Power” sequences satisfy a need for a fitness process that is oriented toward increasing flexibility and strength [and may provide more rapid results].  However, uniquely, “Soft Power Yoga” may better incorporate a process of slowing down, releasing tension, and going further into the opportunities presented by holding the pose to optimize flexibility and strength, AND “listen to the spirit.”

Holding poses longer may also allow for more intuitive practice.  In staying with a pose and listening to the body, variations in poses unique to each person may emerge, as practitioners listen more closely to the body and aspire to respond to that which is needed.

Why “Soft Power Yoga”? 

Simply, by any measure, “Soft Power Yoga” is appealing its concrete efficacy in optimizing—rapidly----flexibility and strength in the physical body.  And then, as a gateway to optimize our capacity to open and listen and develop, “Soft Power” offers something that is not new, something known and longstanding: a core drive toward deep calmness in yoga and other body-mind practices as well.

SELECTED SOFT POWER SEQUENCE THEMES:

Child--Hero variations

Seal [Yin] /Cobra [Hatha] variations

Wide Angle Forward Fold variations [sketched above] / Frog variations / Saddle-

             Reclining Hero variations

Standing Forward Fold variations [+fold in Half Lotus]

Seated Variations: e.g., Janu Sirsasana, Marichya variations, Seated Intense Stretch,

            Tortoise, Heron

Supported Shoulder Stand variations

Sun Salutation [slow]

Squat variations: e.g., Garland, Balancing Bound Angle

Balance variations

SUMMARY:

OVERALL COMPONENTS OF SOFT POWER:

An intermediate practice: a balance of rest, activity and illumination

“Hang out” in poses [slow and hold] and their variations to optimize increasing flexibility [Ayama, “flexible” to “open the door”] and strength; all with a strong sense of calmness or “softness,” listening to body-mind-spirit.

********************************************************

      HANG OUT IN POSES:

• Hold/sustain poses longer to maximize stretch and strength: notice tightness, stretch and then release;
• Do sequences that involve variations of each pose: child, wide-angle forward fold, forward fold, shoulder stands;
• Explore poses not often done in regular group practice

      RELEASING TO DEEPEN AND LISTEN:

• Counters of muscle intensity and rest [warming and cooling];
• Open relaxation/ explore “release” through slow flow through poses, finishing the practice session with an overall sense of relaxation;
• Slowness and holding provides mental space to listen to body [sensations and imagery] vs. keeping pace with a cycle of vinyasa; and

• Inner quietness by slowing activity.

Going Inside

Copyright Lance Kinseth, A Prayer Of Birds And Trees:  Going Inside Leaves, 48”x48, 2011

The floral notebook is nearly closed.

Tree tops sooth our loss of flowers to the frost: crimson, oranges and ambers

As miraculous star-catching leaves dehisce.

Cold rain, crisp winds and the rich beginning of

Soft leaf fall—precision sun mechanics thrown down,

But not away,

Becoming this year’s rich page in the book of the Earth.

Late wild flowers have found their wings

Feathered--almost, unbarbed—almost a satin texture.

The North of Earth sways away from the sun

—Extraordinarily ordinary—as the whole planet Earth, topples away from the Sun.

EXQUISITE “CRISP” COLOR bursts out of the North American mid-continent, as if “green” suddenly opens to a color sample book.  Under the matt of soil, all of the tubers are swollen, readying to slow-cook and meld with everything we will bring to them—onions and bouillon and salts and peppers, to spice up the growing darkness.  In the Southern Hemisphere, “Spring” and “Summer,” as we have known it, will open to something not less than “grace” through that which we are likely to name “winter.”

With the slow tilt of the Earth, perhaps we might lean back just a little more.  Perhaps we might give over, just little more, “striving.”  And with this seasonal shift, perhaps a corollary sense of appreciation for things that high-speed modern time seems to miss opens. 

All around us, the leaves are moving from green to gold and crimson.  We begin to directly see the “inside of leaves,” as leaves turn themselves inside out.  The green chlorophyll dissipates as leaves shut down and dehisce from the branch.  And the rainbow of colors that were hidden by green appear, sometime abruptly, as if overnight.  There are many colors in that which we might superficially term “green” or “yellow” or “orange” or “red.”  There are viridians and cadmiums, olive, Van Dyke red and burnt sienna, orange red, almond, Venetian rose, chocolate, sandalwood, raspberry, yellow oxide, burgundy, wisteria, bronze yellow, copper, apricot, and edges along veins glowing teal and emerald green and magenta.

This might be a rich time for body-mind practice.  As the colors of fall begin to appear, so, too, our body-mind practices might begin to gradually take on a different “color” or “tone.”  A “routine” of seemingly same-old, dependable practices—like summer’s dependable “green”—may begin to open to a “rainbow.”

In the Northern Hemisphere, the night begins to lengthen.  Perhaps we begin to also lengthen, perhaps spending more time in a pose, and/or perhaps we give over some more time devoted to opening the rich “palate” that has remained more internal up to now in our body-mind practices.

As we go deeper inside body-mind practice in any season, we might even find that inside is so deep that there is no boundary between “inside” and “outside.”

In The Triumph Of The Sparrow: Zen Poems, Shinkichi Takahashi writes that “The sparrow stirs/ The universe has moved slightly” [p.68] and “He hops calmly, from branch to empty branch/ In an absolutely spaceless world” [p.44].  Takahashi admonishes us that there is this very real way that we are the sparrow, flowers, snow, wind, bream, the universe falling apart, a strawberry, a rat, thistles [blooming in the heart], and the sun with four legs waging its tail. 

We try to imagine that we are “solid,” which may be to say that we are self-complete.  We might even imagine that we are separate and above most of our experience, including the human beings that we daily encounter in traffic, shopping, walking, in houses that we amble by. 

We are not transparent enough.  We think that we have boundaries, especially at our skin.  Just once, try holding your breath or not eating.  The world swims in us, not even needing to come “inside,” as that is what is has been doing, becoming that is named “ourselves,” “we,” “us,” “you” and “I.”

In any season, our body-mind practices are offered an opportunity to NOT be limited. 

In restorative-yin yoga, we come to the matt, and if we are fortunate, in the stillness and quietness of the practice, we are drawn, deeply, inside.  It is a landscape that we know, that we immediately recognize, but it is a place that we may not really go as deep as we might.  Inside, we are offered more than a mask of green.  Inside, a rainbow may become visible.     

Wave

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Buddha-Ocean / Fo-hai, 2011

REPETITION AND CYCLE do not consummate as much in circles as in spirals.  No event is repeated.  Amazing freshness!

Perched on a coastal shoreline, incoming waves seem the same or, at least, repeating sequels of waves of different intensity.  For example, the waves photographed above express a vast process.  The amber color of the waves are an expression of the vast plate underlying Lake Superior tilting down on its southern side, eroding the south coasts, turning the lucid waters there amber to reddish color that is visible in the photo. 

There are turquoise waves. There are waves that seem glassine, when the waves raise up and thin so that you can see right through them, and there are waves glittering from sun-struck scales of fish lifted inside the thinning curve of the incoming wave.  These waves are a metaphor for waves in our intentional movements, in our cycles of respiration and digestion, and in the flow of each moment of time.

In body-mind practices where sequences of form and pose are repeated, the practice might seem to be the same.  Day-by-day, physically, it is not the same.  And by returns to practice, we may come to sense that these waves are spirals rather than circles.  Across time, body-mind practices might be compared to a slowing trek, slowly spiraling upward on a mountain path.  Rather than going around in circles, in each new turn, there are new views ahead and a different perception when glancing back from where we have come.  Flexibility and strength and mobility improve, and subtlety and depth of actions, both in body-mind practice and in everyday life, increase.  Paradoxically, across time, in our “repetition,” there is a strong sense of “development” and “change” and “progress”—“spiraling.”

Our breaths and our soft movement in body-mind practices have much in common with waves of water or wind.   Were we to really examine who we are and that for which we are living, we might get a hold on this sense of “spiraling”—continually changing—that comprises the very heart of our living and being-ness.   We might have a sense of not only touching something eternal and enduring, but also something that is not archaic, something that is “modern” and falling into the future.

In everyday life, many of our actions can seem blunt and abrupt rather than fluid and circular.   Body-mind practices offer a pathway to awaken this profound sense of participation in the ongoing creation of the world. 

In modern life, when metaphors such as “wave” and “flow” arise within our practice, we may dramatically elevate our practice, especially in terms of beauty and increasing calmness.  In our practice, there is likely to be something akin to the flow of wind in grass and incoming waves in water, and the nuances of each swirl, are not primitive, but rather, something beautiful, and this is eloquently expressed in the longstanding Japanese term of appreciation, furyu —the “beauty of wind and water.”

In the quiescence of many body-mind practices, each of our breaths and each gesture can generate a sense of being like the curve of wind-blown snow in deep winter or wind-in-grass or the wind-singing of trees or the fractal sweep of a covey of birds or of the river around a boulder in any season.   The wind-blown curve of snow or wind-in-grass or the incoming wave on Big Sur, on coastal California, mirror something that is occurring in our body-mind practices.

By returns to body-mind practices, we stand to extend this expanded awareness more consciously into our everyday lives, rather than simply be a quality that is limited to the practice session.  The relatedness of body-mind practices to everyday life is, really, that which draws us like a magnet to such practices.  We hunger for something deep albeit elusive in these practices that may be missing or overwhelmed at times in our everyday.  We speculate that it might be possible to “thrive” rather than just survive.  And in our thriving and energizing, we might become outspreading waves of energy that, humbly rather than ostentatiously, may add some small moments of grace to the everyday, and refresh and energize others, outspreading—shanti—being peace.

Each of our movements, from the beginning of practice through becoming an adept, no matter how restricted or malleable, is beautiful, graced—a wave.  In the flow from one pose to another or in the flow of tai chi from rolling back to pressing, the multiplicity of wave that is the dynamic of the physical and biotic Earth flies softly forward.

Yoga In The Park!

SUMMER THROUGH SEPTEMBER Saturday Yoga In The Park in Des Moines, Iowa:  Sponsored by Des Moines Parks & Recreation, Gray's Lake Park, free and open to all levels, facilitated by different yoga practitioners in Central Iowa each week, currently drawing between 100-200 participants per week

Middle Way / Moderation

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Middle Way / Chudo, 2011

Rolling toward Equinox

The slow-sway of Earth now away from the Sun

Toning down the burst to life,

 A wash of the stars,

Overflowing and then softly waning.

SEPTEMBER: a middle way—in between plenitude and loss

In the North American mid-continent, there is the tug of a swelling tide of  biomass from summer’s production and the simultaneous outflow of light in the waning of days

A time of seasonal transition from summer to the meteorological autumn

Butterflies, the silk of milkweed, fallen apples, ochre fields of golden corn, golden rod and woodland sunflowers

Tattered leaves—wind-beaten and devoured and encysted by insects

The drying garden—in this drying, a sense of ending—the coming end of flora, and in in human life as exemplified in Japan—in the coming visits to family graves near equinox

Against summer’s heat, an incoming coolness—a sense of beginning and freshness

The temperature shift now becoming literal in morning haze in midcontentent, as fogged Earth leans back from the sun—jeweled cobwebs and grass blade

Harvest moon—the full moon closest to equinox, rising within a half-hour of sunset, looking very large and brightening night, and so named for the gift of night illumination to complete the harvest.

IN THE NORTH AMERICAN mid-continent, September’s moderation of climate might inspire some symmetry between body-mind practice and the immanent season.

A middle way in body-mind practice, in between the tides of pressing to a physical edge and release, moderation is strongly expressed in third excellence of yoga: to allow the practice to be just what it is, to be what is optimal for that day, rather than to aspire to rush ahead.  Moderation is also expressed in Santosha—contentment with life-as-it-is.  In moderation, a release of tension appears.  In the calmness of moderation, nuances lost in the depletion of energy might appear, offering more clarity.  In moderation, more “space” and time is offered, allowing for deeply enriched states of being, such as charm and grace, to appear in the moments of practice.

Attention given over to moderation in body-mind practice can translate into optimal human attributes that extend into everyday life: Mental Calmness, Mediation, Diplomacy, Composure, Poise, Forbearance, Temperance, Tolerance, Peace, and Lenience

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

Benjamin Disraeli

In restorative yoga, perhaps there might be an overall rekindling of a strong sense of moderation in all poses.  And for special emphasis in this or any season, Mahamudra, an advanced seated pose for breath control that resembles Janu Sirasana, might be moderated for rich restorative practice to provide a place for deep listening to the body.  Modified,

• Place either a bolster or rolled blanket under the knee of the extended leg to both bend and support knee, releasing hamstring and gastronemius muscle tension.
• Place another rolled blanket or bolster atop knee. 
• Lean gently forward, bending elbows and stacking hands softly on shins just below knee on extended leg, and resting head gently on support to release neck tension.  Support atop knee should also aspire to release tension in lumbar fascia. [Raising head support or adding a slight backward bend of the thoracic spine can reduce lumbar tension.  Perhaps wrap the body in a blanket. 

Once in the pose, inhale-exhale softly and evenly through nose.  With tension released, energy is optimized for focus on developing a stillness.  Then bring awareness to sensations that emerge from one’s entire body mass—a feeling of being fully inside the complete body rather than either focus on in a specific area or thoughts generated by the feelings, attending to the vitality of life force and energy that is continuously active throughout the body.  Relax and listen deeply.  Repeat on other side.