Weird day; got up, didn’t fully emerge from the dream landscape for quite a while. I was carrying a baby up into the mountains near where a subterranean tunnel was that I’ve frequently visited in past dreams. One time I canoed down it into the Hudson river past Manhattan, but this time I was just hiking up into French mountains like those in Jean de Florette. A cartographer girlfriend from undergrad was especially interested in “dream maps” and this is one place that really seems like it should be surveyed; I keep going back there again and again. Todays dream seemed upbeat, but I hadn’t reached the summit or descended into the tunnel. Anyway, I woke up tired, and remained tired. After about 90 minutes I had 3 small cups of coffee to try to counteract that, but it didn’t help. If coffee doesn’t do the trick, try yoga, thought I.
At this point, LA Valley College was nearby, and not in session, so I found a tree with some shade and set into the Liver, Colon and Stomach set I just posted about recently. I wasn’t dressed for yoga, and my belt was a bit uncomfortable. I’m allergic to grass, trees, and ragweed, and the lawn was freshly mowed. My allergies have (knock on wood) mostly been inactive since living in LA and doing a yoga practice, although bad dietary choices can aggravate them. However, either the bad air in the valley, the mowed lawn, the coffee, the mashed potato mix and chicken from last night – I was having trouble feeling like I was getting full healthy breaths, and the liver cleaning exercise packed a wallop.
It’s said that if you do this exercise for 11 minutes “you will never have any problems with Mr. Liver.” Well, my experience is that if my system is fairly toxic, the dizziness gets a bit more intense, and it can also bring on nausea, like it did today. I had to lie down a couple minutes to “get back to normal.” Oddly, the instructions for this set initially say that this exercise works on the gonads, although it’s given in many other manuals specifically for the liver. The note underneath it does target my liver experience today, however.
The set began to go a little better when I switched from Cherdikala Jetta’s (whom I normally love) “Mul Mantra” to Guru Singh’s more upbeat “Golden Temple Song.” It seemed that there was a light breeze, but it blew my glasses off the picnic table nearby. That helped cool me down in my jeans. By the time I’d ended the set I felt a lot more balanced and clear-headed.
I haven’t been able to dig up the lyrics for “Nobility” as specified in the manual, so I made up some versions of “Bountiful, Blissful, and Beautiful” and liked the variations I came up with, recording them in the phone, perhaps for later elaboration. So it’s a women’s song, but the message is still good.
Then I did my 11 minute “Har” – today fared quite a bit better, perhaps because the yoga exercise beforehand helped focus my energy. Normally I do this with one of three recordings to help carry me through, but today I did it without musical accompaniment. By the time I’d reached 8 minutes, I had this peculiar experience, as I tried to chant with the energy pumping from the navel, that I was almost shouting without effort. But I wasn’t shouting; it was the sound being reflected off my hands to my ears and face.
I also did the “Meditation on Your Self as a Yogi,” p. 186 Master’s Touch. I hadn’t been looking forward to this meditation too much, it seemed silly. But when I reflected on the obsession with Kundalini Yoga that I’ve exhibited almost from the start in the early 1990’s, it deepened my appreciation for the time I’ve put into it and the changes I’ve gone through.
I finished 11 days of “Healing the Wounds of Love” last night, and sort of feel like it was a waste of time. Either there’s a lot more karma there than the meditation can clear, or I just can’t sense the changes yet. Or else I’ve been given empty promises for it.
Before I started doing the yoga, nature was calling, and I couldn’t find an open bathroom. I expected the set, which works on the digestive system, to send me running for one afterwards, but that wasn’t the case. My digestive system seemed to have settled down rather than eagerly cleansing itself. My energy seemed “even” rather than amped up or tired.
A couple hours later, I had some solstice onion soup and mung beans and rice, and after fighting my way home through late rush-hour traffic, my energy had dropped, and I was irritable and depressed. Nobody I’d attempted to reach via phone today answered or returned the calls, and I was feeling a bit frustrated about it. The maintenance man at my building hadn’t fixed my lock as promised. I had made some progress on my UX design projects after the yoga, but it seemed negligible. My problems with my iPhone’s interface exhibited direct disregard by Apple of the Human Interface Guidelines they created, once I read a portion of them today, and were still causing frustration. My elderly neighbor and friend had taken me to a dance concert at one of her previous colleges last night, and asked for some paid help on a regular basis afterwards, but as we discussed it, I realized she just doesn’t have any money to pay for the help. I’m actually happy to help her out, but a bit frustrated financially and also understand her position. She was almost in tears as she described her frustrations finding friendship and support. I must say, I’ve been grateful for this August friendship. She has been one of my most direct supporters, even though her slow mannerisms and speech style take some work. But the cynical mind says, “prosperity meditations? THIS is what I get? Fuck that!” Then I do them again anyway. Whatevah!
So I couldn’t remember whether beautiful, bountiful, or blissful came first in the chant, and kept mixing it up. So I looked it up, and there was a short exercise for helping alleviate depression:
To help alleviate depression and release our energy to join the ethers, sit cross legged or in a chair, raise the arms straight up, palms forward, fingers stretching wide and draw little circles inward as you breathe long, slow and deeply through the nostrils. Do this for up to 5 minutes. Let your physical body, your arms and shoulders be challenged. Let your rectum, the earth energy, be massaged with the movement and feel the energy move upward. Go beyond the physical. Soar into the ethers. Feel light.
via I AM BOUNTIFUL, BLISSFUL AND BEAUTIFUL.
It helped. I’m thinking I’ve met this woman who wrote this post somewhere, but can’t remember where; Espanola? Golden Bridge? Yoga West? Ram Das Puri?
