Yesterday I did the “Har” meditation, made a small get well card for someone from the Quaker meeting who’s just had open heart surgery, and headed over to Pasadena to help clean out the Quaker Meetinghouse Cellar. While looking for a mailbox for the card, saw a mailman delivering mail, and handed the stamped envelope to him, which simplified the delivery a bit for me. Saw a dance performance downtown at Central Library that a friend was playing for, and by the time I got home and cooked some dinner, I really didn’t feel like doing any more yoga. I also felt like I HAD done some, and my conclusion was that the cellar cleaning amounted to Karma Yoga.
Today I chanted the 25th pauri of Japji while driving across town, but it did little to alleviate my impatience with crazy LA drivers (not that I expected it to). Then I did the 11 min. “Har” meditation while sitting waiting for an appt. in my car, and later on headed to Plummer Park. I felt like I needed more of a workout with my yoga today, so I dug through the “Fountain of Youth” manual, which is from Women’s Camp.
Although they’re women’s sets, I’d venture to say most men I know might find them difficult or even couldn’t do some of them. There are a few that I judge impossible. I’ve actually loved this manual since I got it, although I can’t really judge if they’re truly helping my ovaries and menstrual cycles in the cases where that’s promised.
I chose the “Body Adjustment to Elevate the Spirit” set; it looked like it would work out my whole body, with a lot of leg lifts, downward dog/cobra combos, etc. Nearly every exercise is done 108 or 52 times.
Part 1:
As soon as I started the 108 leg lifts, my phone rang, and the long call was good, because it gave me time to digest the tortilla soup with mung beans and rice I’d eaten 20 minutes or so earlier. Once I started again, I noticed butterflies fluttering around the sculpture next to me. I couldn’t capture them in the pictures though. But it felt magical.
Then I continued through the set, and a bunch of Russian kids began running around the sculpture, and then running all around me.
When I got to the cat/cows, I looked up, and this kid was a couple of feet from my mat, staring right at me.
So I continued, and his friends were all running around me. Then they started waddling up and down the concrete water drain, and I snapped some pics of them, which intrigued them.
Once I got the section of the set where you stretch your arms alternately over your head, I had some new pals.
Their parents came by and scooped them up and whisked them away. I finished the set; for most of the exercise part I listened to Guru Singh’s “Ap Sahee” and “Hummee Hum” for some of it. The final rest is supposed to be 10 minutes; I played Guru Singh’s “I Am” which is 8 minutes long, and then moved on to the Master’s Touch meditation.
“Meditation for Upliftment” is on page 236. I’m frankly, getting pretty annoyed at all these meditations in the book that specify mantras that aren’t available, or are excerpts from other recordings that are tough to find. It said it used a setting of the 20th pauri of Japji for 7 minutes, then you’re supposed to hold hands in a group and sing along with it. Since I was doing it alone, and although I’ve made each pauri of Japji into a separate mp3 that I can loop, I didn’t have pauri 20 with me, so I just played all of japji for 11 minutes, held the mudra, chanted along with it, and imagined myself holding hands for the last 4. The meditation ran until the beginning of Pauri 25, which I’d chanted earlier.
Then it was close to dark, and I finished up. So far so good, right?
Well, around 9:30 I swung by the Piano Bar to see if Natasha’s band was playing there; I thought she’d said they play there on Wednesdays and Fridays – and I didn’t see them around, so I headed home. Suddenly I was walloped! I crashed into a nasty physical depression. I thought it might’ve been a blood sugar drop, and ate a bit when I got home, which helped a bit, and made some golden milk and a pot of fresh yogi tea. I stabilized after a while, but I still wonder what the hell happened. Yuck.