Float Free

Friday night late in the month of Shivan (May 15 - June 16)
Late sunset, looking West
Taking notes in a clearing near the Rivanna Trail

For good health at this time
Use upright Yoga postures
See the letter symbol Vahv (V)

For the web log include: Notes to Yoga Instructors
Also, Blue Ridge Mountain Journals
Have a Fri eve party

O ye people of the book
Turn a new page
Let your prophet re-appear
See the letter symbol Tet (t)

I am an ocean of love and light

It’s dark on the way out of the forest
Lightning bugs keep showing me the path
Even where to pause for a dangerous dip

I remember catching lightning bugs as a boy
Punching holes in the top of the jar for air
And letting them go. Also, getting my younger brothers and cousins
To let them go free. They haven’t forgotten

On the way, on the dark path home I realize
I am this forest, these trees, this sky. It’s magnificent
And frightening too – so much mystery and depth

I stop and gently shake a lifted tree branch as a wave offering
From us – the entire forest
Now all the trees and bushes are my pals
We touch each other affectionately as I leave the woods

The Farmer and the Vulture

 “My karma,” said the farmer, standing at dawn viewing his ruined fields as far the eye could see.

     A turkey vulture flying overhead swooped down and asked, “How is it your karma? What happened?”

     I wanted to jump on her without even courting her. A goddess. Can you believe it! So of course he had me step back.”

     “Who?” said the vulture circling about.

     “My guru, the whole universe.”

     “So, it’s over?”

     “Look at these fields – devastated. Looks bad, doesn’t it. He’s a tough guru, but he’s also always loving.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “He didn’t take her away completely. He’s letting me love her from afar. I get to learn little more about love. So once again, I’m blessed.”

     The vulture perched on a boulder on the side of the mountain. Far below was the city of Waynesboro. It looked like a pattern on a quilt. “So what now?” asked the vulture.

     “Who knows? My life’s a puzzle.”

     “Guess you’ll have to start meditating again.”

     “Okay, okay. How do I fit in all these practices – with all the other stuff?”

     “Put it into your ‘purpose,’” said the vulture.

      The farmer looked at the vulture. “Just look at these fields.”

     The vulture flapped his wings a few times. The farmer heard a phone ringing somewhere and wondered  -- “is it you, is it she? “Okay,” he said. “I’ve been doing that purification Hatha Yoga. It gets me to focus and use my mantra. So I guess I’ve begun meditating again.”

     “It’s about the puzzle of your life,” said the vulture. “Mind jumping about here and there, many-branched and endless are the choices. Mind still and one-pointed, only one choice.”

     “I got it,” said the farmer.

     “Look at your fields again. What do you see?”

     The farmer was quiet for awhile. Then he replied: “Fields of consciousness.”

     “The field of Isaac” said the vulture, “as in:  ‘Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide.’ – from the first scroll.”

     The farmer cocked his head and stared at the vulture. “How do you know all this old scripture stuff?”

    “I been around a long time,” said the turkey vulture. Then he spread his wings and flew up high above the mountain until he was just a speck in the sky as the sun began to appear.      

Pearl Harbor

I come from a Navy family. My uncle was an admiral. His brother, my father, was the Commodore of a squadron of sixteen Destroyers. I was raised beside the oceans of the world. As a teenager I dozed on beaches in the warm afternoon sun.

During World War ll, when I was a little boy, I would walk along the beach in the morning by myself and pray for my dad to come home alive from the Pacific.

When we were in Hawaii my parents gave me a ukulele. We lived on a  mountaintop outside Owahu. My mom was walking with me to a neighbor’s’ house when Japanese planes flew low over the mountain heading for the Harbor. From the open cockpit the pilot looked down at us. He was right there. I could see his face. He looked like a teenage boy. Mom began singing Christopher Robin poems so I wouldn’t be sacred. I didn’t know there was anything to be scared about. But during the next hour the ships in the Harbor were sunk and so many people were killed. Dad was stationed on the battleship California, which went down that day, but we didn’t know that right away or who the survivors were. Everyone thought the Japanese were going to land and take over the islands. For days we had to keep our shades down, just burn candles and listen to the radio. We didn’t know if Dad was coming home again.

We must have had a big house because Mom invited a number of Army wives and their kids to stay with us, while they waited for their husbands to come get them. Their quarters had been bombed. The Japanese attack also wiped out the Army Air base and all its planes so the pilots couldn’t take off and fight back. As the days passed, some of their husbands came to get them. And some never came at all. One lady was pregnant. Her husband didn’t come get her. My mom was holding her and crying. My dad came home and held us both close for awhile before he went off to war.

The Navy raised up the California and sent her out to sea, where she was hit by kamikazes. Japanese pilots dive bombed their explosive laden planes into the American ships killing themselves in order to try to sink our ships. This was before guided missiles. Dad was Gunnery Officer on the California. His job was to shoot these planes and pilots down before they struck the ship killing hundreds of men and even sinking this great battleship.

The Navy sent the wives and children home to the mainland. For awhile my mom and I stayed with my grandparents in their house outside Annapolis on the Chesapeake Bay. There were two little boys from Germany also staying in the big house with us. They didn’t speak English. They were Jewish. They seemed to always stay under the grand piano in the living room. I knew something had happened to their parents. No one said anything to me, but I figured if I’d been raised in Germany, my parents probably would have disappeared, and maybe me too.

Then we moved to Long Beach, California, I think because that was where Dad’s ship would come home to -- if it ever came back. That’s when I went out walking on the beach and praying for my dad to come home safe. I don’t know where I got the idea to pray. But I did. My mom would sleep with me in the bed with her a lot when Dad was away. One time in the middle of the night we had a surprise -- Dad climbed into bed with us. We were all so happy.

Maybe that’s when I started believing.

The Healing Breath

The Healing Breath

Loving greetings of peace in Satchidananda.

You may try out some deep breathing with visualizations to heal any area of your body and mind. Here is how to do so.

1. Sit quietly and comfortably with straight back, open shoulders and chest. Invoke the one you adore; pay respect, invite protection and guidance.

2. Begin deep three-part breathing (Dheerga Swasam). After a couple minutes …

3. Add visualization and a short retention at top of the in-breath, and continue a few minutes longer.

4. Sit quietly with normal breathing enjoying the results of this practice.

Dheerga Swasam  Deep three-part breathing:

a. Inhale through the nostrils way down into the lowest portion of the lungs, until the abdomen puffs out a little. (Don’t overdo it or strain).

b. Breathe it out gently and slowly through the nostrils.

c. At the end of the out-breath, draw in the diaphragm a little to force out a bit more air from the bottom of the lungs.

d. After a few in and out breaths, next time fill up the abdominal portion of the lungs and also the chest area.

e. Breathe it out slowly as before, remembering to draw in the abdomen a little at the end of the exhale.

f. After a couple times, repeat same, but this time and in this order: fill the abdominal portion, the chest portion and also breath in and also up into the chest all the way to the chin, so the collar bone tends to rise just a little -- like filling a vessel from the bottom to the top.

Be careful not to work too hard at this or move the body much. It’s mostly directing the breath with the mind. This is Dheerga Swamam, the deep three-part Yogic breath, which brings 8-10 times more oxygen into the blood.

The Visualization & Short Retention (3-8 seconds whatever is comfortable):  

a. During the in-breath visualize white light/gold light prana (vital energy) coming into your system from above, down through the crown of the head and down into the area that isn’t well.  

b. During the short retention, visualize the prana circulating about in that area, cleaning, purifying and strengthening all the cells and muscles in that part of the body.

c. During the out-breath visualize any weaknesses or disturbances in that area of the body (and mind) washing out of the system, out of the body.

d. Repeat a few times.

This is a very powerful practice. Try it out two or three times/day. You will see results within a few days, or even sooner.

Prahladan@Yahoo.com

Raised by the Chesapeake Bay

After 30 years they finally bulldozed

The old family homestead and instead erected

Hundreds of luxury condominium town houses

And a man-made marina

In place of the graceful lawn

Up from the beach where we ran

Barefoot in the dew early mornings

Down to the pier to look for crabs

Clinging to the dark pilings.

Now $450,000 apartments on unrecognizable land

As I sit in the sand of Chandler and Arnold’s beach

Musing about time, the devouring shark.

Arnold drowned. Grandma and Grandpa are no longer.

I felt their presence today

Wandering the streets of Annapolis

Maryland Avenue and the State Circle.

That little Japanese Maple is a big tree

Now, its branches reach

Out to the Chesapeake where I would play

With my brothers and cousins

All through the golden years of childhood

Until we grew up and moved across the world

While our grandparents grew old

And the land was sold

Again and again.

Now it’s hard to figure where our house used to be

But the sound of waves coming in is the same

And the small first flat rock that I take and toss

Skipping over the water

Lifts me to a timeless memory:

My mother and her sisters married here.

My brothers and I were raised here.

What’s been done here

Is profitable at last, but not so lovely.

This very beach! Where you are now

Bill Davis who helped me build a kayak from a kit

Took me kayaking and camping until a Northeaster drove is

Home so fast our arms ached from paddling.

And you Professor Stryker, you beautiful old man

Who knew everything except you burned your house down

From smoking and died in the blaze.

I’m beginning to understand

Aging.

When you grow old

Old friends are memories

The generation just before is a memory too.

The heart overflows

Like a tide coming in.

This warm sand feels good on my toes.

Strange to see grey townhouses along the beach

Jutting out to the water’s edge.

A million dollar real estate adventure

with Jaguars and Porsches

And Mercedes Benz sedans

On asphalt parking spaces

Laid over the grass I played ball on

With Mark and Diane and Ritchie.

I want to run and find someone I used to know

But the old people are dead

And the rest have moved away.

Don’t they know there are stinging nettles

In this bay and the water is tepid in August?

These people are paying too much

for their waterfront property.

I remember our Labrador swimming circles around Mom

Barking when she went for a dip heavily pregnant with Joel

Now Jayadeva with five children of his own.

Some early evenings

When it was very peaceful

Grandpa would walk down the gentle gradient

And swim for a while in the Chesapeake Bay.