health

by Nina Trees in the Ocean by Brad Gibson Today in my weekly yoga class, my teacher asked me to demonstrate a pose�Marichyasana 2�that I used to be able to do. But because the arthritis in my right hip prevents me from taking Half Lotus position (which I used to do with ease), I had to turn him down. It got me thinking. Naturally, not being able to get into Half Lotus on one side also means that Full Lotus is also unavailable to me. Even if one day I get a hip replacement (I�m hoping that won�t be necessary because so far I�m not getting any worse, thanks in part to yoga), I still won�t be able to do Lotus. So, well, that�s it for me, folks!  As some of you may know by now, I�ve been working on non-holding (see Non-Holdiing (Aparigrapha) ) by getting rid of objects that I have no use for but to which I have an emotional attachment. So I decided today that I should just let go of Lotus pose (and all its variations, such as, Arda Padma Paschimottansana) in the same spirit. And I said...

by Nina "Holding on to one's thoughts is also a form of possessiveness�." �BKS Iyengar Untitled Drawing by Milton Zolotow, one of hundreds Ram's recent post on aparigraha (non-hoarding) left a strong impression on me. In it, he mentioned several meanings for aparigraha , including "non-possessiveness, non-holding, non-indulgence, non-acquistiveness." Recently I've been thinking a lot about the "non-holding" aspect of aparigraha . Non-holding has been on my mind because I've started to feel weighed down with possessions. That's partly because in the last few years, both my parents and Brad's parents died, and we ended up with a lot of their stuff. Some of the things were useful, like the beautiful dining room table we inherited from my parents. We are using that table now and gave our old table to our daughter who started her own household, so a kind of balance has been established. A lot of the other stuff isn't at all "us...

by Ram Naushon Tree by Brad Gibson In the Sadhana Pada of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali we are introduced to the eight rungs/limbs/steps of yoga whose practice helps us to develop attention as a tool to discriminate between ignorance and awareness and truth from illusion, the means for liberation or enlightenment. One of the eight limbs is aparigraha , which has several meanings, including non-possessiveness, non-holding, non-indulgence, non-acquisitiveness. Verse 2.39 in the Yoga Sutras describes aparigraha as: aparigraha sthairye janma kathanta sambodhah When one is steadfast in non-possessiveness or non-grasping with the senses there arises knowledge of the why and wherefore of past and future lives. �trans. by Swami Jnaneshvara   Aparigraha comes from the word parigraha , which means reaching out for something and claiming it for oneself; the "a" prefix' before parigraha turns it into an antonym. Thus, aparigraha  is the concept of non-possessiveness or non-hoardi...