I love that to practice Iyengar Yoga is to step into a river of Devotion, that it brings me to total trust and terrifying levels of surrender, that it requests all I can give and more, so I know my capacity for focus, for strength, for patience, for love, is much greater than my mind tells me.
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I love that what I’m exploring in asana practice are the exact skills I need to navigate work in the external world: to awaken to and challenge my own internalized oppressions, to disrupt the harm I inevitably create, to stay present during the discomfort of working towards change, of directing attention to what I’ve been socialized to ignore, of compassion and clarity amidst fracture and conflict.
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I love that Iyengar yoga brings me in, to really experience what is beyond, what is God, what is real. To sense the hum of the earth’s living soul, the awake vital pulse of the universe. .
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Feeling really grateful for an incredible week of practice with Patricia in CO and everyone here...
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#rajakapotasana4 #patriciawalden #iyengaryoga #beginnersmind #purusha
Shirt by @ameyogaapparel 💙 pic by Nina
G U R U ✨ P U R N I M A
Today we will be chanting the Guru Strotam. Other days we have been chanting the yoga sutras, a pada each day, with a recording from Geetaji. 💙 How sweet, potent to fill the inner space, and shared space with these vibrational currents. .
Even my weakness and discouragement become doorways into devotion today. Staying with the innermost, anything seems possible. So many backbends this morning! What else can I say. Sending love from Patricia’s retreat in CO. .
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Akhand-Mandalakaram vyaptam yena characharam. Tatpadam darshitam yena tasmai Shri Gurave Namah.
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Akhand – unfragmented; Mandalakaram – one infinite whole; vyaptam – pervades; yena – by which; characharam – movable & immovable; Tadpadam – That state; darshitam – has shown; yena – by whom; tasmai – to that; Shri – glorious; Guruve – guru, teacher; Namah – my salutations.
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“My Salutations to that Guru who revealed to me that Truth, which is unfragmented, infinite, timeless divinity, and which pervades the entire universe – movable or unmovable.”
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Translation by Swami Atmananda
Thank you for sourcing this, sharing with us, @yogawithholly 💕
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#iyengarcommunity #iyengaryoga #gurupurnima #oceanofdevotion
"Do a practice that is stronger than you are." .
"The gift of suffering makes you more attuned to yoga philosophy."
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- Patricia Walden .
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Heading up today to Patricia’s CO training, ahh an annual pilgrimage into deep student mode, deep deep deep practice. So much has evolved since this time last year, in my practice, my analysis of yoga in the US, how I locate myself in Iyengar community... I’m curious and excited to see what will unfold. Grateful for such direct and humbling learning. Grateful for so much, the ever widening horizon of the unknown! .
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thanks 🙏 @anne_marie_schultz for recording these quotes 😘 .
This picture is of Patricia and me in Pune last December... ♥️
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#iyengaryoga #deepdive #beginnersmind
"Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?" ~ Tao Te Ching
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Fact is, screen time dulls my presence for the rich real vividness of life, it’s been kind of profound to step off the Instagram train, to trust my connections, projects, purpose, business, etc, are evolving just fine without the hustle to produce. It was never about that anyway. Exploring finding the relationship to social media that best nourishes ...me. Creativity is so special, we can use our vital energy in many ways, but we have to choose, can’t do it all, all at once. How are you spinning yours into existence? How am I? Is it serving the things I wanna serve? Filling the spaces I want to fill? .
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Real connection is so rich. I love all you precious friends who live far away you know who you are!! Visits are golden. .
Grateful ahh for presence n friend time with you @paravida__ #totaltreat. Our sweet faces, shoot, I couldn’t resist doing the post thing. So much in life unfolding, so much. Thanks for today.
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Insta community ✨ hope this finds you feeling spacious, patient, and lavish in the time you give yourself to let things in your life grow at an unrushed pace. .
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#iyengaryoga #communityiseverything
“I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle.”
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. “We are socialized to see what is wrong, missing, off, to tear down the ideas of others and uplift our own. To a certain degree, our entire future may depend on learning to listen, listen without assumptions or defenses.”
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“It is healing behavior, to look at something so broken and see the possibility and wholeness in it.”
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“I believe that all organizing is science fiction - that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.”
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- #adriennemareebrown 🔥⚡️❣️
@adriennemareebrown .
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“Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.”
-José Esteban Muñoz .
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Here’s my final ‘bonus’ post for the #ReclaimPrideYogaChallenge 🔻 Did you know throughout this challenge certain posts were deleted, hidden...? How are marginalized folx, bodies + stories policed & invisible-ized, beyond social media, everywhere? More than we realize. .
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My body is intelligent, full of riches. .
Queerness, space between definitions, binaries - brave and tender community, you show me my own heart when you reveal yours, it’s sacred. Revealing what can be, beyond what has ever been before. .
Thanks @baron24m for including me in this year’s trans + nonbinary calendar to benifit @tgrcnm 💖 📸 by @burnalexburn 🌟 Glad I got to be ‘June’ 🥰 maybe I’ll post that pic at some point, we’ll see how the vulnerability quotient flows. 🌺🌸🌼 .
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One more big squishy sentimental gratitude gush to all who played 💋
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#ReclaimPrideYogaChallenge 6 days of queer yoga visibility & solidarity leading up to the 50th anniversary of Stonewall 🏴✊🏿✊🏽✊🏼
anti assimilation, anti isolation 🌈
Hosts:
@swayvery
@kjcfalcon
@ruben_tree
@leucasloves
@omgirlalli
@trans_yoga.jg
@bigqueeryoga
@giannayoga @wholesome_yoga_chicago @yogaqueer
@notna.the.human @plant_basedbae
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Sponsors
@abq_queer_trans_yoga @bhamyogaunbound
@queeryogacharlotte
And here we are! DAY 5 of the
#ReclaimPrideYogaChallenge 💋
RESILIENT RADIANCE #adhomukhavrksasana
honoring 👑Marsha P Johnson, 👑Silvia Rivera
👑Stormé DeLarverie
👑Miss Major - and all the rad queers queens dykes fags who were fed up with being beat up and thrown in jail over existing (and thereby breaking the rules of gender and heteronormativity)chose to fight back, 50 years ago today. .
My life in all its weird rich freaky fullness has been possible because of you.
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Almost always it’s those who are most vulnerable at the front of the fight. Black, brown, trans, poor, disabled, undocumented folx lead the charge. Because that brave emotional night in NYC, the 3 day riot that followed, years of activism, how many thousands of lives have been saved, touched, given soil in which to bloom?
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We never know the scope of the ripple effects when we stand for justice. .
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How tragic then, that as the whitewashed gay rights movement took the bait of assimilation, these leaders were pushed to the side. Queerness isn’t based solely on sexuality, it is political stance, too, that seeks to disrupt the norms in order to center the lives of those most marginalized; to clear out and rebuild the structures that mechanize systemic racism, patriarchy, consumer capitalism etc. This is why I use the word Reclaim. .
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Gay pride isn’t just about a big party it’s about resistance, resilience, restorative justice, radiance that those who know about, KNOW. 🌟 (Tho I’m reeeal stoked to GoGo dance at a big trans inclusive lesbian dance party tonight at @meow__wolf because well, if you haven’t figured out by now, I’m a natural exhibitionist, & also - there’s a special kind of joy that exists in safe spaces for queer sexy expression.) .
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Yoga culture too is in a process of reclamation and I’m loving the work of @susannabarkataki @yogaisdeadpodcast @skillinaction and so many others; this huge vital network of change makers bringing critical framework to the yoga world. Grateful to be in this work together! .
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MASSIVE LOVE 💥🌈💥 to everyone part of this #reclaimprideyogachallenge it’s been a beautiful week together...! Hosts + sponsors in comments 😘
