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nilambu notes Vol. 4 Issue 2 This issue introduces a new feature on the nilambu's web site - guided meditations! Try it out at your desk or download for your mp3 player. And let me know what you think. The last nilambu notes featured a piece on why yogis set intentions. Here, you'll learn how to set intentions to move out of the groove of bad habits with a process of seeing, accepting, setting and acting. Also highlighted is the experience of walking a labyrinth, whether here at the Washington National Cathedral or in your own area. (Labyrinth finder included) Have a lovely and safe Memorial Day. The Latin root of remembrance is memor , meaning "mindful." So be mindful this weekend of those who have died for the values of the Enlightenment embraced by our country's founders. Be mindful of others. Namaste - Cassandra Guided meditations can be helpful during the particularly stressful times in life. Intense emotions or stress make the "monkey mind" particularly rambunctious. “Monkey mind” is Anne LaMotte’s wonderful phrase for unsettled thoughts. A quiet, seated meditation can become challenging. So listening to another's voice can enable you to approach the practice in a new way. Contrasts in your meditation practice can deepen your experience. A walking meditation practice provides new experiences that can then alter your quiet seat. In the same manner, a guided meditation can support and renew your quiet meditation practice. Here's how to listen: Click here and wait. Depending on your default settings, you computer will open either Quicktime or Realplayer. You can listen right there at your desk. The meditation is 9 minutes and 31 seconds. Here’s how to download: To download the .mp3 file for your Ipod or other mp3 player, simply right click here. If you are in Microsoft Explorer, select "Save Target As...". If you are in Mozilla Firefox, select "Save Link As..." So give it a try. I hope you enjoy. And if you have a moment, please provide some feedback to aide and guide nilambu yoga in future recordings.
Walking the path of a labyrinth is an extraordinary experience and a very unique form of meditation. Words can hardly capture the sensation of shifting perceptions as you twist and turn away and then go back toward where you just came from. You pass or shadow strangers, each off on their own path. You can be alone on one part and then suddenly congested amid twenty. So you step aside wait. Then you are alone again, stepping apart. The movement inward, arriving at the center, can be powerful, like entering a womb. Walking the labryinth becomes a metaphor for life, for the many journeys on which we embark. The Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage opens at 6:00 pm for centering prayer (also known as meditation). The Center is right off of Resurrection Chapel and if you've never visit, you're in for a treat. Upstairs in the nave, the Cathedral makes two labyrinths available for this special contemplative practice which is free and open to the public. A harpist will accompany you on your walk. And Compline is said at 8:45. A special additional offering 7 pm a special program is offered in the Bethlehem Chapel. This month Deryl Davis offers Drama for Your Spirit: Acting Faithfully. For more information about the program at the Washington National Cathedral, click here. The National Cathedral offers this program on the last Tuesday of every month. If you don't live in DC, here is a world-wide labyrinth locator. And here's a link for all you might want to know about the types of labyrinths and the history of the practice from classical times through the Middle Ages to our own time.
Back in January, nilambu notes set forth the yogic approach to setting intentions. Rather than make resolutions and focus on the results (the scale, your marital status, achieving lotus pose), yogis set intentions and concentrate on the steps that make up the process of change. We can direct our approach and our behavior. This nilambu notes outlines how to integrate your intentions into lasting change and new habits. So what do you do? First you need to see clearly what is – what are your samskaras? What are your ingrained patterns of thought or habit? An accurate perception of your limits, your unhelpful habits, your distractions is the entry point to change (and you’ll re-evaluate your perception along the way). Nothing will change if you don’t see clearly. At this stage, others can help provide loving perspective. Turn a flashlight on in your life. See what is really going on in those dark corners so you can dust them up. How do we do this? Using burning enthusiasm (tapas), we study ourselves (svadhyaya). That may mean keeping a food diary or examining your schedule to see where you allot your time. This self study reveals your patterns, your values and can help you see clearly what is. You do this again and again as you evaluate and reassess, and nimbly readjust your behavior. Self-study can help you see unconscious habits that could sabotage your intentions. Next, with devotion to a higher powere (ishvara pranidhana), we humbly accept what is, what we don't control. We admit we don’t really as eat as well as we think, we have a serious illness with no cure, we are beyond our breaking point with stress, the mother/father of our children doesn’t want to be married any more. And we accept what we cannot change the outcome. Some realities are mutable; some are not. When we accept the things we can not change, that yielding can allow us to relax. It can lift a tremendous burden. We can stop fighting. A yoga teacher of mine told me you can have pain without suffering. What she meant was that we can't always control the pain, physical or emotional, but we don't have to suffer if we are able to adapt our response to the pain. Sometimes that may be easier to do than others. But by yielding to what is, to what we can't control, the change in perception can alter the experience. And in doing so, you may actually change the dynamic of your situation, your nervous system will ease and may even improve your vitality and ability to deal with illness. So this is the interesting thing: sometimes things, situations, reality will change as a result of accepting what is. Then you set an intention. Make a promise to yourself and remind yourself over and over of that intention. Plan, with specificity, a course of action that will support your intentions. You can do that for each intention and one intention may have several supportive steps. Some examples are:
Try to visualize and imagine yourself doing what you promised yourself. That will help. Not giving up helps too, which brings us to acion.... Finally you act. You take a step. A small step, again and again. Don’t visualize the goal; visualize the step, the action. Don’t give up. Keep getting up. If you get knocked down, get up and get up and get up. Another said you might have to keep at it "a billion times." Burning enthusiasm (tapas) works at this stage as well. Sometimes you can only get up with discipline or with burning enthusiasm for the intention because the short term result seems so undesirable. This stage is crucial; no question it can be easier to stay on the floor and not get up. It is easy to stay in the old patterns and habits and ruts (samskara). If your actions are not in line with your intention, with out judgment or self-laceration, see that clearly through your self-study and adjust your course. Be willing to adjust your course. And don't give up. To sum up: S.A.S.A. You go through this cycle over and over – See, accept, set, act. Be gentle with yourself. And you’ll be able to create new habits (samskaras), new grooves for your life, better actions and possibly a new outcome. Oh yes, and according to a British study, yogis (men) do better if they are specific while yoginis (women) more often succeed if they share their intentions. So be specific and share! And The New York Times earlier this month published a popular piece on changing your habits that echoes many of these themes. One of those quoted notes, "you cannot have innovation unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.” |
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This month, nilambu yoga introduces guided meditation. 
Speaking of walking meditation, you can walk the labyrinth next Tuesday, May 27th at the Washington National Cathedral from 6:30 to 8:45. The stain glass windows of the Cathedral capture the setting sun beautifully. 
Early this week, a dear old friend came to visit me. We're both in our early 40s and discussed the humility of realizing how little we have directed in our lives. Though no one controls outcomes, there are aspects of our life experience we can command. We can hone our approach, manage expectations, set intentions.