Success

Maybe it just comes with age and experience, but at some point you don't give a damn what anyone else thinks. If everyone would just be happy within themselves, there wouldn't be all the problems in the world. I just fear that we wait until we're much older to have this attitude.

I just recently wrote up my "success" story for the Studio 4 Pilates newsletter about losing 23 pounds after I joined as a member. One of my classmates thought of me and my success story when her friend wanted to start exercise but felt she couldn't do yoga because she was overweight. My yoga teacher asked what prompted me to finally start an intense exercise program? I said the bathroom scale, weight, sore knees, but the question kept mulling over in my head as I lay in savasana that night in yoga. It really was more than just losing weight because my knees hurt. It goes back to having major surgery a few years ago to have my thyroid removed and completely going through a metamorphosis. Maybe you'd call it a mid-life crisis. Whatever it was, I know myself deeper than I ever have before. Losing my thyroid helped me become comfortable with who I am, inside and out. A major change can make you take a totally different path. And you also have a choice in how you deal with that change; whether positively or negatively.

It took several years of exploration, but I'm at the right place now, physically, mentally, spiritually. My life feels balanced. So when my yoga teacher asked what prompted me to take on yoga and Pilates and lose weight, it was more than the scale and aching knees. It was the culmination of my lifetime of experience and dealing with a major crisis in my life to finally have everything make sense. Knowing that if I don't take this one little pill every day or I would be dead within 30 days really made me rethink everything. Don't wait until that moment when you can't turn back, take on life now. You never know what the next moment holds. The greatest adventure of your life happens now.

Frank Jude Boccio and Yoga Journal offers some ideas for a change-friendly inner life:

"Every morning, repeat a gatha (mindfulness verse): 'Great is the matter of birth and death; impermanence surrounds us. Be awake each moment; do not waste your life.' Life doesn't give you breathing room, but if you stop grasping for control of the uncontrollable, you can learn to breathe through it all."

Ganapati Mantra

Shrim Hrim Klim
Glaum Gum Ganapataye
Vara Varada
Sarva Janam Me
Vashamanaya Swaha

Let the energy in the obstacles and difficulties return to their sources. Let that energy be transformed and returned to you in a usuable form.

Gayatri Mantra

Om bhur bhuvaha svaha
Tat savitur varenyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yonah prachodayat

We contemplate the glory of light illumnating the three worlds: gross, subtle, and casual.

I am that vivifying power, love, radiant illumination, and divine grace of universal intelligence.

We pray for the divine light to illumine our minds.

Mitagating Anger

I received my new book today, "A Year of Living Your Yoga" by Judith Hansen Lasater, PHD, P.T. My yoga teacher, Linda Grace Foster is student of Lasater and often uses quotes from her.

I opened the box and took out the book. There was a ribbon bookmark in it, so I opened it to the page it was on. This book is set up to read each day by date. The book was marked to today's date! My yoga teacher had read us the quote the night before. It was about anger and letting your anger melt into being present. We chanted this mantra:

Shante Prashante
Sarva Krodha
Upasha mani Swaha

(SHAN-TEH PRA-SHAN-TEH SHAR-VAH KROH-DHA OO-PASH-AS MAH-NEE SWAH-HA)

This mantra helps to mitigate anger and instill peace of mind. Thomas Ashley-Farrand translates it as: "Invoking supreme peace I offer (surrender) the quality of anger to it's source in the higher and formless universal mind. Salutations."

Lasater says, "you cannot be angry unless you believe you are right...allow being right to melt into being present."