Francisco de Zurbarán - detail from Saint Lucy

LOVE

Rather, it is what she calls a "micro-moment of positivity resonance." She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in "It's a Wonderful World" when he sang, "I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"

Emily Esfahani Smith, The Atlantic 1/24/2013. Full text here.

Wishing you many micro-moments of positivity resonance today.

“I am because you have been. You will be because I am.”

...I’m also thinking of Dr. Karandikar. He was Iyengar’s personal physician until he was reportedly worn down by the teacher’s constant stream of verbal abuse. Karandikar left the Ramamami Iyengar Memorial Institute to found Kabir Baug Sanstha just three kilometres away, across Pune’s Mutha river. Kabir Baug is a sprawling yoga therapy clinic and therapeutic college that serves thousands of mostly Indian clients and students every year. While Iyengar globally advanced the hypothesis of “yoga as therapy”, Karandikar seems to have quietly proven it by staying at home and using a seamless blend of ancient and modern techniques. Most injured clients who come to Kabir Baug for asana instruction receive a spinal x-ray before they even begin. This clinic is unknown to the global yoga community, I think, because Karandikar’s skill is not occluded by the projection of intuitive wizardry, but rather demystified through the medical technologies that have almost replaced divine vision. Karandikar has flown below the radar of Western fetish and orientalism, perhaps because his work is to show us that embodied insight is not the domain of a charmed few, but is democratically available to everyone.

--Matthew Remski WAWADIA

More updates and a link to help fund the book.

micro-moments of positivity resonance

In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love ... It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.

Rather, it is what she calls a "micro-moment of positivity resonance." She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in "It's a Wonderful World" when he sang, "I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"

Emily Esfahani Smith, The Atlantic 1/24/2013. Full text here.

Wishing you many micro-moments of positivity resonance today.

How to love these small differences?

"...Patricia White just got back from a hip replacement, which she insists came from her long ago days as a dancer, and not from yoga. On Wednesday mornings, she steps into the room on a cane, a striking image in a yoga studio. Who do we put at the front of the room? An older woman walking on a cane. In her class I am beginning to feel tiny openings in the hip flexors and around the collarbones that I’ve never felt before. I can follow this network of fissures and they lead me to new places where I can say yes. It’s like the life you share with your best friends. As they tell you the story of the past weekend, even though the circumstances are new so much of the telling is familiar, you’ve been hearing variations on this story for thirty years. Those small variations are at the heart of what friendship is. How to love these small differences? What Patricia is teaching me is how to get in touch with and love the small changes...."

-- Mike Hoolboom

Claire Cunningham

The detail in Claire Cunningham's work is completely captivating. Take a break and click play to inspire yourself...

details

The inspiration for all that deep groin release in class this week was this post from Anna Karkovska McGlew at fleshcontext.

"...this is an active groin release, not a passive one. It involves a strap, so go get one (the longer the better; if not, you might need to connect two straps to make a long one). The video will show you how to loop the strap around your feet, shins and thighs. Notice that the heels are not together in this variation, only the toes and the balls of the feet are touching, the heels never touch. Once you get there, anchor your upper arm bones against the floor. As you pull on the tails of the strap, actively press the balls of the feet into each other and resist the heels away from each other (same idea as above). At the same time, lift your heels away from the floor, as if someone is prodding the outer heels and the outer edges of the feet up from underneath. By this time, you will probably feel a stretch from the pubic bone through the upper inner thigh. Don't forget to breathe and keep space between the upper and lower jaw. Also, your buttocks will be working, but don't confuse working with overworking and gripping. If you feel like you are gripping, think of broadening the buttocks away from the sacrum and lengthening the center of the buttocks away from the top of the pelvis in the back. Finally, check once or twice to see that the heels are evenly lifting away from the floor. Often one will be higher than the other, as in the upright version--you  might also be able to discern this from the tone of your buttocks against the floor/mat..."

It's been helping me with my hip movements in overhang climbs too.

“Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?”

-- Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

Agnes Obel’s Riverside, directed by Alex Brüel Flagstad;  
 I walk to the borders on my own, to fall in the water just like a stone.

(found here)

‘Two hands, one heart, Till death us part.’
Ring made in England in the 17th century.

(British Museum)

Love details

"love is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. it can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. it can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and loaded with promises that we may or may not want to keep. the best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love. and, honey bun, on this front, i think you have some work to do."

- Sugar
(Dear Sugar, The Rumpus)

Found at KetchumYoga via staceymoves

A grain of sand up close.

(Found here)

Recipie: Tortilla Espanola

Tortilla Espanola by Aja Pecknold

Find a person you like (or animal, or both or many)

and a couple of handfuls of potatoes, any kind 

One yellow onion 

7 eggs, with brightest yolks possible 

Salt, pepper, parsley, paprika 

Slice potatoes and onions thin and round.

Layer, with salt and pepps in a trusty cast iron of hot oil, 1/4 inch 

Cook over low, until pots are softish. 

Beat eggs with salt and pepper, pour into cast iron

Wait until eggs are set, 

Finish in oven at around 300, until top is firm to touch. 

Remove from over, flip onto plate. 

Cool, serve at room temperature, topped with parsley and paprika

In generous slices with friends & lovers for breakfast, lunch, dinner or midnight/morning/afternoon snacks.

Aja is the creator of Unified Field Collective, a conceptual outlet for art, ideas and other select projects. She loves the display of light in Northern Iceland near the winter solstice, when the sunrises and sunsets dissolve into one low, abbreviated hum of what might be, as the days begin to grow longer. Also the brightness of the yolk of a really good egg. She lives.

 (image from JennCuisine)

Source: russian-and-soviet-cinema, via proofkiss)

Details

'It's refining the quality of intention. That's what yoga is.'

--Diane Long

(Source: seemoreandmore, via mrmoo8)

Tiny frames.

(found here)

Practice.

When moving what do you chose to  focus on?
The small details or the bigger picture?
Watch how your attention shifts between the two.
What happens to the movement when your focus is broken? Can you keep bringing it back to the task in hand?

It is the moment by moment focus on how you feel as you are feeling it that will keep you safe. 

(Illustrations by Lauren Nassef)

I once had a thought

I once had had a thought
About a thought I once had had 

About whether it was natural
For nature to seem so natural, 

Whether there was a Man in the Sun
Who steadied the sun with levers, 

Pulleys, and gears, and if so whether
He ever managed not to be there ...

Rowan Ricardo Philips, from 'Abingdon Square Park' (beautiful.)

Image: beauchamping: Detail of Gulliver's Mushroom.