We had a filming party for Deva Healing Center yesterday. A young yoga teacher and local college student is creating a 3 minute promotional video for the studio and its mission to bring yoga and healing to women in the community, especially women in recovery from trauma and addiction. It was an amazing turnout of woman and an awesome boyfriend who didn’t mind sharing the space with nearly fifteen women. Bri led us through a calming vinyasa practice with gentle words of encouragement while Ariel filmed. Another teacher, Claire Zane, led us through a standing sequence focusing on stability and stamina with some leg balances. Later we all drank tea and talked about our week in the colorful low-table sitting area, with plush vibrant cushions and pillows. Ariel decided it would be fun to film all of us dancing in the middle of the room to music, it was a riot and it felt so good to let loose and move our bodies. She finished with a couple of interviews of the teachers, Bri, Claire Zane, and myself. The interview questions were on what brought me to Deva. I think in many ways teaching this beautiful practice of connecting the mind and body has saved me this year. It’s boosted my confidence and has empowered me in so many ways. The short of it is it’s taught me I have something to give to this universe.
Links
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127602464
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127602464
Making fun of celebrities when they mess up isn’t alright. They are human, and many of these young celebrities are trying to come of age in a world that is watching their every move.
Mother India Documentary
Did you know there are over 31 children without a family or a home in India? I learned this alarming number through a documentary I watched called Mother India. It’s not for the faint of heart, it really makes you feel uncomfortable sitting in your apartment with food in the fridge and a warm bed without mosquitos. But the beautiful thing about this film is the ending has hope, and a way we can get involved. I think I’m going to say goodbye to organic food this month and start sending 35.00 dollars a month to sponsor a child. Eventually I’d like to go see the NGO that was featured in the film, called Harvest India. They are doing some great work.
Untitled Poem
We’d been driving two days now
Past fading snow and frozen lakes
Red earth and grain elevators
Broken homes and empty lands
Approaching Texas oil
Somewhere north of Oklahoma City
We picked up a girl sitting at the petrol stop,
She was waiting for people like us
A girl in emerald green short cropped hair scabbed knees
Said she’d been camping in a field for days
Crawled out of her tent and danced to the early sun
until the rancher stopped her.
My first hitchhiker.
We sat three girls and one dog up front
My sister and I and the girl
The backseat held all I owned
A framed portrait of a collie on my Mothers old farm
Half used candles yard sale coffee cups winter coats I hoped I would never use again
Journals half kept and abandoned
Heartaches poured out on paper but never mended
When we finally crossed the Arizona border the next morning
We pulled over to get cold drinks, sandwiches.
The man with the long white beard was there with some kids
told us they were going to see a big crater
Somewhere off I-40
Did we want to come they asked
See an expansive hole in the earths exterior
A reminder of what is beyond our own small existence.
Sometimes we get hit
without a chance to defend ourselves
alwaysthewanderer 