My teacher reminded we students recently that a lot of the pain [that comes up in yoga practice] is from previous injury or activities. Yoga just reveals them. Oh yea, my knees suddenly remember bike racing and down climbing mountains a little too well. Still, it took about a week and a half of disappointment about having to modify poses and vacillating between going home early to realize the practice was working on me. It clearly has become not so much about what rather than how. So even though I’ve wanted to stop, and it isn’t all that pretty, I haven’t.
Sharath also pointed out in a recent conference that “Sukha/dukha happiness and sorrow is part of our life. How we can handle these things is very important.”
Clearly griping doesn’t help. Getting up and doing what one can — celebrating the sun for instance — just might.
Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.
Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.
Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.
