Jai Bhagwan!

Prakash led sadhana this afternoon and, listening to his direction, I suddenly found myself thigh to chest and wrapping my hands around my heels in paschimottanasana.  This is the posture that I fear as I have injured my back twice over the last seven years pulling into it.  It is the same posture that I used to tweak my back in June simply by shifting my feet together in the middle of it.  As I nestled down against my thighs and gently grasped my heels, I felt a serenity and safety that I have never experienced in this posture.  I came forward to my usual edge and held, breathing, accepting.  My hips suddenly softened, my sternum extended further toward my feet, my back rounded slightly and I has holding my heels with no effort.  The effort to keep my low back safely engaged vanished.  The effort to keep my legs straight vanished.  All of it melted away into effortless existing as paschimottanasana.  As I came out of the pose, I could feel a deep stretching and releasing beginning in my right psoas and up into the erector spinae and quadratus lumborum—three major muscles in the low back—this is where my back was injured fifteen or so years ago.  The tension and pain in my left lower back from my Yoga injuries is long gone and now the tension and holding in the right side, which is much older, is breaking up.  I wanted to cheer as we finished the posture, the elation and welling of prana was so powerful!

Tonight Eric focused on being remarkable, being just a cook or being a chef!  Long story short, a cook creates edible food and a chef creates a marvelous feast using the same ingredients as the cook.  The chef accepts personal responsibility for the food, whereas the cook may place the responsibility for the quality of the meal on the ingredients or weather.  To be truly remarkable, however, is not to just be a chef.  It is easy to be remarkable doing something we love.  To be truly remarkable, carry that same intensity and passion, that same presence to not only the things we love to do but also to the things we hate to do.  When scrubbing the floor, scrub the floor and do nothing else.  Become so involved in scrubbing that there is nothing else in your world.  Bring that same passion and presence to everything and then, then one becomes truly remarkable.

Namasté