Christine Price Clark

Always check your inner state

Yoga Outreach

I will be teaching a class on Saturday, May 23rd in Squamish, in support of Yoga Outreach…

http://www.yogaoutreach.com/events.html

I am honored to be a part of this event- join me as we “Unite to Ignite” !

Ode to Spring

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE3CNu_rtY

My beautiful friend, Ali, sent this link to me this morning. I cried with total joy while watching it.

Thank you, Ali.

Watch it.

RSVP

Dear Foreals,

Your Aunt Kristen suggested I write you a letter….that it may somehow encourage you to come out and meet us.
I really don’t want to rush you (now or later in life when you will also be making decisions and life choices that I will try to respect as yours to make and honor the time it takes you to make them) but seriously, my little one, we are ready for you now.
I promise that while I will do my very best to make your entry safe and warm and loving, I vow for the rest of my life to love you like I have never loved anyone. We already do, you see. We have been in love with you since the moment we knew about you. We have been writing you this love letter for months. Please show us your little face, soon.
We are scared, too.
But we know we can do it.
And so can you.

love,

mom and dad

December 15, 1973

Dear mom,

Thank you for having me.

I imagine that on the eve before the day I was born, it was much like today- snowy, cold, relatively unremarkable, especially for the Eastern Townships in winter….

except you had been waiting.

I wonder what you were doing in that singular moment- when you knew I was coming soon.

Were you scared?

Were you excited?

Did you wonder : Can I really do this?

Dad drove you and Aunt Joyce to the hospital. Did they comfort you? What did you talk about on your way? What were you wearing? Were you warm enough in the car? Did you think about your mother?

When you arrived at the hospital, the doctor sent you to bed in your room and sent Dad home. Did you wish he had stayed?

You slept. Alone in the room? Did nurses check on you- peak their heads in and see you restful, curled into your own pillow? Did you bring your own pillow? Did it smell like home?

When the morning came, I was ready.

The anaesthesiologist’s car was stuck in the snow.

How many people were in the room with you?

Dad was buying me a Gund toy- a tiny, stuffed cat with blue eyes and gray fur.

Did you hear me first- or see me first?

Did they say, “It’s a girl ! ” ?

Did they put me on your belly?

Was it just you and me for a few moments before Dad, before Aunt Joyce- or was I taken away to be washed and warmed and swaddled?

You were brave. You are brave.

It has been 35 years since that morning  and I know you wonder if you remember how this goes…and how you might be the best grandmother to this baby.

How easily we forget our strength, our nature- it lies dormant, waiting like a gracious servant of the heart-  until the call comes again.

The familiar sound beckons us and we rise to meet it, to reunite with it- at once new and known.

Thank you for having me.

Let’s Make a Deal

Dear Foreals,

You are expected to arrive in just 4 weeks…

When you arrive, it will be 2009, I will be 35 years old and I will have only been in labour for a maximum of 6 hours. Your Dad will not pass out, our Doctor will deliver you, and your Grandmother will still be in town.

Deal?

Fo’reals

Dear Foreals,

ever since we found out that I was pregnant, we have been calling you Foreals…we promise that it will not stick.

I think it began due to our obsession with So You Think You Can Dance and the last season where the underdog (and winner), dimple-faced Joshua would make the number 4 sign above his shoulder and then the letter R.

4- REALZ…..

When we told your Uncle Deegoe (also a  SYTYCD fan) that I was pregnant, I think he said, “Foreals?”. And there you have it. We have now gone almost 33 weeks calling you Foreals.

I wonder now…is it a gang name? Will this help you on the playground?

Even your Nana Clark calls you “Foreals” in her Irish accent, with all the love with which she will speak your given name, eventually.  (I think she actually calls you “For Real”, because, well, Nanas have to call you by your “full name”.)

Upstairs in your room is a box labeled “Foreals”. It is full of onsesies and blankets that will eventually warm your little body, as well as a red pair of shearling slippers that only cover 2 of my fingers. Your tiny toes will be cozy, Foreals.

I also have a red file for you, labeled with a black jiffy marker “Foreals”. This has your first photograph in it, among other things. When I first saw you moving around, I said to the technician, “kind of looks like a little potato with some nubbly bits moving around…” Sorry, Foreals, you are not a potato.

When your Dad and I talk about you, we say things like, “Do you think Foreals will like school?” or “What if Foreals thinks we’re weird?”

Sometimes your Dad will get up in your grill (aka my belly) and whisper things to you….sometimes I can hear him and sometimes I can’t, but I respect the one-on-one time you have. I have heard him warn you, “Foreals, sometimes your mom likes to jump around and go upside down- she is just doing yoga, so don’t get freaked out…”

Your Aunt Betty recently saw a photo of me and commented, “Foreals is getting so big.”

Foreals, I hope you are safe and enjoying your last weeks in my belly. I know it is getting harder and harder for you to find space in there. I can feel you punching and rolling around wondering where the other room is, maybe….

It’s out here. Your Dad and I are going to try to tackle most of it this weekend.

And there are so many people for you to meet.

So many people to love you. Here on the outside.

Foreal.

Smrti

This week, I have been focusing on the theme of smrti, meaning memory or recollection. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, smrti is offered as an alternate route to inspire progress along the path toward enlightenment (or as I like to think of it, the path to the seat of your heart, to who you really are and who you have it in you to be). My teacher, John, defines enlightenment as any moment that you are in your heart. I see these moments as diverse as they are unmistakable. They range from the tender moment with a loved one when you are not only struck by the enormity of your feeling but it is so enveloping, you actually become the love itself. And then the days that hold no particular significance where you find yourself overwhelmed in gratitude- where you are lighter, fuller, more alive in your aliveness. Recently, I had lunch with my friend, Shelley and her daughter, Coral, age 10(?). Coral asked me about some baby names that my husband and I were considering. So, I would propose a name and she would give me a reason as to why or why not it would work. When I said, “What about the name Max?”, she gasped and said, “oh no, not Max- I know a Max and he has a HUGE forehead.” And just like that, she made us laugh so hard and made me so happy to be right there, with her, in that moment, alive.

So, how does smrti play a part in our progress on the path? Well, when we remember that we are part of something bigger- that the smallest of our gestures, the way we move and place our energy, affects a much larger universal energy- we make more conscious choices. We also, hopefully, invoke a deeper participation in life. In this life. In this moment. We aspire to be the fullest expression of our most authentic selves while serving a higher purpose- all at once. They can be one and the same. Not only the remembrance of our part in the universal flow, but also the recollection of our past triumphs, where we have been, can inspire openings.

When we remember a moment in our past that at the time seemed insurmountable and recognize that we made it through and that maybe that seemingly insurmountable tragedy or burden or heartache led us to the next opening- then we are living our yoga. We don’t dwell there but we acknowledge its value and with that acknowledgment, we are propelled forward yet again. Reignited by the memory of our own potential.

Is your yoga working?

The word yoga comes from the root,”yuj” meaning “to yolk”. This is often distilled into the definition of yoga as “union”. But it is important to ask- union of what? Carlos Pomeda, in his lecture series, The Wisdom of Yoga, reminds us that yoga is a “union” with a philosophy, or a binding to a particular belief system. So, classically, the yoga is a union of the practitioner (or man or priest or brahman) with a specific method of observances and disciplines all for the attainment of samadhi. It is a binding of oneself to these austerities for the purpose of separation from mind and body.

In Anusara,  the purpose for this binding shifts…In our yoga practice, we bind ourselves to our intention to align with our hearts while concomitantly, aligning with nature-  to utimately sit more easily in our hearts, and participate in this life from that very seat.  So the yoga you practice, its philosophical foundation, reflects how you practice, and is the beacon, the torch that lights (or casts its particular light) along this pathway to the heart. The quality of light, its color, its essence, is our choice. Philosophy matters. The Why determines the How.

We may not all, however, align with (or want to align with) a particular philosophical school of thought or belief system, religion or world view. So, then what becomes the Why of our practice? Have you considered that each time you come to your mat and your instructor offers you to set an intention for your practice, what you have the choice to do is establish your own personal philosophical foundation- your Why? Your yoga.

This choice is a powerful and precious freedom. So we need to choose well and wisely, for our “philosophy” will pervade all we do, how we align our bodies, how we respond in a challenging asana, how we greet a substitute teacher, or how we approach a partnering exercise.

If you have ever taken my friend, Paige’s, class, you may have heard her say that your yoga is an opportunity to “get real with yourself”. It is another opportunity to go to the truth of who you are. So when you set your intention, are you being “real”? Sattvic.

As Desiree Rumbaugh reminded us this past weekend, “What is a belief but a practiced thought?”

So now sit with this: Why do you practice?
Contemplate. Listen.
And then ask again: Is my yoga working?

You have the choice to set a new groove or to remain in and/or deepen the one that exists. How do you meet yourself on the mat? How do you invite yourself into the experience?

Whatever your intention or your motivation is, will be the very thing that you cultivate.

Set your intention. Just for this day. And see how it lights your way.