subhakamana

if you are gifted with a bright sunny warmish day in these next few weeks, I hope you hop on your bike and think of me.

a friend found the above greeting and passed it along to me for my upcoming globe trot to nepal tomorrow (and the next day): it's meanings are good luck, good health, best wishes . . .

I offer the same to you all during these next few weeks, and if all goes well, I'll be back shortly before Christmas.

namaste, and salud!

9533

coming up on it, you see sky, blue and vibrant, reaching down to touch the road and it looks as though, as the road bends, you will climb up and fall off the top, down into the abyss of the far away valley, its rounded hills coated with gold and orange aspen and deeply dark sharp-tipped pines.
there are few true passes that I climb around here, and guardsman is the sharpest, the highest (my garmin says 9533, but it's stated to be 9700' above sea level), the narrowest, dustiest, most invigorating and empowering of them all. the road from the big cottonwood canyon turnoff to the top---a mere three miles---is so painfully steep at times that I most always experience, at least once, a desire to vomit. yesterday it was right after the hairpin turn where the grade is somewhere around 16 percent and the road just sits there, taunting, unwilling to compromise and soften, just a bit. you're halfway, I told myself. the whole thing is only three miles, which, relatively, is absolutely nothing.

anyone can climb three miles.

I thought about turning around. I thought about stopping, just for a minute or two. and what kept me from that is the knowledge that I'd done it before, I'd survived, and I'd done it without stopping. if I had made it before, I could make it again.

I sat at the top, resting my bike against a rocky shale hillside then perching on the same tumbly rocks, sprigs of pungent sage fragrancing my little oasis. the pass rounds the hill, the road hugging snugly the hillside upon which I sat. a snow frosted mountain side faced me, its north-facing self protected from the melting power of the sun. the valley spread before me, ridges separating midway from park city from the snyderville basin. I can see bits of deer valley, I can see mechanical structures from the ski resort. I see the dirt road, pathways, little teeny cars in the distance, thousands of feet below me.
I chewed my s'mores protein bar (oh I love that marshmallowy stuff on top) and sipped my water, and thanked God for not letting me turn around a mile or three miles back.

I tend to ride here just once a year, in the fall, and each time I make my way up the hill I'm reminded why I don't do it more often.

and each time I sit at the top, I wonder why I don't do it more often.

namaste.

who would I be without my yoga mat?

yoga makes me a better person.
there's really not much more to say than that, but being me, I'll expound anyway:


it teaches you to breathe. deeply. consistently. through tension and difficulty and discomfort.
it teaches you to slow down and pay attention. always.
it teaches you that you are capable of more than you thought. if you stick to it.
it teaches you that good things come with effort. yep.
it teaches you to soften your gaze, to be less demanding of the world around you.
it teaches you to move through layers of sensation, relaxing into each before moving on.
it teaches you that a calm and steady core diminishes the tendency to overreact.
it teaches you that the goal is not "not to fall," but when you do fall, to fall with grace.
it teaches you that balance is a necessity. balance between effort and ease, balance between stress and peace, balance between your body and earth.

it strengthens your muscles. making them look prettier. okay, and function more effectively.
it adds flexibility to your joints. especially the ones that tighten from hours of running and cycling.
it changes you, it calms you, it eases your path through the world.
it helps you to understand and learn non-resistance.

and perhaps, most importantly, it reminds you that we all share a common divinity, a common spirituality, a common core and bond, which is acknowledged with a simple namaste murmured at the end of each class. that which is divine in me bows to that which is divine in you.

yoga makes me a better person. it hasn't made me a better person: this is a work in progress, a work that is never truly done. but every small movement forward---and yes, the occasional leap---make it all absolutely worthwhile.

repeat

I went to yoga this evening and my yogi guru sam was teaching.

one of these two following things is true:

people look different in the evening than they do at 6 in the morning, or

sam got his lip pierced.

regardless, he closed class again with this deeply important phrase that I have to share again because it will always be worth repeating:

we see things not as they are, but as we are.

now re-read what I wrote above, and make your own decision about when it was that sam got his lip pierced.

namaste.