Sunday Sutras: Silence (1.1 and 1.2)

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Now that I've finished my series on the Chakras, I've decided to spend some time with Patanjali, the father of yoga. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, a very short book of verses, has been guiding yogis for two thousand years, but I'll admit I haven't opened it since teacher training. To get me thinking about it, I'll tackle a verse or two every Sunday. The translation I have is by Alistair Shearer, so I'll be using that one, but there are others.

1.1 And now the teaching on yoga begins.

The first verse is pretty straight forward. I can picture yogis of old sitting in lotus, listening to their guru say those words. Pay attention, because here's where the good stuff starts.

1.2 Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.

Right there, in the second verse, is the crux of it. Yoga is silencing the mind. It's not eco-friendly rubber mats or butt-lifting spandex pants. It's not headstands or backbends. It's not even breathing deep. It's simply letting go of the stream of thought so all that's left in your head is silence.

Have you ever laid on the grass and watched the clouds? The breeze moves the clouds, forming them into shapes. Your mind starts to associate those shapes with animals, people or things, giving them names, and it watches for the next shape that looks like something. All the chatter in the mind is like watching the clouds, a constant stream of analysis, naming and anticipating. But what if, instead of watching the clouds, you watched the blue sky? What if your mind didn't have anything to associate with anything else? Focusing on the blue sky and ignoring the clouds is like silencing the mind. And silencing the mind is yoga.

That's all you have to do.

My husband hates it when someone says "that's all you have to do," because whatever is "all you have to do" usually requires a big commitment of time, energy, materials or money. When I say "all you have to do is replace that light fixture," he's likely to spend three weekends rewiring the house. I'm sure he just read "that's all you have to do" and cringed.

If you, like my husband, read the second verse and thought that quieting the mind might not be as easy as it sounds, you're right. It's going to take some major rewiring in your energetic house. And if you wondered why you'd want to silence the mind anyway, well, that's for next week...

Must Bake Cookies

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In last week's post I admitted that I was on a bit of a baking kick. That might have been a slight understatement. I'm in a baking frenzy. Maybe the snow flurries coming down outside are making it feel like the holidays and that's why I can't seem to bake enough cookies lately. Unfortunately I'm also eating the cookies, so I'll have to keep running on the treadmill.

My baking frenzy is not completely out of control. I have one rule that I've been sticking to - I can only bake with the supplies I have in the house. After cleaning out my cabinets I discovered I've amassed a collection of gluten-free flours and other starches, as well as doubling up on things like baking soda because one box got buried near the back of the shelf. So all this baking is also helping to clean out the cupboards and use up things that might go to waste if left sitting too long.

Thanks to Google, I've been able to find recipes that use only what I had on hand, although I had to adapt some.

Beth Hyzy's blog Delicious Inspiration provied a great gluten-free sugar cookie recipe for Halloween. I had some Halloween-colored sugar and sprinkles, so I used them rather than icing the cookies. The unflavored gelatin means these cookies are not technically vegetarian, but they were really good so I decided to let that go.

I found a recipe for peanut butter and oatmeal cookies that sounded yummy, but when I checked the peanut butter jar it was pretty low. I replaced the peanut butter with cashew butter and the pecans with coconut and they came out great! I think they might be my favorite cookies (until another really good cookie comes along).

A couple of weeks ago I bought a bag full of lemons and didn't use as many as I thought I would. I didn't want the lemons to go bad, so I went hunting for a lemon cookie recipe. Bonnie's blog Bake This. Eat That. Then Move! (Bonnie is my kind of gal)  had a great recipe for Gluten-free Lemon Cookies with White Chocolate. I didn't have any white chocolate chips, so, since I'm not buying anything, I made the cookies without them. They are still good. I drizzled them with a powdered sugar and lemon juice icing to make them extra lemony.

In another burst of productivity I recorded a new podcast yoga class. Since Thanksgiving is almost here and I've been eating all those cookies, I decided to do a core-focused practice. If you've been eating cookies too, grab your mat and click the play button.

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Even if my cookie baking frenzy continues through the holidays, I have Kim's amazing and very healthy cooking to look forward to at the Adirondack Women's Empowerment Retreat in January. You could join us there. All the details are here.

No Excuses, Just Do It

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This morning's run was slow, but I'm on day nine of sticking to my training plan, at least in spirit. The plan assumed that I hadn't taken three weeks off due to illness, injury and laziness, so I'm not hitting the speed or distances the plan calls for. What I am doing is getting my feet onto the treadmill every time my calendar says "run."

I even spent an hour on my bike, which is set up on the trainer next to the treadmill, in a basement that's finally clean thanks to a surge of domesticity. I am determined to get back to triathlons next year and figured I would take advantage of my run plan's cross-training days for some bike workouts. It's better than starting from scratch in the spring.

This morning I was tired, but I got on the treadmill and walked. After five minutes I got bored with walking and pushed the treadmill's speed up. I did something, rather than staying in bed and taking a risk I might slip back into inertia. I'm noting this so I can come back and read it next time I think about skipping a workout.

No excuses, just do it. This is my winter mantra.

(Please note: the above picture of a running chicken has nothing to do with this post, although the chicken may, in fact, be running faster than I did this morning. It just came up as a Zemanta suggestion and I couldn't pass up a running chicken.)