posted May 9 2012
DAYA means mercy, or compassion, and is one of the ten yamas of yoga.
Our more contemporary "translation:" D elivering A ccessible Y oga A lternatives.
On April 19th, 2012, the DAYA Foundation registered with the state of Oregon as a nonprofit entity with a mission to develop yoga programs to serve both personal health and public health issues faced by so many in our community. We recognize that facing a period of medical vulnerability, illness, injury, post-operative rehabilitation, or progressive illness is a time when the practices of yoga become even more critical. Our public health issues, such as anxiety, depression, addiction, obesity, cardiovascular and heart diseases, and other culturally ubiquitous chronic illnesses,...
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posted Sep 6 2011
CARROT CAKE & YOGA
For our first assignment at the Rainbow Center, Ann and I would be helping a group of children make carrot cake. We went with Yasmin, our coordinator, to the market to purchase what was needed. The market, like many in countries around the world, was housed in a large cement building with enough shade and good building techniques to keep it cool inside. However, it’s not cool enough to keep the smell of raw meat to its sterile, plastic wrapped version in American grocery stores. The smell, combined with the display of the whole carcass and slabs of large chunks of meat, gave me great pause about going on as an omnivore. (I was a vegetarian for 20 years; and the decision to change that required tremendous consideration....
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posted Sep 6 2011
RIVER RAFTING
Today we went river rafting through the sacred valley. We were completely geared up and ready to go with expert instruction from Dullio. This was my first river rafting expedition and I found myself with an almost constant smile. I enjoyed the water, the canyon, the splashes of waves in our faces, and the teamwork we were required to master as Dullio shouted commands from the back of the raft.
Throughout our time in Peru we’ve been hearing about some of the traditions of the Andean people. One of those is an honoring of the elements. We’ve walked the earth, high and low; felt the heat of the sun and the heat of ritual fire; and today, we communed with water.
Rafting, like yoga, requires us to acknowledge...
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posted Sep 6 2011
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Today we visited the Rainbow Center, a school for special needs children. Yasmin, our hostess, gave us a tour of the buildings, garden, life skills learning center and playground. The children who come here have an array of disabilities from cerebral palsy to Down’s Syndrome to autism to being deaf and mute (or being mute because your older brother is deaf and mute and you don’t have parents at home) to being wheel chair bound but otherwise mentally alert and engaging.
The Rainbow Center was started by a young woman of 23 yrs old from the United Kingdom during a visit she made to Peru in which she realized the overwhelming need for children with special needs. Just this one fact alone is enough to stir your...
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posted Sep 6 2011
WEAVERS
Today we visited the local village of Chinchero, where a family of weavers welcomed us into their home studio. We were given a full demonstration of how alpaca wool becomes an elegantly colored, intricately patterned blanket, table runner, or scarf. We watched yucca root become soap for washing alpaca wool until it is clean and soft. Tiny bugs were crushed in the palm of a weavers hand, the blood becoming red dye. Salt added to the boiling water turned the deep red yarn to an orange-rust color.
Following the dying demonstration, we watched how they weave into fabric using a home-made loom attached either to a post in the middle of the courtyard or to the foot of a weaver. The patterns are created in their minds well before...
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posted Sep 6 2011
SAVASANA
Yesterday morning we had another exquisite yoga session. As the teacher, I find myself quite struck by the depth of our surrender, quiet and stillness in savasana. It’s powerful, how we drop in here. Perhaps it’s the timelessness of the mountains around us. Or the work the Andean Shamans did with us that was, while in a verbal language we didn’t understand, viscerally permeable. Or possibly it’s that most electronic devices that occupy us at home, such as cell phones, don’t work here.
Savasana is the pose in which we practice dying. Translated as Corpse pose, it is a rehearsal of sorts, for our inevitable departure from this world. To internalize this while practicing here in the sacred valley of so much potent...
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posted Aug 24 2011
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posted Aug 22 2011
THE AROMA OF TRAVEL
Inevitably with travel such as this, one encounters a certain amount of dirt, sweat, and olfactory adventures. Currently, if you were a wine taster, you would describe my ‘bouquet’ as smoky with wisps of eucalyptus, hints of incense, undertones of ritual fire, mingled with vanilla and sweat. Fortunately, the vanilla is the only unnatural ingredient!
A short walk to the village this morning replaced one item taken by the TSA: body lotion, with vanilla. Last night’s ritual fire, led by the Andean Shaman, lingers on my clothing, while my clean laundry blows in the vigorous winds of the afternoon, raising the smoke of the neighbor’s burning project like incense gone wild. Eucalyptus trees line the dirt road...
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posted Aug 22 2011
Walking out of the dining room satisfied on chicken, vegetables, rice, and chocolate cake, the immense darkness of the night sky calls one to halt footsteps, thought, the concept of time, even the familiar of hum of self-absorbed human desire. In that halt, Yoga overcomes. Yoga: translated as presence, grace, and unity with the infinite surround of God.
We’re in Pisaq surrounded by giants, the mountains, and gently nestled in the valley at Paz Y Luz. We hear the silence of these great mountains under the vaulted and impressively dark night sky, though just down the dirt road the local village hums with the night life of motorcycles, children playing, dogs running, and carts of street food such as papas fritas.
The path of...
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posted May 23 2011
A Wide Open Sky awaits us every moment. At least with the "sky" of our heart... (I've lived through the winter here in Portland, and I know that wasn't a wide open sky of luminous sunshine!)...
There are many ways to come back to this Wide Open Sky. For me, it's in moments of mindfulness, awe, genuine connection with nature, others or myself, deep gratitude, and the wistfulness of the air against my skin, to name a few. Perhaps most profoundly, it's in remembering that this vast sky exists.
Love is our nature, through and through.
It may be clouded over many times, by seen and unseen, known and unknown forces in ourselves. But like the vast cosmos through which our planet travels, this Wide Open Sky survives our personal...
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