Nya Patrinos

p.48
“the path of healing is a process of opening our heart to the holdings of the past while maintaining a keen awarenss of the present.  It is acoming home, a return to the living moment.  But becayse there is so much more to us than just bid/body, because our original nature is without boundary, its edgelessness cannot be describnved. It can only be participiated in.”


p. 28
“We saw so many bodies reestablished a certain degree of wellness. We saw so many as they cleared their heart and resolved loose ends, discover a feeling of being “more alive than ever” sometimes with a considerable diminshment of pain and symptoms. Though their body did not reflect this extra wellness something had healed so deeply into life that death was no longer a problem.”


p.33
There is the story of the chiropractor who goes to the spiritual teacher and asks how to rid his body of cancer and the teacher says “Just love yourself.”

Tomas Merton “True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossivle and the heart has turned to stone.”



p.71

“In taking the path of healing that leads to the heart, previous conflicts are seen as rich and fertile ground for insight into that which causes suffering and that which allows us to go beyond siffering.  Our investigation of the mind, of those qualities that block the heart, become a deeper deconditioning of old holding, a demagnetizing of our incessant and mechanical identification with all that passes through the mind/body In watching the mind we see who we aren’t and enter the new territory of the heart. For it is in the heart that, with a deep sign, conflict comes to peace and the illnesses and pains of a lifetime may be dispersed in the soft receptiveness of unlimited being.”

“Crossing the bridges, having gone beyond the blockages and armoring, the self-hatred and judgement whch have for so long delayed our final healing, we sink into the heart, and the question of “Life or death?” disappears .  All is experienced as life, including death. All dualities are seen as just, overdefinied points in a spiraling process."



P,77
“In ancient Chinese calligraphy, the symbol for the mind and the symbol for the heart are the same: hsin.  For when the mind is clouded only the heart is experienced, just as when the heart is exposed there are no obstacles to the mind. The heart and mind only seem separate to the mind.  To the heart all things are one.”


p.79
“In sending love to ourselves we send love to all. In sending healing we are healed. In letting go of that which blocks the heart, the confusions and old encrustations of the mind, we open into the heart of the world.  As the sensations and thoughts and feelings that often surround illness become more audible, something within begins to melt in mercy for the pain we cause ourselves and the ways in which we have held so assiduously to our suffering. As the armoring mels, we experience our vastness, and the heart expands to fill the whole body with a sense of balance and wellness.”


p.109
“By making room in our heart for the lesser holdings, we cultivate the strength and presence for the greater.”


p.113
“When the mind sinks into the heart, we no longer feel so separate but recognize how connected we have always been and always will be.”


p.205
Taos Pueblo Shamans concept of “All Same” is when heart and mind our seen as one

When I teach my therapeutic class I feel guilty sometimes about taking the time away from the yoga asana in the beginning of class to do the body scan.  When I teach yoga nidra I completely believe in the body scan and I enjoy doing it and I know it is the most important part of the process.

I wonder what makes me embrace the body scan in Yoga Nidra but shy away from it as a beginning of the therapeutic class?   At Ananda/Expanding Light they do the energization exercises as taught by Paramhansa Yogananda which I feel are an elaborate body scan - joint freeing series combo and I didn't really like them. But at Kripalu I really enjoyed the body scans that Joseph lead.  I guess I need to practice them more and believe in them more as an opening to class.  I feel really comfortable closing with them but not opening,

In therapeutic individual session I feel comfortable opening with the body awareness exercises.  I have to explore what's the difference mentally for me.


Nischala Devi spoke to us about a woman observing a tension in her breast during a body scan that lead her to the doctor where he found cancer.

In the book on p.44 there is the Story of the Vietnam Vet with the leg injuries.  “I was closed down for so long, so afraid to feel, that I guess it took all that pain to get my attention.”

I am intrigued by the idea of on p.122 Softening the belly and
Sending Merciful Awareness and Loving Kindness into the illness – We are not just a body



Here some quotes about Softening the belly
p. 177
“And so most of us need to learn to open the body to healing. And each of us is given the perfect receptor of that openness. Keeping a soft belly is the primary foundation for opening to this level of being. For it is in the belly that we have so long attempted to control the world.”

“Perhaps the worst advice one can be given is to tighten the belly, to appear flat-stomached.  The belly is our center of control and holds much tension… The belly should be allowed its deepest breathing, its greatest sigh.”

p. 178
“But in the soft belly lies the possibility of new mind creating a new boy.”


p. 179
“The softness of the belly is a good indicator if our openness to the moment. When we are at peache, the belly is soft and open.  When we are not, it is tense and held. In the soft belly even the subtlest obstruction to the heart may be noticed. In letting go into soft belly-we open the body and loosen our grasp on the mind to expose the heart of essential healing.”


It also makes sense to me on page 133 that many sexual abused women felt their body’s were unsafe place to be“I’d like an in-the-body experience for a change. I’d like to trust life enough to be avle to stay in my body, to not always be on guard, to not always tense as if someone were going to jump out of a dark hallway and do me injury.” I believe the body scan really brings us back into the body.

I had not heard the body scan before referred to as Sweeping the body but I like that term.


p.182
“In the course of this meditation, one may discover unknown pains and joys-areas of tension as well as areas of high receptivity and openness… It may take anywhere from a half and hour to an hour to scan the body adequately.”

So I will continue to use the body scan and try to practice it on myself more.

I have been that woman.  I feel like I missed all of my 30s working so hard. I don't really remember much about them: getting married, my father dying, a few long trips my husband and I took everything else is a blur.  I have missed a lot.

I realized in the book we are all suffering, feeling pain, feeling pain, experiencing joy, dying and being reborn,  I like the idea of Life and Death being just this much.  I had a client the other day who had a many many physical and emotional problems.  So many and he physically was deformed and I thought what can I do for him.  Maybe I can do a body scan, a little breath work, joint freeing series. And now I can do "Just this Much" or maybe I can just listen. It's all valid.  My conscious mind wanted to come out with elaborate routines and prescriptions by the superconscious will what to see what God-dess has to say and do the little things,


These quotes spoke to me

p.29
“This work of opening to ourselves is taken a step at a time.  It is begun with a heartful openness and investigative awareness which gently explores the physical/mental pains and holdings which become so noticeable around illness. It is an ongoing process of meeting our fear with forgiveness and healing awareness, meeting our doubt with a new confidence which develops in each unknown step as the ground comes up to meet and support our progress.”

p.35
“Healing, like grace, always takes us toward our true nature. Indeed healing is not somewhere we are going but a discovery of where we already are-a participation in the process unfolding moment to moment.”

p.54
“Nothing has to be different for us to be whole. It is not  a mtter of change as much as merciful acceptance. We don’t even have to be less angry or less frightened or less doubtful. We  don’t have to be more loving or more compassionate, or more wise.  To be whole is just to take ourselves within wholeheartedly to meet even our lovelessness, our mercilessness with a deeper “Ahhhhhhhhhh”

I am very interesting in the topic of APPEARING WELL VS. BEING WELL and also the converse
APPEARING SICK vs BEING SICK

p.103
“One fellow with terminal cancer noticed that in trying to heal himself he learned to appear well but never how to be well. He said he had been pretending his whole life that he wasn’t sick. He spoke of notiing an ache in his chest just over the heart, which was becoming more intense as he worked with the grief meditation and he exploration of his stomach tumor. One day, when the pain in his heart was particularly apparent, he decided to address it directly. He spoke to it, asked how long it had been there. To his surprise the ace responded saying, “I have been here all your life.  But this is just the first time you ever noticed me.”


.p. 127
“Most importantly I have come to accept myself exactly as I am.  This is the greatest gift of all… Soon my body will drop away from me like a cocoon and my spirit will fly like a butterfly – beautiful and perfect.”

I am realizing that the healing is all on us, the one who needs/wants to be healed.  There can be companions on the path whatever their credential is but mainly I think we are responsible for our own Self-Realization.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
Of eternity. We are pain
And what cures pain, both. We are
The sweet, cold water, and the jar that pours.
- Rumi

p.272
“Ramakrishna, the great Indian saint, said there were two things that made God laugh: when a healer says, “I healed them” and when bickering lovers say, “We have nothing in common.”


This idea as the client and healer being the same is talked about in the book in the story of Loud Larry.  When the doctors asked him how on earth did he heal, he replied “I took the best medicine I could find. And I was the only physician who could prepare it. I took me, lock, stock and barrel."

I think we have to trust that we can heal ourselves not matter what it looks like.  I love these quotes from the book.

p.160
“When we let go of everything that blocks healing, only the healing remains, only our essential nature. We are all healers who need healing, but it seems so often to be a question of trust. Because letting go means letting be, and few trust what it is.”

p. 161
“We discover the healing which is always present when we aren’t identified solely with this body or mind or any separate aspect whatsoever with any model of who we should be or who we are or even what illness might be. Seeing illness as a teaching instead of a curse, we learn to let go of a lifetime’s denial of pain and confusion, to see the deeper illness, the sickness of separation from ourselves, the nausea and discomfort that leaks into the separation between the heart and the mind.”


p.245
“Healing is to press our nose against the lens of perception, to enter our life directly with our eyes and ears and body and mind wide open. Discovering the unimagined spaciousness and clarity in which all distortion floats and heals back into its original nature.”

The book also reminds us to beware of Healer’s Disease when working with others.

p. 149
“The need for someone else to be different as means of bargaining with their own sense of helplessness and unworthiness.”

“And no one is so sensitive to the difference between being touched with love and being touched with need as someone whose mind or body has been abused.”

p. 228
“Before one thinks of “doing good” one must seriously contemplate removing oneself from doing harm.”


Lastly, for me, I realize it's really important to have a daily practice of yoga and meditation and talk with god or goddess like a friend all the time.

p.212
“When practice is as light as the breath within the breath, there is a profound element of mercy which shines within a choiceless receptivity. It does not force change but simply allows it. Indeed it watches the tendency to force things, patiently, without alarm or condemnation.”

Don’t be a Buddhist, be a Buddha
Don’t be a Chirstian. Be Christ
Don’t be a Meditator, Mediate

p. 213
“Don’t leave your meditation on the meditation pillow.”

I am presently trying to develop a spiritual guidance and training program at The Yogi Tree and at the beginning of the week I was meeting with Joseph a pastor who will be part of the program and he said healing and curing are not the same thing.  I replied oh yes I have been reading about that for school.

I wished I had had this information when my father was dying of cancer.  I was so mad at the doctors for convincing to be part of these insane trials.  But I do remember before he became to sick he scanned many family photographs and made some peace with his brother. I realize he was healing the wounds of family.


p.3 “If healing was as it seemed, the harmonizing of the disquieted, a balancing of energies to bring about peace where before there had been war, then healing clearly was not limited to the body, or even the visible.” It includes the possibility of quieting even the deepest, unseen wounds-the discomforts which make death seem respite."



My father spent much of his child being passed from family member to family member. Even spent some years in an orphanage.  I know he was deeply wounded.  My mother thought he may have even been raped.



p.4
“healing as it seems (is) the integration of the mind and body into the heart. Healing is the growth that each person seeks. . . Healing is discovery. Healing occurs not in the tiny thoughts of who we think we are and what we known but in the vast undefinable spaciousness of being – of what we essentially are-not whom we imagined we shall become.”

He loved putting all the photographs together in files on the computer.  Maybe he was was revisiting his childhood, his family and making peace with it.


p.4
“Our work seems to be an encouragement to focus on the moment. To heal into the present and to allow the future to arise naturally out of that opening.  If the moment holds pain, awareness is bought to pain. If the moment holds grief, then grief is the focus. If the moment holds illness, then illness is the teaching to which awareness is directed.”

My father loved science so it was natural that he would do everything in sciences power to be cured.

p,5
“There seemed no bodily healing technique that worked for everyone, no one method held in common by all those who seemed healed.”

But, science in my opinion didn't have cures it had large tortures - itching, nausea, hiccuping, exhaustion, diarrhea, loss of appetite, etc.

He would have continued to do more cancer trials but he died.

I remember one of his last statements was

"way too much"

I thought he was referring to us fussing over him so much.  But now I am not sure if it was deeper than that.

p.6 “. . . our path becomes a letting go of that which blocks the path.”

When I went to take Nischala Joy Devi's Cancer Training - Yoga of the Heart this April was mainly because I knew I was in need of healing from the trauma of watching my father die.  I felt the hospital was too aggressive to violent with their treatments.  But now I realize it was my father's life and my father's death it was all up to him.


p.6 “healing is not forcing the sun to shine but letting go of the personal separatism, the self-images, the resistance to change the fear and anger, the confusion that form the opaque armoring around the heart. This process begins with the dissolution of the dense clouds of our forgetfulness and unkindness. It opens the way to reveal the ever-healed within.”

I was not always at peace with my father. I consider him a difficult man and very troubled and troublesome at times. But I did feel loved by him.  And I miss his very much.  I have no question about the integrity of his heart.


p.82
“His healing was no less than any of those we have seen who survive in the body. Though his cancer did not desist, his heart became as light as “the feather of truth.” Indeed, the ancient Egyptians beloved that after death the heart was placed on the scales of truth to be balanced against a feather to conclude if the life just passed was lived in healing or forgetfulness.”

For me healing would have been seeing people, meditating and doing yoga, making beautiful dinners, traveling, planting and tending a garden..  But for my father it of course looked different.


P, 162
“Among the first steps of healing is to let go of our definition of what we imagined healing might be.”

My father's cancer was a teaching for him and I teaching for me.  What I can do now is "Take the teaching."

I see myself as a yoga therapist helping others to find their own healing and helping myself to find mine.  My name means guide in Sanskrit, it doesn't mean teacher, guru, leader . . . I want to be a guide. . but to guide people back to their true self, intuition and inner nature.

p..167
“By breaking our addiction to automatic action, a desire of the superficial to be healed from outside itself, we enter into the direct participation in our healing from within.”

I finished reading the beautiful book Healing into Life and Death last week when I was up at Sivananda Ashram.


I felt like it was a spiritual practice just reading the book.  And I shouldn't write just because the book is extremely profound.  I found myself wanting read instead of going to kirtan.  But I didn't.  I find some evening times to read and it was beautiful.


I had read the journaling questions from IYT for my Yoga Therapy internship before I finished reading. This idea of listening as healing was something that was stressed a lot during the previous chapters writings on Siddhartha for IYT. But it didn't really hit me hard until I did the Spiritual Counseling Training at Ananda/Expanding Light.


Listening really did work.  When we did our practice counseling sessions I experienced the power of Listening and Being Listened to.  I also learned how the Conscious mind wants to always jump in and fix everything.  I learned to not try to bring in your own story that you feel relates. Just shut up and listen.

In the Healing into Life and Death Stephen Levine mentions a woman on page 10 who two types of people that come to her room. One had no room in their hearts for her pain because they had no room in their hearts for their own pain.  “there were others who could just come in and sit down with me. And if my pain was so intense or I was too fidgety that day and couldn’t even stand to be touched, they would just sit quietly next to me. They didn’t need to give me anything or to take anything away for themselves.  They didn’t need to take my pain away, and they didn’t make me feel that I needed to be different when I was in pain.  They had room for my pain because they had room for their own.”

I think a few months ago this would to be shocking to me.  I think of cousin Dolores who I thought was dying a couple years back and I rushed to be by her side and I didn't think that was enough. But now I think it was a good thing to do.

I remember in April sitting at the nursing home every day with my Mother-in-law and I think my heart was not open to her. Next time I will hold her in the light.


I was sad in angry much of my life about my brother's epilepsy


and cousin Davida's Sickle Cell Anemia.


Why them? Why not me.  I am holding a lot of guilt about that so it was helpful. My guilt has kept my distanced and separated.

p.46 Stephen Levine says “I can no longer second guess God as to the meaning, cause or effect of illness… I just trust “don’t know” to stay open to the process and how deeply we heal when we bring our attention to life and all it entails."

When I was doing spiritual counseling training and talking about my brother my counselor said everyone has to unravel the knots of their own Karma.  That was helpful to me.

Remembering once again about God at Expanding Light. Remembering that it is not all in my hands has been very healing too.

Chapter 1, pages 1.11-1.12 outline the role of Separation and Stress in Illness and Healing. Reflect on a time when you or someone you know well has been ill. How did separation and stress play a role in that illness?

"It is imperative to understand exactly what it is that we are healing as yoga therapists. Yoga therapy is not the treatment of specific conditions, but the healing of the separation, disconnection, and imbalance that result in physical imbalances."  Joseph la Page

I remember visiting my uncle Lucius in the hospital.  He had a triple by-pass but refused to give up smoking. He said that "all I have is cigarettes and Deep Space 9."  I will never forget him telling me that. It is one of the saddest things I have ever heard in my life.


The western medical system gave him his by pass but they could not heal his heart because his heart was suffering from a complete heart disease not just a physical one caused by smoking. And there was no bypassing this pain.  The pain needed healing not only bypassing.

"We must be aware of this in order to avoid falling into the allopathic medical model, which says “that for condition X, give treatment Y;” a model that is so ingrained at conscious and unconscious levels." Joseph la Page

I remember my uncle as a nervous angry man with a speech impediment, a stutter. He pronounced my sister's name Lois the same way he pronounced my mom's name.  My mom's name is Dolores and he called her Laures and I didn't understand that. Why couldn't I understand that. And when he used to come to our door asking for Laures I would tell him my sister was at college which made him more frustrated and angry. He, my mom and aunt had a family business they ran together which frustrated everyone involved. It was my grandmother's boarding house in the depths of the North Philadelphia ghetto.


He had 3 biological children and 3 adopted kids from his wife's first marriage.  His wife name was Betty and she big strong woman.  Very much like a black woman you would see in an 80s sitcom. She was kind of like Esther Rolle.



What was it about cigarettes and the TV show Deep Space 9 that made them the only thing that gave my uncle comfort?  A man with 6 kids and a loving wife?



Deep Space 9 was a revolutionary Star Trek for the African-American community because the captain was black. He was smart, well-spoken, powerful and respected.  Maybe those were things my uncle yearned for,

Lucius definitely felt separation from his family because he didn't not mention them as worth living for,

What was Lucius true nature.  Where was his bliss? his Ananda.  I can't believe that it could only be in smoking and watching TV.  There most have been more.  Dreams deferred... dreams forgotten.  I remember the Langston Hughes poem:

What happens to a dream deferred? 

      Does it dry up 
      like a raisin in the sun? 
      Or fester like a sore— 
      And then run? 
      Does it stink like rotten meat? 
      Or crust and sugar over— 
      like a syrupy sweet? 

      Maybe it just sags 
      like a heavy load. 

      Or does it explode?

A great source of Avidya for Lucius (as I am told) is the loss of his son Junior.  Junior died of sickle cell when he was 7 years old.  I don't think Lucius ever recovered from the loss.  His daughter Davida also had sickle cell.  Her whole life was spent going in and out of the hospital.  She was one year younger than me.

I don't remember what Lucius' relationship to God was.  My mother's family were devout Baptists and I assume Lucius was a Baptist too.  But he didn't mention God that day in the hospital room.  He didn't curse him or praise him. He didn't say soon he would join him.  God didn't make that list with cigarettes and Deep Space 9.

I remember his prana being so low in that room.  His spirit was broken his will to live was gone. He had seen too much,  My aunt Frances sometimes would tell stories of how his mother used to beat him and call him a dummy.  But Lucius was a success in my eyes. He was a garbage collector with a pension, healthcare and a good salary. He was a property owner with a few rental properties.  He raised children.  He married a lovely woman.  He raised her children.  Why was it not enough?  Why did none of that seem to count - at least that day in the hospital? Or did the weight of the loss of Junior mean much more than the five children who were alive.

“We do not have control 
over many things
in life and death
but we do have control
over the meaning we give it.” 
― Nathalie Himmelrich, Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple

I don't know if yoga therapy could have helped Lucius.  Would he have been able to see himself as not separate as not a lone.  Could he have come to terms with all his devastating losses but still embrace life? Is it already too much just being a black man in America and then lose your only biological son and watch your daughter go in and out of the hospital waiting to lose her too?

I am reminded by the poem by Maya Angelou


You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
....

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
....

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
....

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I ri
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

I wish the story ended with that hope. Lucius did not rise. In fact he was lowered into the family cemetery, He died soon after I saw him.  Betty died too and so did Davida.  The other children stopped talking to each other because they began to feud over who had the rights to over Lucius's properties.  I am sad as write about and rehash the story of my uncle Lucius.  And yet I do believe Yoga Therapy could have helped.

"When we are connected to the true Self, the channels of prana are clear and open. When Self-knowledge is absent, prana becomes blocked or insufficient and illness results. As these energy blocks are released, the natural healing qualities, which are one aspect of the body’s intelligence, begin to function optimally and balance is restored." Joseph la Page

When I see my uncle Lucius in my mind's eye I almost see my mother's face. My uncle who with the love of Deep Space 9, a  world where a benevolent intelligent black man was in charge. This love tells me Lucius was still desiring transformation even in the end. But somehow nobody could help him see it for himself.