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MINDFUL SOUL CENTER FEBRUARY | MARCH 2020
bi-monthly magazine https://themindfulsoulcenter.com
THE YOGA DIARIES
MEDITATION MINUTE
HEART Y O U R
H E A R T
C H A K R A
YOGA AT YOUR DESK OPEN YOUR HEART
SELF-CARE CORNER
RECIPES FOOD DELICIOUSNESS HEART OPENING MEDITATION &
MINDSET MATTERS
FEATURES CONTRIBUTORS in alphabetical order
Christine Boyd Miller, PhD Christine is a California mountain mama transplanted from the East coast. In The Yoga Diaries
she explores the obstacles & challenges she faces as
she learns new yoga poses, explores new ideas and attempts to maintain a regular practice. Needless to say that
The Yoga Diaries
she shares the benefits & joys too!
When she's not writing or practicing yoga, she spends her time frolicking in the redwoods with her son,
hula hooping, cooking, and helping her husband
tend to their garden and bees.
Charity Collier, MA, CADII Charity is a meditation expert coach, teacher and drug addiction counselor. In her column, Meditation Minute she teaches us the nuts and bolts of mindfulness meditation. She holds a Master's degree of Mindfulness
Meditation Minute
well
as
a
Exercise
Studies
certificate Physiology
from in
Lesley
University
Substance
both
from
Abuse
the
U
in
Cambridge,
Counseling
Mass,
and
Boston.
MA a
She
BS
as in
offers
meditation coaching through her company Meditating Together.
Megan Nolan Megan is
a
personal
trainer
and
yoga
instructor
with
over
14
years
of
experience. She has worked with hundreds of clients and students who have experienced the aches, pains, and challenges of having to spend long hours at their desks. As an entrepreneur and
writer herself she spends pend a lot
of time working on the computer. She has come up with a plan to combat these
difficulties
and
teach
us
that
Movement
is
Vital
with
each
issue
teaching us how to deal with our life at a desk. She runs Vitality Wellness Maui and created the Yoga At My Desk program.
Movement is Vital
Deja Osbourne Deja is an artist, an oracle deck creator and owner of DejaDrewit. Born in Russia and raised in NY, she now lives in California. As a young girl, Deja experienced bullying and as a result developed social anxiety. Drawing was
Deja's Self-Care Corner
her escape. As she healed she knew that she wanted to inspire and help people through her art but wasn't quite sure how. From 2005 until 2013, she worked as a graphic artist and designer in the fashion industry. She left to raise a new baby and discovered a way to use her art to help others and started to create oracle decks. Check out her Self-Care Corner.
Brooklyn Storme, PhD Brooklyn is an alignment strategist who teaches entrepreneurs and private practice owners how to shift their mindset in order to create positive change in their business. The winner of the 2019 Health Practitioner of the Year Award in her region, her practice interests including anxiety, depression and relationships. She lives in Melbourne Australia in the seaside town of Hastings. She has worked in the area of the mind and human behavior for over 20 years. She writes the Mindset Matters column.
Mindset Matters
CONTENTS
FEB/MAR 2020
Volume 1 Issue 3 ,
05
18
06
22
DEJA'S SELF CARE CORNER
08 09
THE YOGA DIARIES
20 00 65
[the fish pose]
MATSYASANA
The Legend The Art The Symbolism How To Do It Benefits of It
'
Why We Need to Open Our Hearts
Getting Help Suicide Hotlines
43
27
32
THE HEART CHAKRA
MINDSET MATTERS
Change your mindset, change DEJA'S 56 your life SELF-CARE CORNER 55
Editor s Letter Contributors Calendar Goal Tracker Sheets Fundraising Effort for Dogs Inspiration 16, 26, 31, 42, 57 Buy the Magazine
46 Anahata Charka [Heart] 47 Chakra Basics 48 Balancing the Heart Chakra 52 What is a Chakra?
41
MEDITATION MINUTE
24
Quick Starter Guide to Begin a Meditation Practice
OPEN YOUR HEART MEDITATION
28
[listen]
RECIPES & FOOD DELICIOUS NESS
58
POEM
An excerpt from The Prophet on Love by Kahlil Gibran
14
66 TMSC
REcOMMENDS
62 RECORD YOUR MESSAGE
PODCAST 63 Interviews & Minisodes
The Yoga Diaries by Chris tine Boy d Miller , PhD
a m u a r t & f e i r g h g u o r h t h t r o w g n i find
sisters Ellen & Christine Trigger Warning
Caution: This article deals with the topic of suicide.
finding worth through grief and trauma My sister Ellen died by suicide two months ago. She drove into an oak tree at 90 miles an hour. Her death was instant but she had struggled desperately her whole life from abuse, trauma, and mental illness. Her condition was degenerative and promised to eat away at her through a slow and increasingly painful existence. Even though the threat of her young death by suicide or some tragic accident loomed over us for years, her sudden exit from this world split through me like lightning. Ellen was my very best friend, my big sister by only a year. Our entire lives we’ve known every detail of each other, kept each other’s innermost secrets. I mean the really horrid stuff, the stuff you don’t tell anybody ever. We knew all that stuff about each other. We didn’t judge; we’d been through hell together. We loved each other unconditionally and wholly. We were mutually closer to each other than to anyone else in the world. Her death utterly broke me. The autopsy report states the cause of death to have been internal decapitation. That’s when the spinal column separates from the skull base resulting in immediate death. Striking a tree at 90mph will do that. “Internal decapitation” – her death and all the horror that preceded it summed up in two words. These eight syllables, in-ter-nal de-cap-i-tation, in-ter-nal de-cap-i-ta-tion, repeat in my head over and over and over again, trapped there like a bad monotonous song lyric. It took me a month to get to a yoga class after Ellen died, my body weak from grief and self-neglect. I cried through the whole class and went through the motions but my heart and mind weren’t in it. Or maybe they were and my body wasn’t. Maybe that was the problem. My mind and heart sat with my present grief while my body moved on invisible puppet strings in some other dimension. During silent Shavasana, a screaming train of painful thoughts hurtled through my mind. All I could think about was my beautiful, sweet sister and her life of pain; fighting visions of her barreling into a tree seeing no other options, the crash photos and visit to the tree still so fresh in my mind. I sobbed the whole way through Shavasana. By the end, I felt emotionally spent. It took a couple of days to recover mentally from that class. It was heavy.
Shavasana (Sanskrit: शवासन; IAST: śavāsana), Corpse Pose, or Mrtasana, is an asana in hatha yoga that is often practiced at the end of a session. It is the usual pose for the practice of yoga nidra meditation. Yoga nidra is a meditative state in which the body is completely relaxed, and the practitioner becomes systematically and increasingly aware of the inner world by following a set of verbal instructions.
Open Your Heart: Matsyasana aka Fish Pose & The Legends of Matsya
With names like Camel or Frog or Tree or Fish, yoga poses often relate to other beings and stories too. As we practice, we can transform into these beings in our imaginations. For instance when I practice tree pose with my foot firmly against my thigh and my arms raised, even when I'm unstable - swaying - I become the tree. Now I haven't practiced fish pose in the water yet but would like to to see if I can fully embody the primal being that we once were as a fish and maybe with time without water.
I already feel like a fish when I swim or at least my idea of what it's like to be one. Immersed in water, floating, gliding, moving and buoyant I feel vibrant and alive. It feels fundamental - essential and basic - stirring in me -Â feelings of comfort and fluidity. Maybe my ancestral brain kicks in since after all, we did evolve from fish. Maybe that is why I really love this pose? But I don't like all the heart-opening poses. In fact, some of them make me very uncomfortable. Feeling vulnerable and exposed isn't always fun.
In this piece we're not just going to look at a pose and talk about it here, we're going to dig a bit deeper and look at its origins, the mythology behind it, some beautiful historic artwork related to it, the evolution of vertebrates and whatever other rabbit holes that I jump into on the topic as we open our hearts and explore the pose called Matsyasana. So let's dive in :-)
Matsyasana & The Legends of Matsya The Characters
Vishnu'
Vishnu is one of the most important gods in Hinduism. Vishnu along with Brahma and Shiva form the principal trinity known in Hinduism. According to various texts, he took many forms or embodied many avatars throughout the ages. Some say 10, some say 21 and some say that they are too numerous to count. Ten seems to be the number generally associated with Vishnu. However many times he incarnates on Earth, each time Vishnu must descend to Earth and save and/or recover ancient knowledge or resolve some problem on Earth.
Shiva (holding the trident), Vishnu and Brahma (4 heads)
Vishnu's first avatar Matsya
Manu
In this story often associated with his first incarnation or first form, he becomes the avatar Matsya. Matsya ऎ य is the Sanskrit word for fish. This story along with other variations appear in several text ranging including a section in the Yajur Veda; Shatapatha Brahmana, Book 3, the Vana Parva, in the epic Mahabharata and in at least three Puranas if not more where the names of the characters, the details, the plot and the message diverge. The legends associated with Matsya vary in each text and they don’t always equate Matsya with Vishnu. Even the demon is called by different names in some cases as Hayagriva or Shankhasura. Manu is also known as the first man and ancestor of two mythical royal dynasties - solar or son-based, and lunar or daughter-based dynasties. He is the ancestral father of the human.
Manu's boat being towed to the top of the Himalayan mountains and Matsya has slain the demon
The Story
The story begins with Manu a King and legislator. A container of water is brought to him and in that water is a small fish. The fish asks Manu to protect him since he fears being swallowed up by larger fish. In exchange for protection, the fish in exchange, promises to save Manu from an impending flood that will destroy all life on Earth. Manu accepts and keeps the fish safeguarded from other fish. The fish continues to grow to an enormous size as he is safeguarded. Once he is free from danger he is returned to the ocean. The fish instructs Manu to build a boat by a specific date. The flood comes and the fish carries the boat with Manu to the high grounds of the northern mountains, the Himalayas. Matsya saves Manu, ancient knowledge and earthly existence. In one version, the fish reveals himself as Lord Vishnu and gives the power of creation to Manu. But the flood is only one part of the story. In this story Matsya must also save and restore ancient knowledge by slaying the demon Hayagriva or Shankhasura since the sacred texts had been stolen from heaven buried beneath the primordial sea by the demon. Later, Vishnu emerges from a fish to tear open the demon’s stomach. From the demon’s stomach four crowned figures are released. Each figure holds one of the Vedas.
Open your heart: The Heart Chakra I'm going to go out on limb here and say that we all want to be loved and be more loving. Sometimes we get stuck. We give too much. We don't receive enough. We give our hearts away, we lose ourselves all in the name of love. We don't have to when we work towards balancing our heart energies. We can open to receive and give love more freely when our heart chakra is in balance. Your heart chakra, our heart chakras are part of our energy bodies. But before we look more deeply into the heart chakra, it occured to me that some readers may not be aware of the chakra system. So in case you don't know about chakras yet, I'll start there.
What is a chakra? Simply stated a chakra is a wheel of energy. As part of an energy system chakras are wheels of light that absorb and transmit cosmic energy in and out of the body. This energy or life force is known as chi, prana, life force, etc. If you've heard of them before then you'll probably know that there are seven primary chakras. The primary chakras run from the base of your spine through the top of your head. The seven primary "chakras correspond to specific endocrine glands with almost identical functions and descriptions (e.g. the thyroid corresponding to the throat chakra.)" All in all, there are 114 chakras in this energy system. They spin smoothly when in balance. When energy gets stuck it can create an imbalance in our mental and physical bodies. Now to the heart of the matter.
Open Your Heart: Anahata Chakra Symbolism & Attributes All of the chakras are represented symbolically as lotus flowers. The symbol for the heart chakra is depicted as a twelve petaled lotus with each petal representing an attribute that we can place our focus. These include; joy, peace, kindness, presence, love, harmony, clarity, compassion, purity, understanding, forgiveness and bliss.
Within the symbol is the two-dimensional representation of the Star of David, a six-pointed star or hexagram which connects two-dimensions. As a three-dimensional representation, it is two tetrahedrons that spin in opposite directions creating a three-dimensional energy field that expands in four directions. This is also known as the Merkaba which literally means light [mer] spirit [ka], body [ba]. Below the heart chakra is the solar plexus chakra or Manipura which is the uppermost chakra that represents our connection to the physical planes of existence. The three chakras above the heart are connected to the 'spiritual' planes. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the Merkaba unites both within the heart. The Merkaba consists as two-star tetrahedrons - one pointing up to the heavens, channels energy down from the cosmos to the earth plane, and one pointing downwards, draws energy up from the earth beneath. The upwardpointing tetrahedron is male rotating clockwise, with the one pointing below representing female energy and rotates counterclockwise.