Happy Happy, Empty Empty

Jack Kornfield tells the story of a monk from Asia visiting the United States who spoke only two words of English.  

Everywhere he went throughout the United States he’d bow, smile and say, “Empty Empty Happy Happy.”  

I remembered those words when I was on the Cape recently. There’s nothing quite like heading way, way out on my board until the coastline is barely visible, stopping dead still and feeling the vastness of it all.  

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

A Drone at Home

Two great friends showed up today … with a quadcopter!  

I’d never seen one up close. Amazing, kind of scary technology. You monitor the camera from an iPad, direct it where you want and shoot both stills and video.  

I couldn’t resist and edited the footage(which is captured in 1080p, by the way). You’ll see the Potomac River and for just a few moments, about three miles down to Great Falls where the Potomac River drops eighty feet in a quarter mile.  

Thanks, Peter!  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Super Moon

The Super Moon means super tides. Here on Cape Cod, that means we were able to wander about a quarter mile out into the bay.  

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Perfect Haze

Because I am often down by the river each morning to welcome the sun, I am treated to quite a few mundane sunrises - as well as a few spectacular ones.  

This morning the perfect amount of haze formed to create a perfect neutral density filter to allow me to capture the rising sun and not overwhelm the camera's sensor.  

Geek facts: Canon 60D Canon EF 70-200 L with 1.4x adapter ISO 200 f5 1/400 on tripod  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Lone Egret this Morning

I found this solitary egret purveying the landscape.  

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Protein on the Potomac

These are swarms of bugs on the Potomac River highlighted by the rising sun behind them. Mist is burning off the water in the morning light.  

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Herons in the Morning

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Teaching Pranayama and Meditation at Kripalu Center

I’m in deep immersion here at Kripalu Center in Western Massachussets.  Nine solid days.   This is the “Teaching Pranayama and Meditation" module for yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour professional certification.   

We start at 6:15 and go till 9:00PM most nights.  The “Kripalu approach” is to teach from the inside so we do intensive practices, particularly for the first half of the retreat before we move into practice teach.  Each day, we do hours of yoga practice, intense breathing practices (pranayama) as well as a variety of core meditation techniques.   

Two things make this training extraordinary. One is the power of community - skilled and dedicated practitioners who are really on for transformation.  Another is this amazing setting.     

The Berkshires were the playground of the ultra wealthy.  The Kripalu property, in fact, was the site of the largest private residence in North America.  For about a year, that is, until a neighbor built their summer home the next year, just a wee bit bigger.   

The aftermath of this wealth is an area dedicated to culture and a nature.  Half the county is preserved land. This is the home of Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony.  You’ll also find the Shakespeare and Company, Jacob’s Pillow and a host of alternative communities.   

Of all this, though, I  think I like the middle of the lake best.  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Seasons and Change

I've had this trip with friends to the Rockies planned for months, am happy I can be here, but it's an adjustment.  

I came from the swamps of northern Virginia to 11,500 feet of dry Rocky Mountain air.  

The contrasts are delicious.  

 

A few days ago Tara and I were lounging in a kayak in the sun soaking in the summer heat. Yesterday we were hiking in a snow squall, sliding off the hard-packed snow into melting snowbanks.  

Last week I started setting up for the hummingbirds. This morning it was 23 degrees and I'm wearing everything I packed.  

Today we'll again hike up on the pass, wearing down coats, hats and gloves. I'll be back in the steamy woods of the mid-Atlantic shortly, most probably trying to remember the feeling of biting wind and lashing snow against my face.  

Robert Frost said he could summarize life in two words: "It changes."
 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

The Art of Mindful Photography

I often find myself acting out a similar pattern: as soon as I see an especially poignant scene, I reach for my iPhone to capture it.  

Photos can be a wonderful way of sharing meaningful experiences with others, but I worry that my attempts to document the moment make being present in it a challenge. Does photography support awareness of my immediate experience, or detract from it?  

I thought immediately of my friend and teacher Jonathan Foust, a world-renowned meditation instructor and the former president of North America’s largest yoga center, Kripalu. A few decades ago, before his career as a meditation and yoga teacher, Jonathan worked as a freelance photographer for the Rockford Register Star in Illinois.  

Who better to address the question of mindfulness when it comes to photography? Here’s what I learned from Jonathan’s unique perspective on the relationship between two of the great passions of his life.  

  Awareness of Seeing and Attitudes of the Mind

For Jonathan, the most obvious way that photography encourages mindfulness is by heightening our awareness of seeing.  

National Geographic photographer Jim Brandenberg has been an inspiration for Jonathan ever since Brandenberg experimenting with the idea of taking only one photo a day for 90 days. When a world-class photographer who is used to snapping thousands of shots a day limits himself in that way, you can imagine how mindful comes into play.  

About four years ago, Jonathan took his Canon G12 with him on a month-long retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center with the intention of imitating the experiment–with a slight amendment; he would allow himself to take three photos a day.  

And though Jonathan’s hope was to bring more consciousness to how he sees things, he found that the practice also offered powerful insight into the habits of his mind.  

“I’d look out over a beautiful sunset and my mind would say, Nah, I got a better one yesterday. Or I would take a shot from a far distance of someone doing qigong with the fog behind them and think, Damn it, if they were only 20 feet higher on that hill they’d be better silhouetted,” he said. ”[I’d] just be noticing–noticing the aversion, noticing the clinging, noticing the judgment.”  

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE FROM JARED GOTTLIEB and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. Also, the link is: http://intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/06/mindful-photography-jonathan-foust/  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Spring on the Potomac

I live on a big, wild river and every spring I feel a certain tension.  

Waterfowl lay their eggs and the spring rains wash them away.  

This year a number of families got wiped out as we had the biggest floods in about three years.  

This merganser family made it. The image is rather dull as this was shot before sunrise but what I love about this image in particular is the little merganser catching a ride on it's mother’s back.  

The shot looks a little bit like the Loch Ness monster, but I assure you it’s made up of of six very intimate and interconnected birds.  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Snow Day

Monday Night class in Arlington is cancelled.  In the meantime, you might relate to this.

This is as far as I could coax the little girl dog out the door this morning.

  iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

Breathe, Relax and Pay Attention

Being around like-minded, inspiring people is the best game in town.

I am back after nine-days teaching with co-director Larissa Carlson at Kripalu Center with a collection of inspired yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour certification.

The title of our training is "Exploring the Energy Body: Teaching Pranayama and Meditation."

Imagine nine days, each starting with depth practices at 6:15 and full days with talks, practices, practice-teach sessions and a three-day intensive in silence.

The "Kripalu" approach to teaching is to guide from direct experience and knowledge. To that end, we took a deep dive.

Through a fair bit of churning and burning, the result was a lot of lit up hearts and minds and a lot of fortunate students out there to have passionate teachers in their community.

Teaching at Kripalu I like to say is like playing the violin with the London philharmonic behind you.  I joke that I stopped in for lunch and stayed for 24 years.  It's an amazing place with dedicated staff in a beautiful setting.
  iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

Red Tailed Hawk

With the Great Lakes frozen over, the bird scene here is outrageous.
  iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

No Paddleboarding Today

A pre-sunrise walk revealed poor paddleboard conditions. The river was eerily quiet as there is very little open water.

Last week hundreds of birds were clumped together and this morning just one lone goose ...

  iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

Limited Resources

With these days upon days of sustained freezing temperatures, there is less and less open water on the river. It's quite stunning to see such a wide variety of birds all clumped together in the open areas.

The above is an early morning shot of one open area at first light. 16 degrees. My camera started freezing up, along with my toes.

  iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

What I Learned on my Ten-Day Retreat

I'm just back from 10 days of unstructured silence at the Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts.

Tara and I stopped in to visit my father in his Alzheimers unit on our way up. As I shared in my talk, I am getting more comfortable there with each visit. People sit in rooms together in silence and those who can walk, walk very slowly from place to place. There is a camaraderie in the silence, though everyone seems to live in their own inner world.

Once we arrived at this center dedicated to supporting people on long-term retreats, I could not help but notice:

• People sit in rooms together in silence
• Those who can walk, walk very slowly from place to place
• There is a camaraderie in the silence though everyone seems to live in their own inner world

Yikes!

I won't go into detail here, but a retreat like this is always deeply transformative.

If you'd like to hear more, you might listen to my talk from Monday night in Arlington.  In it I share about the specific practices I used and some of the trials and insights that arose.

Here's the blurb:  

This talk is fresh from my return from a ten-day silent unstructured retreat at the Forest Refuge in central Massachussets.

We'll explore some specific practices I found helpful for developing concentration as well as how to look deeply into the the Three Characteristics of Reality. Along with techniques for arriving, we'll talk about strategies for riding the ever-changing waves and fluctuations of sensations, feelings, moods and mind states.

iTunes podcast here, online streaming here, stitcher here.

Your Issues are in Your Tissues

A recent article in the Atlantic explores a study as to where people 'feel' emotions.  Not surprisingly there is strong universal correlation between an emotion and a location 'inside.'

This is the essence of Body-Centered Inquiry and Focusing.   You learn to move from 'the story' to where it lives on the inside.

Hanging out in the realm of thought and beliefs has a certain degree of effectiveness, but there is substantial evidence that addressing issues on the primary level of the 'felt sense' can be quite direct and transformational.

I'm excited my 6-CD training, Body-Centered Inquiry, will be out in April.  I'm endlessly fascinated by this training of shifting form the cognitive to the direct experience of here and now.  When we can do that, new possibilities open up.

Winter Boarding

In the 60s. Impossible to resist getting out on the river.

One thing I appreciate about being out in the middle of Potomac in the winter is how much vibrant birdlife there is and how much the different flocks relate to each other. They are also incredibly restless and not at all comfortable with the sight of a human being standing up and paddling a plank of plastic.

Paddling into the sunrise with mottled clouds overhead, I could not see into the water and the skeg got caught on a rock, lurching me forward a few steps and almost tossing me into the soup.

Really cold soup.
  iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

Morning Light

iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.