Seeking Lord Shiva in the Cremation Grounds

Shiva lives in the cremation grounds surrounded by the gunas, his army of goblins. They frighten away any not heroic enough to approach him. So it's a great metaphor for understanding the nature of our own reality. The fog of the body clouds our divinity, shrouding it in darkness, like the ashes that Shiva and the gunas smear on their skin in the cremation ground. To reach back to our own divine power and recognize our true potential we have to brave the darkness and move past the gunas, the aches and pains of our own body.

So last week we cultivated a courageous attitude when playing on our edge in headstand and we talked about the three A's attitude, alignment, action. Today we're focusing more on the second part, alignment, as we do more inversions and hip openers.

Cat/Cow, Downdog (focus on alignment of hands)
Chaturanga Vinyasana (move with the breath throgh vinyasa with drunken halloween party cobra)
Surya Namaskar - Low Lunge with a twist
Surya Namaskar - Low Lunge with a thigh stretch
Surya Namaskar - Low Lunge - rising up to high lunge (attitude, alignment, action)

Handstand at the wall with legs in L
Handstand with partner in the middle of the room (pick a partner about your height and size)
Handstand at wall - handstand cultivates a fire, like the cremation ground that burns away all the dead energy, it's a great practice to reveal your divinity

Virabhadrasna II - only the bravest warrior will approach the cremation gounds
Trikonasana
Ardha Chandrasana - the moon shines at night over the cematary
Parvottanasana - reach into your hamstings and find those gunas
Parivrtta Trikonasana - feel the fire in your hips and your heart
feel difference in first leg before moving to second side. This isn't trick or treat, we give candy to both our legs and balance them out before the end of the practice.

Iguana, bring leg to center and turn knee down to the earthVirasana - Kapalbati Kriya Pranayama - shining skull pranayama - lots of skulls around in cematary.
Savasana - corpse pose
Closing: We practice yoga to courageously enter the cremation ground. The gunas cannot hurt us. The fire cannot burn us. As our fear falls away our true nature is revealed.

Concerns/Success!: Some injuries and conditions in class today, but I felt prepared to help each student with them. They were within the range of my present therapeutics knowledge. I'm looking forward to learning more about therapeutics next year so I can help out more people that come to class with specific issues.

I should have reviewed kicking up for more students. We covered it when I saw some of them were having trouble with it. Looks like everyone got it.

Next week talk about masks, and how divinity wears many masks like a masquerade ball. The notion that masquerade balls are places where people do things they normally wouldn't, so it is true with divinity in the context of how people treat one another. Shiva-Shakti energy enjoys the concealing and revelation of it's own divinity. It revels in chasing itself around in circles. The trick is the concealment, the separration of being. The treat is the revelation of divinity when the self finds the Self.