All You Need to Vote in Your State
This turtle is from the deck, Animal Allies 2, by Jessica Swift(highly recommend(!) But do keep track of your mail-in ballot. Click the very faint link above the turtle!
By “Immunity is Mutiny” I mean 1) Sleep well 2) eat healthy food 3) Exercise with a mask in case you meet somebody 4) keep Six feet Apart and mostly 5) Wash your hands.
https://www.daniellemackinnon.com/rainbow-bridge/how-to-comfort-your-dog-who-is-dying/
Dear Folks, #BlackLivesMatter and let’s give to the naacpldf.org legal defense fund. A statement for Covid-19, BLM and Indigenous Peoples: Immunity=Mutiny!
Some of the recommended Anti-Racist books:‘White Fragility.’ Wow just wow. Also, ‘Why are the Black kids sitting in the cafeteria all alone?’, ‘How to be Anti-Racist’ by Ibram X. Kendi, ‘White Supremacy and Me’ workbook & ‘Why I stopped talking about race to white people’.
Danielle McKinnon has an absolutely amazing talk on going through hospice/dying & a little on how to handle it after with your dog(very transferable to cats as well). Zoopix App helped me over the death of my cat(below). Thank you, Finn & Diego the Adventure Cat. 🐱🐕
First, Ram Dass slipped in to my photos here with a very funny story about the many vehicles of awakening!
Please click the link up top for Danielle’s article. Also read ‘You Are Psychic’ by Pete Sanders which includes his healing technique, as well as other books like ‘Mind Over Medicine’ and ‘Because Internet’ on modern linguistics.
Email me if you want to join our last-Sundays book group. Finishing ‘How to a Talk to Your Pet’ by Gail Thackray, an English woman who lives in LA, including some guided imagery I will read and we’re starting ‘Beyond Words’ by Carl Safina. Starts out with Dolphins 🐬 yay! The animal with a four chamber brain 🧠
My personal book list goes on(privacy used to be a civil right and might still be).
📚 Topic: Animal Communication(including ‘Animal Talk’ by Penelope Smith)!
InsightPV.org is responding to first Covid-19, the ensuing grave financial losses; now...to the horrible lynching of George Floyd(not a new thing) and how we respond. We have to move from being a fear-based society to being a love-based society. Marianne Williams was/is right.
Our school continues to have wonderful teachers: Rebecca Bradshaw(former guiding teacher) a Climate Change activist and therapist, Manny Mansbach, Jean Esther, Michael Grady and Tara Mulay to name a few. Harrison Blum, Nick Boutros..
Trellis Scepter is the new President of the Board and we are so glad to welcome 🙏🏽 him! These teachers have such wisdom and many have therapeutic background or practices.
Below is my cat trying to find South African Communicator Anna Breytenbach the author of ‘Diablo’.
The late Ram Dass’s(Richard Alpert’s) mystical teacher Neem Karoli Baba: Enlarge! To me he seems to be saying, “What are you doing?” He was a hypnotic medium and great teacher in India whom Steve Jobs met.
Last Saturday Michael Grady held a class on managing fear and it was such a good Zoom that my cat came to watch too. I got all my questions answered on both 1) Internet distraction(Can we ignore it?) and also 2) the difference between Catastrophizing(a scary form of inner storytelling) and skillful, calming stories we can do. Thanks again to Insightpv.org
Dear Reader,
Today is Rebecca Bradshaw’s last day as Guiding Teacher at insightpv.org and she has done a really good job of speaking and scheduling great visiting teachers!
She will be missed and the celebration is tonight. If I had played I would have sung, Heart’s “Dog and the Butterfly”(keywords: “She had to try.”) or possibly Sheryl Crow’s “Always on your Side.” She has free talks on dharmaseed.org that really rock!
Anyway, psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher Jean Esther recently did a great parable, on weeds and detaching from our attachments, that was hilarious(long story short), and the week before: Dawn Scott spoke about moderating reactivity. She is a wonderful trainee in the 4-year Teacher Training at IMS Barre, MA.
All wonderful teachers there and a great chance to become part of a community!
In other news I am so blessed to have the very professional and also maternal(and younger:) Sara Rose Page visit me twice a week for Yoga class mid-mornings. Yesterday a totally awesome thing happened. We were doing Savasana at the end to OM music, she played the brass bell my husband had bought for Yoga 🧘♀️, and so beautifully, to wake me up....
Then we faced each other in mixed lotus and said our Om’s. I usually run out of breath before she does and although I sing, her Om is stronger; but just as I dropped out I heard an overtone of a Fifth above coming from over my right shoulder way up high, like the golden light of an angel singing. I’m not particularly into golden light as it always reminds me of something else golden(LOL)
and when was the last time I called on angels, whoever/wherever/whatever they are? But I asked her, “Has your class ever been so in tune that you heard overtones?” She was not sure.
I’m not sure we were even all that perfectly in tune(!) but feel free to comment, “Have you ever been so in tune you heard overtones?” I felt as though it might be consolation for the first grey day of October!
We feel that artists tend to be clairvoyant and musicians, well they tend to hear!
Sept. 28, 2017 #AboutLastNight
Bhante teaches in West Vriginia but also at the three-month retreat at IMS in Barre MA. He founded a Buddhist center in Uganda that helps heal trauma.
A lot of people think his robes look like authentic African dress and when he gets stopped at airports he says he must keep himself from exclaiming, "Haven't you ever seen a monk, like The Dalai Lama?!"
But Bhante recommends to us that when we hear things we don't like, our off-the-cushion practice should be to think to ourselves only, "hearing", so that we label perceived insults as "hearing" with all the other sounds.
If we try something like that then we are less likely to get emotionally hijacked ourselves. Calling back our power to our own mind and not to the object of our distress, we can remain centered even in ordinary applications of everyday mindfulness.
When we get hijacked, Bhante says, we have:
1) a feeling,
2) a thought
3) an emotion.
Stories get built around emotions, and they can be where we get carried away.
Feelings(1) and emotions(3) are distinguishable he says. If we feel the feeling we can stop a thought from becoming codified into a hurtful story.
Not that we do not take real-world actions to protect or defend ourselves and others, but we can react much more skillfully if we remain centered and also 4) forgive.
What we must do, he says, is be aware of our own defense mechanisms. What are our defenses that get triggered?
It didn't take me too long to think of my vocabulary of defensive reactions, but exploring what types of events trigger these things in our minds, may take some analysis....
Bhante’s warning about emotions hijacking us is that it feels to him like when he missed a certain exit near Dulles Airport and then was out of his way for an hour(There's one like that on Rte. 9 outside Boston although not quite for an hour)! Still, it's preventable.
“May we be safe and free from suffering. May all beings be safe and free from suffering.”
Dear Yogis and Animal Lovers, In light of Covid-19, the financial crisis and the horror of the execution of George Floyd there are posts updating below this ad if you want to read more on current affairs....
Here is my Advanced Feline Training Logo!
This is not the cat(pictured below) but one night another one inspired to get back to work as an Animal Communicator. Please do remember to leave me a voice message if you don’t get me right away. 413-301-3007. AO PS: Soon I hope to be be revisiting the place where this cat formerly known as Angus, was nurtured and supported until he got adopted by some very nice people. Dakin Humane Society in Springfield MA. DakinHumane.org
PS: Newsletter to be sent out soon. My main site(this is the blog) is at zanottaway.com
Dear Readers, This new book on preorder at Amazon looks terrific. Here is a How-To page:
Sara Rose does house-calls as well as some of the greatest teaching at yoga-sanctuary.com
Disclaimer: She is my teacher and I'm partial but I've done NYC Yoga/Pilates since the 80's.
Here's a story from Dakin Humane Society! Where all our proceeds go. It's a heart-warming tale of the type I witnessed a lot when I'd volunteered with them for ~3 years at The Cat Adoption Center. It's very well-run.
Story by DakinHumane.org and photo by Kimberly Schildbach
To schedule an Animal Communication session, please call/text 413-301-3007, email zottali@icloud.com or click on zanottaway.com
Today our fearless leader quoted another fearless leader, "Keep showing up & Keep at it!"
Yoga was always about sitting: basically a preparation for getting into meditation posture.
What we practice today isn't that ancient(although some I recognize from decades ago surely) and we are still making it up! Some themes were interweaving & yet fully independent.
Today we did the Hoberman Sphere and I believe there's no Sanskrit name for it! Wow.
We ended with a prelude to putting your leg over your shoulder. Seriously, magical class! And such a nice, grounded studio with picutre windows! I could see Blue sky with clouds from lying just in Sivasana.
End of Year(12/31) pose was Vasistasana Regular and here's Full Vasistasana(soft-porna):
Mr. Vega teaches at Insight Hawai'i on the Big Island and has led 3-week retreats in Burma.
Update 8-20-20: He is the only American Buddhist I have ever known to question our Burmese teachers over their support for the genocide against Muslims in Myanmar.
But then: This was a short day of Sitting, Walking & Talking....not like West Wing where I'm as if stuck in my mind.
First he asked us to focus on a body part and inquire what we were feeling. He discussed different techniques of focus. As we drifted into our stillness I heard him say, "Do not get stuck in aversion or liking." He cautioned against "hunting for experiences" while meditating.
Vega told this story where someone at a retreat got annoyed by someone coughing all throughout a silent period: In the interview the participant complained to his teacher about the horrible coughing. The teacher said, "You should thank that person for showing you how bad your concentration is!"
JV also told us of a classic teaching called the Four Protections or Four Guardian Meditations:
1) Contemplating the Buddha's Virtue
2) Contemplating the defilements of the body.
3) Contemplating the Joys of Love.
4) Contemplating Death
So when we think of the ups and downs we get accustomed to the ups and downs, good/bad.
* * *
Someone asked what would be our affirmations and Mr. Vega went over what we often learn about at Insight Meditation Center of Pioneer Valley, The Brahmahivaras or Virtues and our basic Metta prayer. Forget how he worded it exactly but Sharon Salzberg once taught it as:
"May I be safe, May I be happy, May I be healthy and may I live at ease.
May you be safe, May you be happy, May you be healthy and may you live at ease.
(You = Loved ones and/or Benefactors, Friends, People we feel neutral about and Difficult folks- in more or less that order)
May we all be safe, May we all be happy, May we all be healthy and may we all live at ease."
(If we aren't feeling healthy we can say "strong" or "healthy and strong".) This picture was taken in the late afternoon so Jesse is smiling and yet you can see the shadows growing long.
Another thing he said is that in these troubling times some people wonder whether we really have the right to sit and meditate instead of taking action. JV said more or less, "If you can find the right conditions where it's peaceful enough to settle down, then it's actually your duty!"
Only then can we find the clarity and groudedness to take the most effective action, I think was the idea. Or to speak and communicated in ways that can best be heard. #GoodTmes!
Thanks to our fearless teacher and more to come soon on other IPV leaders and their classes!
Also on yoga-sanctuary.com New Year's Eve Retreat.
