Yogafly2

Michelle Barge - yoga diva - on Botox

Yoga teacher and recent retreater with Yogafly & Elias Lopez at Ananda Ashram, Michelle Barge's - - blog entry was picked up Reuters:

FDA Safety Review of Botox - Reassessing that Fountain of Youth

POSTED: Friday, February 15, 2008

FROM BLOG: beYOU.tv Blog - Providing motivation, inspiration and information to help you meet your fitness and wellness needs. Where ever you live, what ever your goals, we'll help you be the best YOU, you can be!

 

The following blog post is from an independent writer and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com.

 

Don’t worry, I’ve not become an FDA watchdog.  With my last post on the FDA’s approval of cloned animals for food product, you might think otherwise.  This again is just me trying to keep my dear readers informed with thought provoking information. 

Look, I’m over 40 - and even though I practice yoga daily, teach upwards of 5 classes a day, I’m not going to lie to you:  I’ve thought about Botox® - the Botulinum Type A injectable used mainly for brow furrows between the eye and the deep clown creases by the sides of the mouth.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I was thinking about Botox for the nice "number 11" that sits between my eyebrows that deepens in its intensity when I am tired or stressed.  I would bristle at the comment, when I would be feeling my best of:  "Are you upset about something?"  The worst!  So, as I did my research and got closer and closer to going for that safe eraser of a tell-tale sign of aging, as a yogi, something definitely kept stopping me:  they’d have to inject this safe strain of botulism into my third eye which is the gateway to higher consciousness.  You don’t want to mess with that.  And of course, the physical side effect warnings were always a bit frightening - droopey mouth (replete with drooling), headaches, nausea, etc… 

Well now the FDA has announced a safety review after some "adverse reactions" occurred this month, with some of those "reactions" in children. Bottom-line — there is no fountain of youth.  Take care of your body, be sensible, eat well, exercise, and try and embrace the wrinkles and the lines as best we can.  They are a part of us and earned.  Quite frankly, I’ve found new love for my furrow.  When it’s very present, it means I’m tired.  When it’s slightly present - I’m just hyper focused!

Namaste,

Michelle

 

Read more from this blogger at beYOU.tv Blog

When Love Shatters Your Heart by Nirmala Devi

from her Daily Inspiration e-mails:

When Love Shatters Your Heart

Love takes you to deaths door and leaves you naked and exposed.

In the world of Maya, illusion - you agree to play Russian Roulette -

except in this game, every chamber is loaded.

If you refuse to play the game

because you are afraid to die,

then you will never know

the sweetness of it's nectar

which is the only reason you agreed

to live in this world of duality.

Never fear - my friends,

the death you die is only in your mind's eye,

and is part of a master plan

to get you to seek what is truly Real.

When love shatters your heart

don't try to put the old pieces back together again -

instead, build a new one with your tears and anguish

so that you may always feel humility and compassion

towards all of humanity's suffering. 

MahaShivaratri and Guruji's B-day - March 6

We celebrate Guruji's  - Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati,  pictured on the left - birthday on March 6 and this year it is also Maha Shivaratri.  It is a day when we honor the great stillness inside and all around in the presence of Shiva.  We will chant "Om Namah Shivaya" at Ananda Ashram most of the day and from 10 pm at night on March 6 until 6 am on March 7.  Many wonderful people from Ananda Ashram will chant that night together.  Perhaps wherever you are - you can tune in to the cosmic vibration. 

Om Namah Shivaya Gurave

Satchidananda Murtaye

Nishprapanchaya Shantaya

Niralambaya Tejase

I honor the great teacher within and all around, that takes the form of beingness, consciousness and bliss - ever-present and full of peace, shining with a light that illumines unconditionally.

http://www.anandaashram.org/eventDescription_id_100731.htm

http://www.anandaashram.org/eventDescription_id_100727.htm

Om Namah Shivaya Svaha

And Bliss in Dissolution

Maor took the picture of the deer at Ananda Ashram.  The eyes that speak a thousand silences.

I watch myself disappear in meditation lately - complete immersion in something - neither awake nor asleep.  Even my attachments to this physical world cease to exist.  And here was something that came up when I brought this phenomenon of "disappearing" or "dissolution" into my psyche to analyze it:

When I "think" of disappearing completely - no name, no form, no associations, no nothing at all, I become frightened.  Why all of this work then to be who I am?  All this silly work in order to disappear in meditation seems so counter-intuitive.

Yet.

I disappear and I am in bliss.

When I don't "disappear" in meditation, which is more often my experience than these momentary states of dissolution, I feel such a range of thoughts, feelings, emotions and physical discomforts.  It is a monumental effort to sit through all of these fluctuations and not run to anything, not even God and Guru, for a "cure."  These fluctuations simply exist.  "Sarva Bhavantu" - in all beings. 

I am off to eat dinner and to Ananda Ashram's fire ceremony - to tend to the fire and Svaha (offer) my Self a thousand times as I gaze deep into the flames.

Om shantih,

Sumukhi

To guarantee success

To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.

Quote

Dorothea Brande

Sent to Nirmala Devi by Leslie Day

Cough Remedies Galore

I just got back from Austin, Texas where I had a wonderful time with my friends and professors at St. Edward's University and my lovely little cough followed me all the way down from Manhattan to Austin.  I went to Whole Foods to find some remedies and a lovely man named "Sir Real" gave me his solution for the persistent cough:
1) Olbas maximum strength herbal cough drops
2) Olbas for the bath - soaking in menthol - YUM
3) Ginger tea
4) Licorice

I'll have to say I'm a big fan of Olbas Pastilles.  Other remedies from Bharati at Ananda Ashram include Ayurvedic cough drops that are strong, bitter and potent.  I also know that Bharati's Ayurvedic cooking is not only healing, but totally delicious.  She was taught how to cook by Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati and I can feel the love and healing in her food.

Taradevi from Ananda Ashram also gave me homeopathic Belladonna - which is great for upper respiratory ailments and colds.   And of course, my trips to see Amanda, my acupuncturist, at Turning Point Acupunture in Columbus Circle are a big help.

Bronchial coughs come from the heart chakra and, as Amanda explained, my lung meridian is much stronger than my liver meridian, so her herbal remedies include Coricepcium and "Gracious Power" by Kan Herbals to help strengthen my liver meridian.  Lately, I've been working to open the heart chakra so  I can experience and feel love for all beings.  It's interesting to watch the resistance to this heart-opening.  So I keep working with all physical, mental and spiritual remedies to clear the way to a more brilliant, shining heart.  Cough.  Cough.  Love.  Cough.  Cough.  Peace.

Om shantih,
Sumukhi

I Would be Glad

by Kabir

I Would Be Glad

You are sitting in a wagon being

drawn by a horse whose reins you hold.

There are two inside you who can steer.

Though most never hand the reins to Me

so they go from place to place

the best they can, though rarely happy.

And rarely does their whole body laugh

feeling God's poke in the rib.

If you feel tired, dear,

my shoulder is soft,

I'd be glad to steer a while.

Love Poems from God - Daniel Ladinsky -pg 224

from Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspirations

Across the Universe - Rufus, Moby & Sean Lennon

This has changed my world for the better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqRxi6G7Dro&feature=related

Niradhara played this YouTube video of Rufus, oh Rufus! Wainwright, Moby & Sean Lennon singing "Across the Universe" by the Beatles for me and Jennifer in Ananda Ashram's gift shop yesterday and I have not stopped spinning, dancing and singing it ever since.  Dedicated to a great yogi: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the TM (transcendental meditation) movement. 

Here are the beautiful words to this song:

"Words are flowing out like
endless rain into a papercup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless
wind inside a letterbox
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe

Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter, shades of earth
are ringing through my open ears
inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe.......................

Jai Guru Deva OM."

music and lyrics by the Beatles

Osho on Compassion

I am so profoundly moved by Osho's teachings.  Compassion - The Ultimate Flowering of Love by Osho was given to me by Ananda Ashram's Yoga School Director - Shawn Harrison.  And I have been immersed in the teachings ever since.  "Love with awareness," Osho said. 

You can watch Osho teach by clicking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpfoh47L8iw.

Here is an excerpt from Compassion, the Ultimate Flowering of Love:  "Remember it:  The man of compassion is not unintelligent, but he is non-intellectual.  He is  a tremendous intelligence, he is the very embodiment of intelligence.  He is pure radiance.  He knows - but he does not think.  What is the point of thinking when you know?  You think only as a substitute.  Because you don't know, hence you think.  Because you can't know, hence you think.  Thinking is a substitute process -- and it is a poor substitute, remember.  When you can know, when you can see, who bothers to think?

The man of compassion knows; the intellect thinks.  The intellectual is a thinker and the man of compassion is a non-thinker, non-intellectual.  Intelligence he has, tremendous intelligence he has, but his intelligence does not function through the pattern of intellect.  His intelligence functions intuitively."

- Osho

I often say that I know nothing.  But I often test well at subjects that I don't really study, nor have any emotion invested towards.  So as a child, people asked me how I knew that something was the "right" or "correct" answer, and I often explained that I didn't know how.  I just "felt" and now understand that I simply intuited something to be "true."  I wonder about the over-analyses of everything in the world and if these analyses serve any purpose except as a creative display of how divergent our ways of "seeing" something truly are. 

As I study science for this little pursuit of a medical degree I am currently "doing" - and seeing science's wonderful words for describing the "natural order of the universe," I laugh.  Because as I pierce deeper into the structure of an atom, I see that it is mostly "space" or "emptiness."  My sat-guru, Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati said, "Emptiness is the greatest happiness."  An atom, one of the most fundamental structures of our human body, is mostly "empty" and therefore radiates with that bliss of simple "beingness" described in the Sanskrit phrase: "Tat Tvam Asi."

"I am that," the phrase says.  This tiny space of emptiness with neutrons, electrons and protons make up this "beingness" called "I," "me" and "you."

I laugh as I study the minutiae, one atom at a time,  and realize that an infinite number of reactions, chemical, physical, biological are going on simultaneously around me.  And that when I "think" about these processes, that I limit them into the span of "space and time" and therefore have captured not much of anything, except a headache.

So I follow the words of the great yogis that came to teach us -and I learn to "drop the thinking  mind," as Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati (Guruji) said.  And as I study science now, I drop everything and let it all come to me, rather than limiting the knowledge to a narrow field of a test or a quiz that I must take here and there.  The proof of knowing is not in the ability to regurgitate, but in the inner understanding of the beauty of this life and this body.  Describing this beauty can take up a thousand libraries, or we can simply flow with it, breathe with the beauty and love with her, every step of the way.

Om shantih,

Sumukhi

Purchase books by Osho at Ananda Ashram's bookstore by clicking here: 

http://www.ashramstore.com/customer/search.php?substring=osho

*Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

from Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspirations:

 

“The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

 

 

 

* Maharishi Mahesh Yogi passed away today (2/6/08)

- he led the Trancendental Meditation movement.

  Jai Maharishi, Jai Guru Dev, Jai Guru Dev Om

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih

Om Tryambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim pushti vardhanam
Urvha rukham iva bandhanan
Mrtyor mukshiya mamrtat
Svaha.

Jai Guru Dev.
Om

The trouble with most of us

is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Whatever you want to do,

do it now.  There are only so many tomorrows.

- Michael Landon

from Aldous Huxley

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

The Sky Gave Me its Heart by Rabia

The sky gave me its heart

because it knew mine was not large enough to care fo the earth the way it did.

Why is it that we think of God so much?

Why is there so much talk about love?

When an animal is wounded no one has to tell it, "You need to heal;" so naturally it will nurse itself the best it can.

My eye kept telling me, "Something is missing from all I see."  So it went in search of the cure.

The cure for me as His Beauty, the remedy - for me was to love.

- from Love Poems from God translated by Daniel Ladinsky

picture on left of Ananda Ashram in Monroe, NY

"No doubt God will send him more"

Most masters agree that after the first illumination, there can still arise periods of fear, confusion, loss of spiritual bearings, and unskillful conduct. No matter how compelling the vision, how profound the initial sense of freedom and grace, a process of maturation must follow. Over the years I have not seen a single Westerner for whom this was not true, and it seems to be true for most Asian teachers as well. If we fail to acknowledge this truth, we simply fool ourselves. When a proud mother once announced to Mullah Nasruddin, "My son has finished his studies," Nasruddin replied., "No doubt God will send him more." It is like that for us all.

- Gill Eardly

Commentary on the topic of Awakening Only Begins a Process

from Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspiration e-mails