Posts Tagged ‘Ronna’

by Ronna Case

I missed some days. No yoga and no breath prayers. I’ve been fighting a cold since Friday by sleeping big parts of two days and drinking Emergen-C twice a day. It seems to have worked, because I don’t have the usual major cold symptoms.

As I write this post, it is Tuesday. With sunshine and a view of the blue lake, I began again by praying “Create in me, a clean heart, O God,” with yoga.

Eyes closed sometimes, then open. Distracting thoughts entered, then I would return to breathing and praying. It was like waves, like a dance.

Very nice!

In a few minutes, Brady is coming by to help me with computer issues. I found him again, thank goodness. Through this Lenten time of silence, yoga stretches, and praying, I have felt more at peace about my feeling of information overload. Alvin Toffler wrote about where I am in his book Future Shock in the 80’s. With some help I am hoping to simplify my life and manage data, information, and my projects more regularly and smoothly.

I am feeling good about the process! Even though I missed some days…

by Ronna Case

While doing yoga my feet sometimes end up in the wrong places. I used to go ahead, even though I was misaligned. Now I take time to make corrections.

Life, the spiritual life, is like that. I can end up in the wrong spot. I can hold my breath, instead of exhaling on the hard parts. I can race through something just to get it done. I can reinforce useless habits, or replay outdated mental scenarios. As happens sometimes with my cello music, I can keep playing the wrong note.

This Lent, with small group support and this blog, my spiritual discipline, yoga-with- breath- prayer, helps me slow down and smooth out. I make adjustments, inside and out, and improve my alignment, hopefully with God’s desire.

by Ronna Case

Monday night…

The other stuff battered my Self this morning: I had to work hard to stay with my breath prayer during the first 10 minutes. First a thought wrapped with anxiety came up. I return to breath prayer. In the same way plans for the day, hurt feelings and resentments, memories of my mother, ideas for my blog, and a few of the old negative ways of thinking about myself – all bubbled up for attention.

Mental and spiritual clutter.

Tonight in small group we are reporting on what simplicity and the uncluttered life might be for us. That connects so much with my feeling during yoga just now. What an effort it can be to just be quietly open and available to God! I do believe God will be present as I work through the things that battered me this morning. My discipline of yoga breath prayer is remembering that God is near as the breath I breathe.

After doing my yoga sequences in a quiet room, I practice what my chiropractor advised, when I complained of stiff muscles and painful muscle edges and attachments. He showed me the latest health aid that looks very like a baker’s rolling pin. It is rolled along and across the long muscles of the body to detoxify and unclench muscle bundles. Since my father died pretty young of depression, stiff muscles and a strange cancer in his hip connective tissue, I am glad to have another idea for staying supple and flexible.

It amuses me that I have found a different use for my mother’s wooden cookie rolling pin. It rolls on a metal rod, has nice hand grips and little carved indentations that created flower designs and owls on the cookies she used to bake for us. It was inspirited with her love and so, after her death in 2001, I brought it back with me from California. It has lain unused in the back of a drawer until now, part of the clutter of my life. And it was there when I need it now for stiff muscles. I am ambivalent about clutter sometimes.

Our small group theme this week is simplicity. In addition to clearing mental clutter, through the practice of yoga and prayer, there are piles of papers, projects, and photo albums in my room I’d like to clean up. I’m thinking that being more competent on my computer will help me better manage information avalanches and storage. So I am looking for a bright, patient computer tech to help me out. I met one at church a couple of Saturdays ago. When I mentioned my skill and knowledge gaps, he gave me his card, which I have lost somehow. This morning between breath prayers I thought about how to find him. Now I’m hoping he’s going to read this and track me down this Sunday so I can continue to un-clutter and simplify.

Tuesday morning…

I did much better with my eyes closed today – except for occasional balance issues! I thought looking out over the lake to the horizon was the thing, but decreasing the overall visual stimulation seems to help me stay focused.

I did have the strange thought that maybe a few of the thoughts and ideas I was having might be from God, you know, trying to help me out with things! The anxiousness, thinking about the laundry downstairs and resentments may not be God, but a few of the ideas, like to contact this person or make a prayer shawl for that person, could be? Maybe my breath prayer actually does open a space for the divine. The puzzle is figuring out which are just my distractions and which might be ideas from God.

by Ronna Case

Someone told me once that discipline is the art of remembering what you really want. It doesn’t seem to help yet with (not) eating cookies after dinner, but it has helped me these last few days with yoga. I remember that I want to be found and found out by God. I remember that for me, yoga stretching and breathing well open a space for letting God draw near. So on all but two days since Ash Wednesday, I have found 20 minutes for yoga.

Since small group this past Monday, I’ve added a breath prayer: in with “Create in me” and out with “a clean heart, O God.” (Psalm 51:10). Also, since our group conversation about the challenge and blessing of silence, I have subtracted the flute of Carlos Nakai, in favor of house-silence during my yoga sequences. Without the slow repetitive music, I am distracted by more things and thoughts. I notice the spot on the carpet. I return to my breath prayer. I need to blog today. I return to my breath prayer as I continue to move and stretch. Thinking “a clean heart” brings to mind a resentment I’ve felt for a couple of months. I wonder if I can let it go. I return to my breath prayer again and again. And eventually I let everything go and just do and focus on this one thing. Moving and breathing and praying in the gentle flow of God’s grace.

I’d already decided not to count yoga sequences. So I follow advice of an aerobics teacher, who could be speaking for God: “Don’t count, just do a lot of them!”

In the past, when I’ve begun disciplines like prayer (meditation and yoga), being consistent has been tough. I try to work out something sustainable, but life doesn’t hold still. Maybe it’s partly because I have a different work schedule every week, so regular habits, except for the basics, are hard to maintain. This time, though, with an awesome yoga-breath prayer practice, and a small group, as well as a blog where I’ve announced my intention to the whole world, I feel like I may be on to something: “covenantly” practicing this discipline, so God can help me clean up.

by Ronna Case

God: I wish you’d heard me earlier, about breathing out on the hard parts!

Ronna: When did you say that?

God: One of the times you weren’t listening!

Ronna: Oops!

God: Don’t get distracted. Now you know, Breathe Out On the Hard Parts.

I finally heard this advice in my Water Aerobics class. I was probably 58 years old at the time. Where was this essential information during all those devastating gym classes?! It is truly stunning how much difference it makes when I exhale while doing the things that take the most effort. Breathing out on the hard parts makes the difference between being able to move the same amount of water as the instructor can, and not being able to do it at all. I also have to remind myself to breathe when I am practicing my cello. Sometimes I catch myself doing as many yoga repetitions as I can, while holding my breath. I wear myself out when I do things while “waiting to exhale” – as Terry McMillan wrote. Divine wisdom says: “Breathe out on the hard parts.” When I do, I consistently feel as though I “come into myself,” and that I am “here now” in the midst of The Divine. I inhale God’s help and hope and brightness.

Breath seems like a big key for so many things. I think lots of us hold our breath on the hard parts, including the spiritually hard parts. When we’re afraid or sad or angry, or facing temptation or pain, or when we’re really concentrating on something, or hearing terrible news…we have to remember to exhale. My favorite sport, swimming, is all about breathing in order to be relaxed in the water. What we call Eastern religious practices focus more on the importance of breath than Western ones do. I’m so glad I found out about breathing in time!

So, while doing yoga, I breathe out when moving, and breathe in when I am expending less effort. I move slowly, compared to the other rhythms of my day. I do a sequence of stances and poses I’ve picked up here and there, beginning with Prayer and Warrior and ending in the Child, resting on the floor. Then I uncurl as I rise and do it again. I feel good that I have been doing 10 repetitions of the sequence, which is more than I have consistently done before. I confess to missing one day this week…it was a day off, when I just got busy with errands out of the house….I just forgot until late. The next morning, I got up earlier than usual to do yoga before leaving for work. (It was very dark outside!) Last night I did yoga late, after getting home from small group.

I’m not consistent with time of day. Yet each time I yoga, I feel centered, connected, blessed with breath, even located. Sometimes I feel like I’ve docked with God and heard a word from God. Sometimes I am aware of my breath and body only. Sometimes I understand something in a new way. Sometimes I have to pull back from distractions time and again. Whatever comes, I go on breathing, moving slowly and smoothly and calmly. I feel more “in-tune” and more able to see that the glass is also half full. God wants me to remember about breath, the first divine gift to humanity, the essential practice for rest and renewal and for regaining strength for the journey.

Grateful for this Word, I breathe out on the hard parts.

by Ronna Case

Lent comes this year with my promise to write something for our church blog. For days I wondered: “What shall I give up?” How about my writer’s block? How about my depression attacks? Be glad to give ‘em up! Actually, I’m seeing Lent, these days, as a time to do something good and sustainable, something that adds to life, rather than subtracting. So I’m thinking about restarting Yoga time.

Yoga time slows my pace for the whole day. It addresses my inner rhythm, my constant movement and “doing,” quiets me in ways that help me be less distracted during the day, and helps me to be more loving. Doing yoga my mind is more relaxed and free and my body becomes more so. I listen for my own true voice. I listen for divine voice.

Some of you may remember the days at Holy Covenant when I used to stand up in church and ask for support and prayer as I quit smoking – again. Five times I think I tried, before I was liberated from cigarettes. I basically stopped writing in order to do it, on the advice of a psychologist I trusted: “If you can’t do it without smoking, don’t do it.” You may be picking up that I’m nervous about writing for Lent. Normally smoking is not a temptation. I admit I am at risk, with the pressure of the promise to write. I ask for your prayers as I re-discover writing without smoking, through this blog.

Lent is about intention and action. It is also about asking for help and waiting in hope, passionately. I hope for freedom and help to practice my spiritual disciplines more faithfully and reflect more honestly upon what i say I need and want and how I act.

This morning during yoga stretches, looking out over the blue lake in the sunshine after two days of snow, I felt so good. I remembered that I always feel good when I’ve done it, really stretched.

God, help me stretch every day. And during Lent, help me write without smoking. Amen!