Yogastrology workshop notes, Sun moves into Leo!

Yogastrology

Yoga meets Astrology

All information and wording, except for that which is quoted with an author, is taken from:

“Yogastrology:  Yoga Meets Astrology”, By Diane Booth Gilliam

Creatrix of Yogastrology at www.yogastrology.com

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New moon in Cancer, July 8 2013

Cancer :: Chest :: Openheartedness

“I have a strong and protected, happy heart.”

Embracing Emotion, Nurturing the internal self

Sun in Leo, July 22, 2013

Leo :: Spine :: Courage & Humility

“I respect my courage”

Letting our inner light shine.

Full moon in Aquarius, July 22, 2013

Aquarius :: Ankles :: Strength & Unity

Cultivating opposites for inner balance and self-acceptance.

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“Awake my dear,

be kind to your sleeping heart,

Take it out to the vast field of light,

And let it BREATHE.”

--Hafiz

~

There is a life-force within your soul,

seek that life.

There is a gem in the mountain of your body

Seek that mine.

O traveler, if you are in search of that

Don't look outside ...

Look inside yourself and seek that.

--Rumi

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Sun in Leo, July 22, 2013

Leo :: Spine :: Courage & Humility

“I respect my courage”

Letting our inner light shine.

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“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”  --Audre Lord.

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The Sun illumines everything in its path.  The source of life in the solar system.

The Spine contains the primary subtle-body energy channel, the sushumna.

Yoga is all about the spine.

Leo = Sun = rulership

Yoga = spine (Leo) = Rulership

In astrology, the sun says a lot about your unique source of strength.

The sun is one of the primary indicators of your identity and purpose in life, as well as how to go about achieving that purpose.

((((Maybe draw a picture of a vision of your light:  :)

LIGHT UP YOUR LIFE

What is the light of your life?

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What lights you up?

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Passion of the Sun.

“Even after all this time,

The Sun never says to the earth,

‘ you owe me. ‘

Look what happens with a love like that,

It lights the whole sky.”

--Hafiz

The Courage to Be

At first glance, being yourself is the easiest thing in the world.  Or it ought to be.  After all, we have to be ourselves.  How could it be otherwise?

Right?

As it turns out, there’s more to the story.  The world is constantly trying to make us into something other than our simple, pure selves.

Bottom line:  It’s  a full time job keeping track of who we really are and what we genuinely want; it’s a challenge to extract authenticity and purpose out of this thick and murky cultural soup.

So let’s try this:

Close your eyes and imagine a book.  

See the cover.  Hold it, fell the binding.  

This is the Book Of Your Life.

The cover is your cover, the chapters are phases of your life.  

Is it hardcover or paperback?

Is there a picture on the cover?

Now carefully open the book and look inside.

What does your book have to say?

Spend some time imagining this.  

And then take a pen, or your word processing program, and write in The Book Of Your Life.

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“and the day came when

the risk to remain

tight in a bud was more

painful than the

risk it took to blossom.”

--Anais Nin

“To Be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Leo Asana

Lion Pose :: Simhasana

Relieves tension in back legs arms torso face

firms the skin of the neck, stimulates the muscles on the front of the throat

releases the muscles at the corners of the mouth (smile)

it is said to destroy disease

FIVE DIRECTIONS OF THE SPINE

1. Forward Bend

2.  Back bend

3.  inversion

4.  Twist left and right

5.  Side stretch.

Seated Side Stretch :: Great for the spine.

Surya NAmaskar :: Sun Salutation

Surya = Sun.

Throughout time, people have considered the sun to be the most visible form of divinity in our world.   Sun Salutation is yogic form of holding gratitude for the sun, our inner light.

Extend upward (like the rising sun) and then bow down (like the setting sun) to acknowledge an eternal cycle of light followed by darkness, followed byt he return of light.

Sphinx pose

cat / cow pose

Can you think of any other Asana for the spine?
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Courage

(We even refer to courage as "having a backbone", a spine...)

Make a list of the ways you currently are (or in the past have been) courageous.  

PLEASE be very generous with yourself.  Some days, getting out of bed is an act of courage.___________________________________________________

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“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”

--Amelia Earhart

Humility

Ancient sages strongly recommend we cultivate humility.

Why?

Our culture seems to look down upon those  who are humble.

Truly great human beings, in the highest sense - servants of humanity - are not egocentric, not puffed up about themselves.  An inflated sense of self gets in the way of doing genuinely good work in the world.  

Healthy self - esteem, absolutely.  Self-aggrandizement, probably not.

And to the Leo archetype, we lack courage when we are not humble.  There’s too much to loose when the ego takes itself so seriously.

“I am sick

and tired of

everything

but love.”

--Rumi

Once we find our humility, the universe honors our practice, and our natural siddhis, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc come with our commitment.

We use these siddhis in any form of self-aggrandizement, and that power and all other attainments evaporate.

Curious, isn’t it.

Use it and lose it.

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Leo Resource  :: July 22 - Aug 22, /23,2013

SPINE

Poses with Cat names

Sun Salutations

5 directions of the spine.

AFFIRMATION

“Courage, thank you for being there when I needed you:  I trust you will be with me always.

I pay tribute to, honor, and respect my very own courageous self; I have courage, and i know that everything is all right.”

“I respect my courage”

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All this rain.

All this rain, brings out my shadows....
...brings out my anger, my sadness, my madness
All this rain, inside me, going insane....
All this rain....softness eludes me
All this rain, all these emotions, so much water.
Evaporate me with heat, my heart, but the water has water logged my flame.
I wish to remain,
But with all this rain....
Softness eludes me.
Teases me with gentle embrace, then turns away...
Back to mean ol me.
With what strength
When u feel it has all been beat out?
With what power
When you've given it all away
to these thoughts,
Emotions,
People,
Lovers,
Situations,
This pain.
It throbs w a dull ache,
an icy blue flame.
I dont feel the heat.
This numbness must have a name.
Its hard to think with all this rain.
But in the end, the sun is always there, behind the clouds, the lightening, the rain.
We just cant see it.
The storm is of our illusion, our earthly ego.
The clouds, our thoughts.
The rain, our emotion.
The lightening, our perception.
The water logged journey is heavy.
The lightening journey is impulsive.
The clouded journey is a cage.
The sun is still there.
When we purge,
Re-lease,
Re member
But forget
We see the self
The Self
Shining through.
That is our truth.
And after all this rain,
The warmth, our truth, our heart feels good.

cocooning. Cancer energy and the water trine draws us deep into our own.

Grapes are grown on the rockiest, sandiest soils, on rolling hills where few plants can survive.  They are known for their need for stimuli to stir them to grow.  Just like all plants, pruning inspires growth.  It's actually a very shocking thing for the plant, but that shock or "suffering"  spurs them to grow.  The gardener knows, a little push, and the plant creates it's own growth.  A little rocky soil grows deeper roots.  The plant, just like us, creates depth through surviving the old dying, to make room for the new to grow...creates depth by diving down into the depths for it's nutrients, it's life.  To cut off the old is painful, but the suffering leads to growth, understanding, and just like the plant, we extend our life force (our inner environment / Self) deeply into nutrient rich soil.  We in those times reach out to that which sustains us... and we do this naturally when we're attuned to ourselves and our needs.

And right now in all aspects of life - from what we're told, to what we think, what we judge, and who we think we tell ourselves to be - it's the forgotten step to our happiness... to pay attention, to nurture, and love ourselves, so when the time comes, we can extend our Self out through our root system to connect to that which nourishes, sustains us, and ultimately leads to our growth.

What shows up in these moments when we are living in love is exactly what we need to move forward.  The universe supports us in all growth, and when we drop the illusion and look at what is truly driving us towards our upset (or any other emotion, even joy in accomplishment), we can see the ego at the core.  As soon as we release the attachment to any experience, emotion, or tough truth we learn, we see instead the catalyst towards our growth and the support of what will guide us there through what nourishes our Soul / Self. 

The universe's got our back guys!  But it's not going to let the ego slide without learning these tough truths that will prepare our own lives - our attitudes, our thoughts, our emotions, habits, actions, our environment - for the shift of consciousness that lies ahead.

The secret to all this tension is to realize we clean the clutter in order to invite the new.... and the nourishment is there if we learn to dive deep in ourselves and grow our root system to reach out to it.  But in order to reach, we acknowledge through love and nurturing towards ourselves, that we drop what doesn't serve us anymore, thank it, and send it off with a blessing.  Here is space to begin a new in our approach / structure of life.  

And I don't know about you guys, but I've been asking myself a lot of hard questions about how and why I do what i do, think what I think, and feel what I feel, and the softness comes from inside.  And the moment i soften to whatever i find, the universe reaches back out to me with the support to softly release my habits, attachments, thoughts, etc, whatever it may be, even if it's joy at accomplishment.  the positive can be just as big of a trip-up or attachment if we believe it has everything to do with us.  Our ego, once it steps outside of ourselves, sees the big picture, and instead of it's fear being excluded coming true, the fear is quieted as the universe says, "You are everything.  You are nothing.  Both are true."  We are here.  But so is everyone else.

We've forgotten that we are important, but in order to grow, we must let go of what we know about our identity and what we think nourishes / supports us.  We must approach each moment as it were new.  THIS is our experience, our call.  As we encounter the emotions, thoughts, etc we realize, we are none of these things.  This is only our experience.

So instead of wallowing in it, we clear it and move on.

Take a lesson from our misunderstanding of pigs:

They have recently found that pigs are actually not inclined naturally to roll in their own fecal matter and filth like mud and standing water.  Yup.  They do that because they are caged.  Plain and simple.  Modern day ethical farms (no factory farm methods used) have found that pigs are happiest roaming in fields and rolling in the mud when it's hot in the dirt other animals / nature itself leaves by pulling up all the grass. 

We have "told" pigs what they liked best.  We were wrong.

What makes us think if we're trapped "in the same way we've always done things" (how many times have we said that?! How many times have we heard it!), and told we are happy there, we will remain wallowing in our own filth.  Our own habitual shit.  Literally.  We are called now to break those structures down:   the emotions, the thoughts, the habits, the ego, the everything that makes "Nicole Skelton" (or whoever you are, her.  And I promise, you'll find  that when you work in love, that which is you, or serves you, remains and that which is just our filth (even if it's not negative, dark, etc, but just our way of being the same day in and day out, and the comfort to our ego it provides) that pen filled with our own filth, stagnation, and what holds us back will break wide open with the next water trine with jupiter and the concurrent jupiter, pluto, uranus square throughout the next few weeks.

This is the tough part of the process.  We are asked to soften, to feel, to explore with curiousity which kills the ego's demand for attention.  Once we see the truth for what it is, we will see that our suffering is within us.  Right now we are drawing awareness through the sun being interacted in the water trine and t-square, so the next round is expansive.  But the work must be done, the issues faced in daylight, and the dark brought to light.

And I gauruntee, it won't be as harsh as we think, if we can approach ourselves with love, and a beginners heart and mind.

Take a moment and pretend you knew nothing about yourself or the world.... what would happen if you didn't have a name, nothing to prove, and nothing to lose.  pretend you had no limits, and what you found within was no reflection on your good or baddness, right or wrongness, happy or sadness, or any duality you can imagine yourself in (because duality IS the illusion ;) ). 

I encourage you to ask yourself....

Really?  Is this who I really am within. 

Spend a few cocooning....

Going inward...

Exploring with curiousity what's within.

And know the more you find, the more released, the more room we'll have to expand....

Take a lesson from the pig:  don't believe what other people have told you about yourself, life, or the universe, and don't give your thoughts and emotions your power.... because we are none of these things.  But we have been caged as a universal lesson that belief is way more powerful than we can imagine.  Don't believe the cage, the pen, the filth.  The ego thinks it knows, but mostly it just projects.

Escape the cage of your attachment to thought, emotion, and experience, and soften to the moment....I'm pretty sure in the next few weeks, we'll all be surprised as Jupiter brings our expansion into our nourishment through the roots we send down NOW.

Live light, live with sight, meditate, yoga, breathe often.  Travel soft, but travel knowing, you cannot escape the cage without finding the way out by sight and curiosity. 

 

<3

Enjoy the process of life, death, rebirth, brought to you by our wonderful sponsor, Saturn in Scorpio, bringing you one emotional and spiritual powerful tough truth, one desire at a time.  Enjoy your ego death, and know that it is not your own:

more below....

"And I got
No illusions 'bout u
Guess what?
I never did.
When I say
When I said
"I'll take it."
I meant
I meant
As is..."

--Ani Difranco

Stick with the transformation. 

let the internal world blossom.

Keep trusting in your truth.

We're cocooning... still.... trust the process.  

We can't see anything in the cocoon, 

but we can FEEL everything in the dark.  

Our 'senses' turn on... 

psychic, energetic, subtle 

emotional, sensitivity, empathy.

love the cocoon, but be ready to emerge as the beauty you are.

We're preparing the heart and mind for rebirth.

Clear out the old.

Begin to dream the new.

Begin to breathe.

We're entering a void as we clear out, a space we're creating for the new...

created in trust.

We trust our transformation, 

the support of the universe responds to our trust

that we are being reborn.

"Most of us assume as a matter of common sense that space is nothing, that it’s not important and has no energy. But as a matter of fact, space is the basis of existence. How could you have stars without space? Stars shine out of space andsomething comes out of nothing just in the same way as when you listen, in an unprejudiced way, you hear all sounds coming out of silence. It is amazing. Silence is the origin of sound just as space is the origin of stars, and woman is the origin of man. If you listen and pay close attention to what is, you will discover that there is no past, no future, and no one listening. You cannot hear yourself listening. You live in the eternal now and you are that. It is really extremely simple, and that is the way it is."

Alan W. Watt

Space is beautiful.  Internal space invites change.

Notice what is of you

and what is learned 

projected as your identity,

as thoughts and feelings and habits

we have integrated from an external source

a collection of debris from all we've been defined as

all we've thought and felt

and what we've been taught.

"Live in the action of now

It may be breath

It may be practice

It may washing

It may be walking

Never live in your thoughts

You and I have this issue

We would take a greatest blessing and dissect it into theories and thoughts

Memories are stories

They may be entertaining

They may be life lessons

But they are not future

They're not who we are

I'd rather be breathing.

--Monika Pavlovic Moshref 

Would you still be the same person

if no one saw you?

Stick with the process.

Trust the process.

Trust your Self through love.  

And let the thoughts slip into awareness as we breath in,

and let the thoughts slip out in release as we exhale.

let the emotions be grounded, felt, as inhale.

let the emotions be dissolved from the heart, just as the breath, as we exhale.  

Love yourself, 

wildly

madly

deeply.

Nurture the cocoon state.  

Action is in intentions.

Action is in doing what you love.

"Many of us are essentially asleep, even as we walk around in broad daylight. We're so focused on the restless narratives and repetitive fantasies unfurling in our heads that we only dimly perceive the larger story raging in all of its chaotic beauty around us.

To have any hope of permanently breaking out of our fuzzy trance, we require regular shocks. A single jolt might cause us to briefly come to attention and see the miracle of creation for what it is, but once the red alert has passed, we relax back into our fixation on the dreamy tales our mind never stops telling us.

In the course of its conspiracy to shower us with blessings, life does its best to provide us with a steady flow of healing shocks. But because it tends to err on the side of tenderness, its prods may be too gentle, allowing us to ignore them. Gradually, life will up the ante, trying to find the right mix of toughness and love, as it encourages us to WAKE UP!

But our addiction to the phantasmagoria is tenacious. The stream-of-conscious narratives and ever-bubbling fantasies, even when they're racked with torment and terror, are perversely entertaining. And so we may avoid responding to the kind shocks for so long that life finally has to resort to stronger medicine. Then we might get sick or lose our job or muck up our closest relationship.

It doesn't have to be that way. We could cultivate in ourselves a sixth sense for the wake-up calls life sends us. We might develop a knack for responding with agile grace to the early, gentler ones so that we wouldn't have to be visited by the more stringent measures.

There's also another possibility: With hungry intent, we could seek out and hunt down invigorating jolts. We wouldn't wait to have our asses kicked, but would kick our own asses -- over and over again, with a creative ingenuity.

Who knows? We might even master the art of inducing shocks that feel really good."


--Rob Brezsny, www.freewillastrology.com