yoga with jeff
Based in household yoga practices of more than 40 years, Jeff’s yoga work will include group sessions, and additional content not focused exclusively on posture. That additional content will include 9 Minutes or LESS, and will include THE PRANA PROJECT. Jeff will share therapeutic, maintenance, and training that alternate between the Playful (Lila) and the Heroic (Vira). Look for an occasional Book Review, Interview, Creative Adventure, or Personal Note in realms practical and imaginative.
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Jeffry Farrell / yoga with jeff@jeffryfarrell
April 01, 2024
Injuries as Learning, Recovery, Healing: Nerd Warning
A framework for yoga practices can be simplified by the guideposts of Shtira, Sankalpa, Sukha, and Dukha — Sanskrit terms I’ve mentioned in various videos over the years.
Today, let’s look at the word and the experience of Dukha which Kumar said is an “honest teacher.” With a good attitude his comment is both funny and stern. Yet while bound in Dukha, one might be inclined to say, “fukha dukha” because the word “dukha” signifies a network of meaning centered on pain. Yes, pain is an honest teacher. Dukha is pain, resistance, stress, suffering, dis-ease, the difficult, the unpleasant, the miserable.
Nerd Warning
According to the University of Indiana linguistics scholar Christopher Beckwith, the origin of “du-“ in the ancient Aryan language meant “bad, difficult.” And, to simplify the changes language undergoes over time, the original root verb form “stha” which meant “to stand,” became phonetically changed to “kha,” which also meant “ether, space, sky, empty, hole.”
Thus, the ancient term “dustha” which meant “an uneasy stand, imbalanced, unsettled” came to be spoken as “dukha” with associated meanings. One of those meanings referred specifically to the “bad axle hole” of an ox cart. Dukha meant real problems and potential danger for the ox cart driver, his passengers and load.
Dukha becomes a valuable reference for us today as it regards both an ability to maintain a yogic practice, and an ability to recognize and recover from “bad axle holes” of life we might know as illness, injury, or setback.
Yoga Practice is Personal
So, your practice revolves around your life, your dispositions, talents, desires, strengths and weaknesses. Mine, too, of course, so we come to the meat of my current interest — recovering from “rolling” on a ju-jitsu mat.
Please check out these photos and look at Part Two.
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Picking up hand balances again after years away.
What is needed for hand balances? How do they build? How do we enter and exit? Where is shtira?
Beginning again means asking familiar questions and looking for the answers in the posture, observing what doesn’t work, and what does. Learning twice, and twice again in Beginners Mind.
00:00:52
Morning practice, Wake Up With Yoga
I recorded this last night because I must be on the road during our usual time. Here we observe three planes of functional spinal movement with breath. I invite you to recall warm-ups of this past week and to practice from whatever you can recall. If you cannot recall, then reboot yr favorite livestream recording and use that.
This week marks the start of a new endeavor at the SAMURAI INTI Martial Arts Studio in Frisco. I’ll be teaching i a group class there at Sendai Sebastian Mejias ‘ dojo on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
00:08:18
Friday Livestream 4th of July
Although not a true morning wake up, the song remains the same.
Today’s practice is my first intentional movements with breath. Three planes, lymphatics, joints. That’s the way we address the experience written in our bodies like physical graffiti. Through our intentional breath and movement we recognize our state of being dazed and confused. We can move with grace through good times bad times. We awaken our bodies like houses of the holy. Not to say that our practice is a stairway to heaven, but we cannot hope to get clear and strong if we try to sneak in through the out door.
You don’t need to go down to the seaside, or over the hills and far away, or even to california. Practice wherever you are in the light.
And after practice? It’s a celebration day. Eat a Tangerine, I will listen LOUD to a British rock n roll band who made their fortune in the U.S. of A. I will boogie with Stu and my black dog. These are dancing days. Led Zep is dead, long live Led Zep....
