DAILY To expand daily life and make it more livable, I vote for ritual, instead of chores. Or, chores as loving ritual. I vote for celebration instead of speed and mayhem, or… celebration of speed. Being caught in the crosshairs of too many chores and too little time is the crazy-making struggle.
In olde days, ritual referred to religious rites within a church. Today, everything can be made sacred with intention. We need this. Faced with a world moving in machine gun rapidity, we need comfort and order and beauty in small, repeated moments like beads run through fingers, or one minute of silent sitting in a mudra. There are a thousand ways to light our erratic, unfathomable path.
It’s the body that craves simple ceremony. Ritual can be a mindless reflex that sets emotion into motion, or it can be a profoundly thoughtful, attentive effort, connecting mind & body in profound contemplation. Both serve. How many layers of psyche are affected when we draw 1000 circles in sand, polish 90 stones, Practice 108 Sun Salutations, sing 60 chants in walking vigil?
We are better fed when intention and sacred time are welcomed and set aside. Our scrawny, puny lives take on luxuriance and luster when ritual oils are poured over desiccated skin. Perhaps it’s a return to rich and fabled childhoods and the ceremonies of bedtime; old books, hot chocolate in marshmallows, and lullabies. If you didn’t have that, then give it to yourself now. It is the hour to make profane, irreverent days high and holy.
Asana: The joy of repeating Sun Salutations at dawn. A remarkable way to open a day, especially in the first light of Brahma Mutra, a sacred time when renewing life is offered time & again.
Health Notes: Suns open lungs and heart, set re-newed intentions, physically stretch hamstrings and groin muscle, strengthens arms and back. The entire body is nurtured.
Astrology Notes: Gemini energy, like Vata and Pitta, needs to cultivate quiet, repetitive rituals to keep the lively airy and erratic energies on track. Part of Gemini’s work is to move out into many territories, exploring and questioning to trade ideas and the relationships between all things. The mind constantly darts, invents, and examines, and therefore needs rejuvenation in quiet, simple repetitive practices.
Ayurvedic Notes: In Ayurveda medicine routine plays a highly important, healing role for all the doshas. Simple morning regimes follow the flow of energy in the body and in the environment, Basics practices such as: wake before sunrise, excrete waste, cleanse teeth, and scrape tongue, drink a glass of warm water to cleanse kidneys and large intestine, self massage with oils, then bathe. Do simple Pranayama/breathing exercises, a short Practice, and meditation, followed by breakfast. High & holy out of simple and practical.
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