Gregory Ormson

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.

YogaInspirational number 54 in Yogi Times “9 Ways to Return Yoga’s Gift.”

April 2017

https://www.yogitimes.com/article/what-you-give-to-yoga-

Yoga gives each of us more than we can repay. It’s the reason we continue our practice and make it a long-term life discipline. Yoga creates new space and provides the impetus for us to search for our true self. It has our backs and has fixed our spines.

Yoga balances our perceptions and teaches us to look to the horizon even when we resist and find it would be easier to look down and fall flat upon the mark of our diminished vision.

Yoga levels our judgments to a place of calm detachment; but also fills us with courage to say and do the right thing (on and off the mat) as often as we can. Yoga moves us to meet,  greet, and bow to worlds upon worlds, and that is why those of us practicing yearn to find our limits, breathe deep to fully inherit the spiritual science of health, and release everything into the realm of OHM.

What do you give to yoga?

Every yogi answers in their own way, but here’s one yogis answer:

I give my pain.

Perhaps it’s a surprising answer, and this is open to misinterpretation. But yes, I give yoga pain. I know the pain I need to release, and I know from experience that yoga will keep teaching me how to release it. It’s a pain I hold in my being, in my body, and it’s the pain I hold for the world.

I give my love for family and friends.

I see them aching not just from the slings and arrows of misfortune, and the lance of gossip and backbiting envy.… read more...

Yoga Inspirationals #34 Asana Journal

STORAGE WARS AND YOGA’S EMOTIONAL RESCUE

http://www.asanajournal.com/storage-wars-and-yogas-emotional-rescue/

A reality TV show on the Arts and Entertainment channel is called, “Storage Wars.” In it, a group of bidders look for five minutes at the contents of abandoned and locked storage units, but they can’t go into them. After competitive bidding, the winner is declared the owner of everything in that locker. They rush in with great hope and begin looking through boxes, drawers, and accumulated piles of mishmash.

Sometimes they find valuable coins or artwork, antique toys, or newspapers; however, their newly-bought pile could be old tee-shirts, magazines, or dirty linens and parking tickets, vestiges of life in transit. More often than finding gold, the winning bidder digs up a clutter of left over’s from a human pack-rat.

Storage Wars is popular because it’s a modern day version of the mother-lode gold strike. And in rare cases, the winning bidders of Storage Wars make hundreds of thousands in profit. One discovered Spanish gold coins dating back to the 16th Century valued at half a million dollars, another winner found a model grand piano, and a third uncovered classic toys worth nearly $13 thousand.

CONTINUED IN ASANA JOURNAL.   http://www.asanajournal.com/storage-wars-and-yogas-emotional-rescue/

 … read more...

DRUMS: The Language of Time (an excerpt).

Five days ago, I went to a drum circle attended by about 50 people. It brought me back to my essay in progress.

2 drum

Drumming takes place through the night until a last tired thumper wanders away in the fog of exhaustion. Their fully-charged reptilian brain shifts to the goal of finding their tent. Some can’t walk away, so they fall asleep on the ground near the fire as the sun rises, lighting up the dawn as shadows drop down from the tree tops.

Taking a path through the woods and away from the drum fire is not new, but our caves are. Tents of orange, green and blue cover the grounds. In the dark, glowing candles from within make them look like Japanese prayer lanterns lit in remembrance of ancestors.

These drummers demonstrate what the new physics teaches: We are all connected. In the drum circle, there is something mystical and unintelligible to senses, but the drummers understand and speak the language of time. They know this language. They’ve learned it by listening.

Listening, according to some experts, is the “most often used but least often practiced communication skill.” But something happens when listening to drums that is more than the sum total of communication. In his fine novel of India, Return to the Source,  Lanza Del Vasto once wrote:

“The finest and most complete instrument they have is the drum. It is the voice of all speech, the Aum of all hymns, the          foundation of all music. The drum is the bond between the musician’s voice and his body, between his body and the              music to which it gives the earthly consistency of the steps it raises.”… read more...

EXCERPT from YOGA INSPIRATIONALS

DAY 17. Everything Changes: A Yoga Parable

mindThe people were fueled by energy drinks, but ripe with anxiety and unexamined ambition. The land was drunk on money and the illusion of freedom fired their imaginations. The eight limbs twisted in the wind of post-modernism and creative chaos.

In time, yoga prospered and many realized the teachers brought good medicine. It seemed to help prisoners, alcoholics, those suffering pain, and even angry youth. But some feared its power – especially its counsel to sit alone in silence.

In the counsel of quiet, someone passed a message about movement’s medicine and whispered that diversity is a source for creativity and road to enlightenment. A vision came forth of illusions in misdirected ambition, in Theodrama, and in the construction of culture and its false prophecies of comfort through technology and convenience.

*          *          *

Then someone at the ashram read a passage from Shelly, and a guru wept:

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass

 Stains the white radiance of eternity.

The gurus didn’t understand what had happened, and while nobody claimed credit, people awoke to radiance within. Westlanders didn’t want gurus. They didn’t read books. But they went to their mats and a world opened like the many petals of the lotus in a soft rain, and a light from the crown of their heads went out to eternity.

MEDITATION

Every happening great and small

Is a parable whereby God speaks to us

And the art of life is to get the message.

–Malcolm Muggeridge… read more...

Yoga Inspirationals #31 Asana Back to the Innocent Age

Tika

Link: http://asanajournal.com/asana-back-to-the-innocent-age

Asana Back to the Innocent Age

On an overcast February day, my move toward balasana (child’s pose) began easily enough; “breathe into your truth, breathe into your center,” my teacher said.

The words moved me like someone taking my hands and gently walking me backward into a calm refreshing lake. I would have welcomed this after a slow and voggy day; I mean a day full of vog – volcanic gas cloud residue – suffocating everyone within miles of my writing desk. Things just weren’t happening. I blamed the vog.

Like anyone, I’m involved in making a living and positioning myself for security. I hope for happiness and peace for myself and my extended family. And like others, I want to register my mark in the world and hope my contributions help move the human family in a compassionate direction. I’ve had a good education and learned my civics lessons, so I also embrace my role in helping to alleviate suffering of those less fortunate than myself.

In my best efforts to make a mark in the short time I have to walk the Earth, I’m required to sift through ever-increasing complex data and stimuli that comes to me through my senses. Like all yogi’s living in a material world, I’m obliged to select what I’ll take-in or reject based on my priorities and values.

HARD CHOICES IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD

A yogi’s awareness of the world’s interconnectedness leaves him/her with sometimes agonizing choices over what course of action is least-harmful. One approach to this post-modern dilemma is to adopt the ethical creed of non-malificence, or do no harm, a part of the Hippocratic Oath.… read more...

Latest article in Asana Journal

The Missing Link

On Feb. 3, 2014 my first yoga article was published in TheYogaBlog. Now, nearly two years to the day, the 30th is published in Asana Journal. Thanks for reading folks, and please pass these on.

You may not do yoga, but perhaps someone you know does or maybe someone you know is thinking about it. Right now my literary agent, Elizabeth Kracht, has my full yoga book and will be shopping it soon to publishers.

Put your best wishes forward for this effort not for me, but for words that will encourage many people to try something new for their health and well-being.

Thanks and ALOHA.

Here’s the link www.asanajournal.com/the-missing-link/

… read more...

Making Contact, excerpt from #YogaInspirationals

contact photo  Yoga improves brain and bodily intelligence though its attentive repetition. It’s the discipline of one asana at a time. In the midst of each asana, our brains search to interpret the intelligence of our bodies and picks up the yogi’s growing ability to learn from the soles of their feet, from the twists of their spines, from the mindful placement of their palms and fingers.

Focus on the contact figure opens the mind and allows for it to receive the body’s intelligence, and in doing so, the soles of our feet become like a microchip feeding information to the mother board. It’s stunning to think that this is a two-way communication and that our brains are enriched by feedback from the soles of our feet. Breathe deep the gathering wisdom and learn what your bodily contact is teaching

 

Think of standing on your mat in class holding tadasana, mountain pose, and that your mat is the entire focus of your attention. In your mind, shift your awareness to the place where the soles of your feet make contact with your mat and pretend as if that place is all that exists. Your entire world is made up of the space that forms two outlines on the bottom of your feet. This is what Gestalt calls the figure, and everything else – except that one patch where your two feet make contact – is the back ground/landscape of perception and awareness.

Now imagine standing in mountain pose, lifting one foot from your mat. With one foot lifted, only a small patch of earth/foot contact is directing your life and that one patch is the outline of your right foot.… read more...

Yoga’s Storage Wars

Lotus pose jpg  Perhaps you’ve watched the A&E Network’s show, Storage Wars. In it, a group of people look for five minutes at the contents of a storage unit from its periphery, but cannot enter the unit. Then they bid to own the unexamined contents inside. The winner is the highest bidder, and his/her reward is ownership of everything in that unit.

The highest bidder might find valuable coins or artwork, antique toys or newspapers. In rare cases, they find instruments.  However their newly-bought storage unit could be filled with dirty tee-shirts accompanied by soiled linens and parking tickets, vestiges of life in transit. More often than finding gold, the winning bidder finds the clutter of unresolved issues and remnant droppings of a human pack-rat.

The show is popular because it’s a modern day version of a mother-lode gold strike. In a few cases, bidders have made hundreds of thousands in profit. One bidder discovered Spanish gold coins, some dating back to the 16th Century, valued at half a million dollars. Another winner found a model grand piano and a third stumbled into classic toys worth nearly $13 thousand.

In our yoga bodywork, it’s not long before we are like most of those treasure seekers who run smack dab into unwanted leftovers and are faced with cleanup. It’s widely understood in our yoga communities that our bodies are storage units of past traumas. This includes mental and psychological trauma along with physical injuries.

Dr. David Berceli describes his work treating “deep chronic tension created in the body during a traumatic experience or that has accumulated from prolonged stress.”… read more...

Best Bookstore Sign

Tourist guides say there is not much to see and to call Waiohinu a “town” is being generous. But there are incredible vistas from which to view the ocean when driving the hilly roads above this once thriving sugar cane community.

b store sign5

Its claim to fame is that Mark Twain once planted a Monkeypod tree there. Some people say a second or third generation offshoot of that tree remains standing; maybe so, but his dispatches written to the Sacramento Daily Union during his travels on the Big Island in 1866 are singing literature and reportage. Twain wrote:

“In this rainy spot trees and flowers flourish luxuriantly, and three of those trees- two mangoes and an orange- will live in my memory as the greenest, freshest and most beautiful I ever saw – and withal, the stateliest and most graceful. One of those mangoes stood in the middle of a large grassy yard, lord of the domain and incorruptible sentinel against the sunshine. When one passed within the compass of its broad arms and its impenetrable foliage he was safe from the pitiless glare of the sun – the protecting shade fell everywhere like a somber darkness.”

Twain was here, and maybe that’s why the Waiohinu bookstore lives on. I’ve posted a few photos of the bookstore. Its only open from 10 – 3 on Wednesdays, so there’s a short window to explore this relic. I think the photos speak of what this bookstore is not and what might be . . .

… read more...

Arc of the Covenant: The Promise of Yoga

If one strikes a covenant with yoga, they do not inherit guarantees and neither are there predictable outcomes; but a time-tested truth demonstrates if the yogi bears their weight of the oath, the yield will be rich. Yoga will always do its share in this bendable arc of change.… read more...

MUSIC It’s an Endless Summer on the Dance-Floor

[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form] The Endless Summer band-members grew up with vinyl. They remember hits of the 60’s though 90’s and they rock them. “I guess you could best categorize our music as Beatles to Doobies,” said Kurt Jarvis, lead guitarist and band leader.

Going to an Endless Summer show, listeners will hear some bluegrass and country with the band’s rock staple, and an occasional surprise like “Sweet City Woman,” with Jarvis on banjo. “Our music is an eclectic mix of recognizable songs and dance tunes,” he said.

Other numbers that show the band’s appeal are called “medium paced rockers,” by Jarvis. These are former hits like, “Why Can’t We be Friends,” by War; “Hummingbird,” by Seals and Crofts, and “Draggin’ the Line,” by Tommy James.

“We don’t do any Reggae because there are a lot of other bands here that do a good job with that and it’s just not part of our background,” Jarvis said.

Endless Summer formed in Kona when Jarvis’ friend from Oregon, Russ Kendall, moved to Ocean View in 2012. “We had played together in 1974,” Jarvis said, “and when Russ arrived in Hawaii, we started amassing equipment. My wife, Serena (Jarvis) started singing with us a couple years ago, and then we all decided to be a band,” he said.

Two years later, they are a band and their name, Endless Summer, captures the essence of what they want audiences to experience when they play. Jarvis said he would be happy if audience members came to their show and said, “Wow, those guys are having a lot of fun up there, let’s do it too.”… read more...

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