Carol Miers Yoga

Trust your inner guide in 2017

I found old notes from different sources to be a goal for the New Year 2017.

There is a certain 'feel' to a healing energy or a vibration that you probably recognise. With yoga mantras, thoughts, and postures we try to nurture this to bring about a positive result; for us, for the world.

Writer Elif Shafak talks about Sufism and thinking with your heart.

Her Sufi quote "Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance" makes me think of the world of yoga that is expansive.
Yoga changes a person to reach beyond our self-concept, our limits of what we can achieve. It takes us beyond our own life.

The following extract from "The Forty Rules of Love," by Elif Shafak evokes an image of safety and protection.

"The world is erected upon the principle of reciprocity. Neither a drop of kindness or a speck of evil will be unreciprocated. Fear not the plots, deceptions or tricks of other people. If somebody is setting a trap, remember, so is God. He is the biggest plotter. Not even a leaf stirs outside God's knowledge. Simply and truly believe in that. Whatever God does, he does beautifully."

Here, the 'beyondness,' the knowledge that takes us beyond yourself is that there is a plan, a person is born with a soul plan. We may not know what it is unless we listen.

Change toute autour de nous en période d'incertitude alors que l'avenir est incertain qu'on doit s'interdire y penser presque - mettant votre confiance dans étant un plan global vivre fiducies à jour
live in trust
une stratégie du guérir, la conquête de la paix pour faire la paix, renouer avec l'humanité avec notre espoir, corp, et dès le début de cette aventure humaine à la source de l'existence:
Si nous surmontons notres peurs il y a un profond sentiment de bonté et pour la confiance.

So here we are with change all around us, in a period of great uncertainty for the future, it can be so worrying that we almost have to refrain from thinking of it at all. So why not place your trust in their being a plan ?
Live with a strategy for the victory of peace. To make peace, reconnect with humanity with our hopes that this is the beginning of a human adventure to the source of our existence. When we can do this we can overcome our fears and live in trust.

To know your own plan, begin to listen to the inner guide and heart, 'Tune in' to our plan. "To thine own self be true," we often hear.

This is not some 'wishy-washy' mumbo jumbo. Fears for the future can be very real.

As one friend said to me 'Intelligence without the connection to the heart is a dangerous thing'. But by meditating, we can listen also with our heart in order to make decisions that are not simply 'mental' but with a goal that includes other people. The inner plan is bigger than our mental life, our thoughts, our own will.

Maybe we all had our heart broken in 2017, personally or by world events. One simple restorative practice is "Meditation for Guidance". (en français en bas)

Believing in goodness (against all odds) comes from an action. We've seen this year how doing nothing is no longer an option. The future is in finding hope even by doing something small for someone else. Believing in the possibility of a different world comes along the way, by changing one part with your own positive vibration.

Yoga is something lived, you experience it by doing it. So is reaching out to our highest humanity by acting from the heart and the mind by being kind. Someone else said to me about recent world events: "This is like Samson, shaking the pillars of the temple, bringing it down on the Philistines."

For 2017 define what it is to be 'human,' by our actions. No need to sit and fear the chaos around. Instead, start this adventure to make the world one you want to live in, in peace. This is 'to reconnect with your humanity'
Every small act has a ripple effect that spreads outwards, whether it's giving someone a smile, caring about how someone else is doing, sending out a wish.

We don't see or understand everything that exists, we can sense some things but even then, tomorrow's not clear. Whether Marconi discovered radio or Chandra Bose, is not clear but now everybody knows about radio waves. After doing, we understand more what we couldn't see before.

At Plum Village Zen Buddhist community, Sister Chan Khong said on 24 Dec 2016 that they hold living in the present to be important because the present is the seed for the future, that is why you take your time with it.
Their teachings with the breath " I am aware of my inhale, I am aware of my exhale" is another way to listen for the answers inside yourself and trust them.

The Kundalini yoga organisation is Healthy, Happy, Holy (3ho),
here is their link to a Meditation for Guidance

Plum Village can best pass on their mindfulness teachings.

A direct link to Kriya for Guidance

Mantras for every Kundalini yoga class

At the beginning of a kundalini yoga class, to 'tune in', chant Ong Na Mo that calls upon our own inner wisdom as well as on the 'Golden chain' everyone who has practised taught or followed Kundalini yoga over the ages.

"Ong Na Mo c'est le mantra nous utilisons de faire une connection ou une liaison avec notre maître d'intérieur ou notre soi supérieur ou notre âme.

A little more on Ong Namo

"ONG NA MO GURU DEV NA MO is the mantra we use in Kundalini yoga to tune us to the frequency of our higher self or inner master. We begin each practice of Kundalini yoga with this mantra. This sacred mantra opens us to our spiritual channel. It also links us to all the spiritual masters who perfected this sacred science. By establishing a link with the Masters of Kundalini yoga, we are protected as we practice this sacred technology, as well as guided in our practice. The transmission of information and consciousness to students from Master teachers who have preceded us is referred to as the GOLDEN CHAIN. Yogi Bhajan, Master of Kundalini Yoga, who is the first to openly share this technology with the world, is a living connection to the golden chain."
En français
Yoga Kundalini: Mantras d'Introduction

A little more protection

After Ong Na Mo, you can optionally add the Protection mantra, Aad Guray Nameh, which means in Sanskrit language :
"I bow to the primal wisdom, I bow to true wisdom through all ages, I bow to the great unseen wisdom"

Download Mantra sheet

To end on a positive note

To close after the relaxation there's a song 'May the long time sun shine upon you,'
You might think it is simply a Hippie Dippie singalong but the reason is to send good wishes out to all.
Lastly, 'Sat Nam' called a Seed mantra, three times, sweetly from the heart.

View the song to end here
May the long time sun shine upon you, all love surround you and the true light within you guide your way on.
Que le soleil brille en tout temps sur toi - tout amour de toi - et la lumière pure dans ton coeur - guide ton chemin

S A T N A M

In the yoga philosophy the mind is not simply to be followed in all its brilliance in fact a wise thought is that the brain without engagement of the heart, is a dangerous thing. But in terms of mastering our mind, then it's like training a monkey. So a mantra as well as having a powerful resonance and historic spiritual basis, also helps guide thoughts to a positive wellbeing and are often used in meditations.

Akaal akaal undying for the future

In Kundalini yoga when someone dies you chant Akaal for their soul to merge with the infinite and to help those who have lost someone dear to them to let go.

Akaal, undying. or

timeless, immortal, non-temporal

It's actually in the Sikh tradition 

From thee I come, to thee I go....  Snatam Kaur to Honour the Departed

A french Kundalini yoga teacher wrote this when her grandmother died Akaal Siridev Kaur

In tribute to my father who died on 13th January 2016 we are going to raise the money to buy land for a Naivasha school for impoverished children, Monicah childrens home is a charity that he supported.

To find out more and to donate please visit  Let's buy land for Monicahs Childrens Home

et mes amis français un grand merci pour toutes vos messages

S'il vous plaît restez vous vous connecté et avec les vous chanterez l'akaal pour mon père et aider l'âme à aller vers la lumière, le Père, l'amour, l'unité. 

L'obseque va être à 14 h mercredi 27 à Kings Langley

 

 

Lait d'oré or Golden milk

( si quelqu'un veut corriger ma français je vais l'apprécier merci en avance)

What are the benefits of turmeric?

Qu'est ce les avantages de curcuma?

It's good for the joints

C'est bon pour les articulations

So - something to drink before you sleep

Puis quelque chose à boire avant tu dors

 

Golden milk       Lait d'oré 

Trouvez    Lait et miel et curcuma (de temps en temps l'huile d'amande)

Chauffé une tasse de lait

Ajouter une cuillère de café de curcuma et si vous avez  le même quantité de l'huile d'amande et du miel. C'est tout

 

Why Turmeric?  You can read more about it's properties here

Et pourquoi curcuma ? - le système immunitaire augmente et c'est une couleur très jolie !  Autres benefices ?

Vous pouvez lire plus de caractéristiques ou propriétés  ici

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yoga for kids, folding over a page

Aliza and the Mind Jar from Hover on Vimeo.

When kids start doing yoga they begin to turn their attention within themselves and away from everything attracting and stimulating their minds in the world around.

This can be a change as great as that between night and day. The night is a quiet inward time after which the dawn begins opening out into the activities of the day, where life is more outward.

A way for children to learn how to turn their attention, is for them to start exploring what is happening inside their body, physically.

As for example, is explained in the kid's yoga book, Fly like a Butterfly, using the metaphor of balloons. The kids think about their lungs as being like their favourite coloured balloon that fills and empties as they breathe. So they create an image of the activity of breathing.

In her book, Fly like a Butterfly Shakta Kaur Khalsa explains the idea of an inner voice by relating this to a wise teacher that lives inside us.

This inner voice is not always easy to listen to because the mind is not easy to manage. As most people have found if you try not to think about an elephant, the only thing you can think of is an elephant.

But in yoga as in other spiritual disciplines, there is a concept of the mind as like a little crazy monkey that leaps about causing a lot of trouble but can begin to be tamed and one way is by meditation.

To condense something that Perma Chodron, the popular Buddhist said in 5 Reasons to Meditate,>

"The Mind is very wild. The human experience is full of unpredictability and paradox, joys and sorrows, successes and failures.
...If we can train ourselves through meditation to be more open.. we can become more settled and relaxed."

Like those Christmas globes full of dancing tinsel, in the video above there is a globe called a Mind Jar that is used as a way for kids to visualise the accidental activities of their minds.

Being open to the good and bad of life can mean being open to a change in direction that might not be comfortable. What arrives you can accept (as a first step) rather than persuing what we want at all costs irrespective of who we hurt on the way to acquiring it.

So the kundalini yoga teacher, Chiv Charan Singh used to say that if you love your friend then you wish them a crisis (a chance to grow).

It can be a way into thinking that the depth or meaning of life often comes out of the difficult times, just as the wheat that grows may arrive in spite of weather conditions, as well as due to them.

Being open to what arrives is not simply wanting what is pleasurable but being able to transform the situation into something else. This can be via feeling it in your heart, rather than 'hardening' if something arrives that seems like bad luck.

This is the idea with Catalyst yogi Feeling stuck in life. The unblocking meditation is one way of sitting with the uncomfortable emotions and transmuting them. One of the sutras from Yogi Bhajan for the Aquarian age is, that there is a way through every block.

In the video about yoga for children and the programme in a school in New York the children are learning to look inside to see what they feel. They are becoming more conscious and self-aware.

In this yoga class in NY, in 'Aliza and the Mind Jar', the children can be absorbed simply watching the jar of tiny particles as in meditation someone might observe the thoughts of their mind labelling them as Pema Chodron says 'thinking'.

When or if you start your children doing yoga you could find yourself wondering how they could manage without it? How can a child grow up without having an anchor, a reference point inside? In this video the anchor is the heart or the belly, the centre of energy.

If you find it hard to find ways your young child can sit still this video is full of ideas. Then you can also ask them what they think is happening to their breakfast, to imagine the workings of their stomach and intestines, or are their any sounds?

You can build this up to one minute. And tell them to ignore any thoughts that might say 'This is boring I want to move,' but instead to try to feel their heart beat, with one hand on the heart or the wrist pulse or their breath.

Walking makes a comeback in our village

Every Sunday bar an occasional holiday, a small group of friends go for a walk.

It is always absolutely lovely. The idea came about after thinking of needing to get healthy, with something other than a yoga class for inspiration.

Now, a couple of years later this has become an adapting group of French, Dutch, British, German and Moroccan people, who share a few hours on a Sunday morning, walking, relaxing and shedding skins as it were, while tramping through different parts of the countryside.

As some walkers grew up here, they know routes and villages which have totally changed and they can explain why and how.

Others love reading maps, getting lost and then finding the route using local signs and a compass. The walk is not that often the one we set out with.
I take yogi tea and some snacks and usually others bring something to share.

It is something to really look forward to every week.

In a rural community there are not many activities and the winters are quiet, and compared to a city, isolating.

When we walk we also get any worries or troubles into perspective, they expand or evaporate into the open air, fortunately.

We often have dogs, all-sorts, so some are pedigree, like the two deerhounds alongside a terrier or the scruffs of Loubejac.

Everyone has got to know Iris, the border collie that lives on a chain in a local farm where the owner's claim, she is guarding the property.

However, she gets out on most of the walks, usually wildly excited about chasing every smell.

Sadly she can be a bit antagonistic with other dogs (after two years living on a chain) but she is great for pulling tired legs up a hill.

*Where Iris lives*

Les échauffements de kundalini yoga, 3 chaque jour

Une petite série facile, pour se réveiller, s'échauffer, nettoyer les tensions de la journée.

1. Posture de tension

: Sur le dos, jambes jointes, levées à 15 centimètres au-dessus le sol. Soulevez la tête et les épaules de 15 centimètres et regardez vos pieds. Dans cette posture, respiration longuement et profondément ou respiration du feu. Commencer 30 secs et augmenter à trois minutes. (Le centre d'énergie le nombril) Le bas du dos reste toujours sur le tapis. Si vous avez un problème du dos soutien avec les mains sous les fesses.

1. Ego-eradicateur

Assis jambes croisées Bras à 60°, pouces tendus, autres doigts repliés. Respiration de feu 1 à 3 mn ou respiration longuement et profondément. Pour finir : inspirer en joignant le bout des pouces au-dessus de la tête et en dépliant les autres doigts ; expirer en abaissant lentement les bras de chaque côté, comme pour balayer l'aura jusqu'au sol.

1. Etirement la colonne vertebrale

Assis, les jambes tendues devant, joignez les jambes ensemble, tenant toujours fermement les gros orteils. Inspirez en cambrant les reins, expirez en tirant la tête vers les genoux. Continuez 25 fois ce mouvement. Synchronisez la respiration. Pincer le gros orteils entre le pousse et l'index. Puis inspirez expirez penchez vous plus et tirez le mul bhand

Travaux de l'intérieur, salle de bain et schéma électrique, bathroom, electric schematic

Fifteen years ago, Jan and Frieda de Heer, renovated an old mill building, Le Moulin Bas, the lower mill, Loubejac, that had been abandoned for 63 years. They moved in and lived off-grid with photovoltaic, solar heated water and wood burner, systems until a few years ago when they paid for a new transformer to go onto a nearby pylon and now they feed electricity back to EDRF.

But in the 90s when Jan installed their photovoltaic system with power stored in submarine batteries, even the manufacturers of controllers had to design a new pcb to keep up with him.

Summer 2013, Frieda caught sight of two Spanish pottery bowls on my vide grenier/car boot stall. I inherited them from my mother, one was a large 'couscous' plate for feeding twenty, which at the moment I cannot use, and the other was a smaller version. Both matched one she already had. By the end of the day, I had promised to give them to Freida, she promised a meal in exchange. A year on she used them for her 60th celebration, and then we were invited for a meal, June 2014, under the shade of their parasol.

But I had a single focus, our house. More specifically, how to do our house electrics and bathroom.

Life here includes learning new trades whenever we need to, and so Craig had soon agreed to help Jan with pinning up building beams, in exchange for Jan's help with our bathroom.

Back in our eco house, a week later on 12th June, Craig and I heard a car, Jan in the driveway. We gave him coffee, biscuits, yellow courgettes and fresh peas from the potager, sitting surrounded by conduits or gaines carrying cables across the walls.

Jan crouched on the bare concrete floor, describing how to install an Inox/stainless steel shower bonde for a wet room. Then he pointed to the eaves, suggesting how to join waterproof plasterboard and beton cellulaire along the flat.

Otherwise it had been a week of wires, preparing the electrics, although we also finished painting the outside panelling with UV protection on Saturday, at 8 am before the sun so temperature rose.

As our evacuation pipes were put in with the fosse septique in March there had to be some guessing the right position.

“Who decided to put the out pipe from the shower here?” Jan said. “Is this bathroom going to be big enough? Can we move this out pipe?”

But if it did not go there we would have to rework the out pipe making more holes in the floor. “It will make a big hole,” Craig said “Yes, so? ” said Jan.

But Jan made an instant hit when he said he preferred hand sawing to creating dust with an electric saw.

“Why not leave the wall open at the top to let air pass by?” Jan said. “No,” said Craig. “Yes that's a good idea” I said. “No,” said Craig “OK, No.”

“You have to buy a square bonde for the drainage,” Jan said.

“The plumber should have put that in with the out pipe,” (Great)

“Who did it like that? “

“When you have bought the bonde then you can decide the floor height.”

“OK,” we said.

“Ring me when you have bought it.”

“OK.”

I had begun the electrics. In reality it was more difficult trying to imagine the house finished with sockets and lights than to read the book about how to do it. Well until I began drawing out diagrams which was very difficult as there was nobody to discuss it with. That changed when our neighbours had a couple of British visitors, including David an electrician who wanted to have a look. He said they have a 40A breaker for the instantaneous hot water heater.

Bertrand the electrician said we would not be allowed an instantaneous water heater in a house supposed to limit use of energy. However, Monsieur le Norme électrique has demanded a 32Amp special circuit, with 6 mm sq cables in spite of the fact we use a gas cooker, and that has a 32Amp disjoncteur or circuit breaker.

Monsieur le Norme having a monopoly over the minimum number of sockets and lights in a new house finally earned the title of dictator on a Napoleonic scale.

We bought the Inox bonde in a vist to the metropolis of Perigueux and took it to Jan the next Tuesday 1st July, just in time for an aperitif. In France everything you eat at 6pm is to encourage you to drink more, so lots of salty snacks, peanuts, olives.

Unlike Jan's visit to our house, dusty concrete floor and dusting down vegetables pulled from the vegetable patch, we sat around an immaculately presented table on bright yellow and white cushions, drinks served with a flourish.

The next day Craig bought more essentials, a W.C., sealant tape and cement for concrete blocks, beton cellulaire.

We had no idea when Jan would return. In fact it was not until 21 st July.

House electrics, said Lettice Leefe

You know when I was a kid I had a comic full of characters taking on unlikely adventures, getting up to tricks. There was

Lettice Leefe from Girl magazine and Minnie the Minx from the Beano and they somehow came out on top.

It is a bit like that here at the moment. Just today, two French men called showing me a copy of Revelations 21 from the Bible, talking about the apocalypse and conversely 'Paradis'. "I can look it up in English on the internet thank you very much," I said. But not fast enough as they mentioned sending around their 'brother' who speaks English.

I don't think the 'brother' would understand about the scrapes that Lettice Leefe got into. Then Minnie the Minx would probably have had a go at house electrics leaving a trail of destruction that should stay inside a comic. Quite enough apocalypse and revelations .

Here are parts of the first and second electrical schematic diagrams so far. I used symbols in the book, Electricity in your French house.

Getting an electrical connection

Every time I had mentioned the house domestic electrics, Craig suggested we could pay Bertrand the electrician, until the week we moved in and went for a meal with neighbours, Jan and Frieda de Heere. Jan assured Craig to believe it is not so hard to do it yourself. So now it is, “Get on with it, it is not difficult”!

We had finished the vapour barrier and the horizontal batons to which we can nail the plasterboard.

In March, our bottom line basic conditions for déménagement/moving into our chalet, dropped back to a survival level, one cold tap.

The second week in June had mostly been a week of wires, preparing the electrics and finishing painting the outside wood panels with UV protection on Saturday at 8am before the sun and temperature rose.

In reality, the difficulty was imagining the house finished with sockets and lights hanging neatly in the right places.

As the cabling hung from the walls, the drawings were on the desk, would Bertrand the electrician drop by to have a look before we seal it behind plasterboard?

He said he would, but it was when I was hanging out of the car window looking down on him outside his house.

On 10th July after waiting a week for Bertrand to call, I decided to post the wiring diagrams onto a French electrical discussion forum on the internet to check it with others. But a couple of hours later, passing Bertrand on the road, “Vas-tu venir?” I said. “1.30 today,” he said.

Relief after Bertrand arrived, silently as he has an electric van. After talking about bees and asian hornets, we looked at the wiring diagrams. “Très bon," he said. Only a couple of things to change, putting the lights on the same circuit breaker, disjoncteur of 16A (or two, one for each rail, so if one goes down you have another), and changing the bathroom lights.

Bathroom lights no earth in France

Although we have lights which are good for bathrooms, the IP44 standard, they have a possible earth connection. The French in general are much keener on Class 2 double insulation than the English, and Bertrand does not want the possibility of an earth wire on the lighting. Earth wire, water and electrical fault means a large possible current, he prefers to leave the live and neutral wires well isolated, then rely on a short circuit creating a differential between the two that can trip a circuit breaker.
So now the bathroom light is IP21 standard, more later.

On the French electric diagrams for the approving body, the Consuel you have to show the layout with the sockets and switches, but not the colours of the wires going to them. The colours can vary, but the neutral and earth must be consistent, as in the UK, blue and green/yellow.

Summer currents heavy air long days

For a while after we moved in, in June, every minute was about working to finish off the house but then suddenly it was clear we had to be earning, leaving the house for evenings and weekends.

It had taken its toll. In June, it was three months since we found we had leaking windows and only after five fix-it-with-mastic visits from Christian Brondel, and after we methodically targeted weak window leak points listed by an architect friend did we get it straight. After seeing Craig cautiously explore the state of the window frame following each downpour only to come back down-faced and frustrated, after dreading each visit, he finally smiled because the windows passed the hosepipe leak test. But it took three months.

Avoiding an apolcalypse but not finding 'Paradis'

Bertrand understands cats, it was he who told us, when ours, Mojo, was stuck in a tree, that he had never known a cat that went up not to come down by itself. He also knew we needed to ask questions.

As did a world ant expert and specialist on social insects, M. Darchen who I recently was telephoning repeatedly for more information. Every time she heard my voice she said; “Encore?” "You again?" I told Bertrand this story, he who had said to feel free to ask him any questions. On leaving, he could not help adding "Et je vais dire “Encore?” and when you ask them I also will say "What more questions?"

But what else but to be curious?

If A is for apocalypse, and B is for Bertrand, then C is for Curious cat, no doubt. A comic cat that chases her tail and we wonder how she will climb down from the places she explored.

Les Jachères the fallow fields of flowers

Back in March, Craig, Alex and Philippe Chaud finished their sanitation work and then Jerome had the last job of spreading the earth with the digger and putting in castine for a driveway. Then there were bare stretches of topsoil and as he left Jerome told Craig and I to plant seeds quickly, "Plant soon or the rain will come and wash away the top soil," he said.

We went to the local Coopérative agricole Sodepacc the land and garden suppliers and bought Royalfleur Jachère Campagne en Fleurs; wild flower meadow seeds and grass seeds and sowed the seeds the same day on the bare earth.

The jachère is a field left fallow when crops are rotated, our pack had flower seeds for les Centaurées Polka Dot ( blue, rose and purple), le Souci (orange and yellow), Le Zinnia Lilliput, le Lavatère (mulitcolour) and Cosmos.

Throwing the seeds onto the ground we found it a bit unreal, standing on a hilltop, two city dwellers, having a go, throwing out seeds, not really knowing what we were doing.

So when the wind blew the next day we thought they were lost. I said to my neighbour I was sorry that they might have wild flowers growing in their lawn, but Jean-Paul said he did not mind, his elderly mother had always planted flowers everywhere when she could only now she did not have the energy.

But although the seeds seemed to have gone, life grew below the surface and the shoots came through, so that somehow, from one seed, whole plants sprouted and clumps of flowers opened with more coming every day.

Some are stunted but still there is usually a bee on one of them.

We do have lots of flowers, especially over the sand filter bed area where they are waist high. When I am standing listening to the buzz of insects going from one flower head to the next I am very happy to be helping the bees.