Articles from Esther Myers Yoga Studio

Now that the summer's here, we may struggle to remain inert.* That's because doing nothing is questioned, judged, and generally frowned upon. In our hyperactive society, resting is non-productive. But it's essential to take a break, and summer is the perfect time, weather-wise. Heat helps slow us down. The world goes on, from one distressing event to another, and if we associate summer with holidaying, and sunning, we may find a way to experience a little mental relief and some physical unwinding.

Thich Nhat Hanh presents an interesting viewpoint. He says:

Walking meditation is walking ...

Much in the Hatha yoga world is static - it's about emphasizing postures, and we're often instructed to 'hold' them, ‘keep doing’, and 'stay' fixed and statue-like. It's impossible to do everything right, to keep anything perfect, and the attempt creates tension and discouragement. Instead, let's practise stillness, changing position, and movement, all with the attitude of warm, compassionate ease and awareness, noting and studying changes and always grateful for them. It's only with a soft, enquiring, open-minded approach to our bodies and thoughts that we experience the natural unfolding of the phenomenal world with surprise, learn something new, ...

City people, nowadays, seem more than ever dedicated to their gardens, allotments, outdoor spaces and public plantings. Gardening is fruitful, productive work. One must be watchfully calibrating the effect on the earth and the flora of sun, moisture, animals, other plants, blooming and dying. Harvest is a joyous and surprising time. And held within the ritual of harvest is the promise of the following year, a new year, a new generation of nurturing bounty.

Gardens feed us in every way: through fragrance and smell, colour, taste, sound, texture, shape, and chemistry. The awareness of levels of existence ...

Spring is celebrated with eggs all over the place, hidden in ponds, and burrows, and nests, and in human homes, boiled and coloured and painted, made of candy and chocolate, or dipped in salt. The egg is the most perfect structure and has almost infinite qualities seemingly in opposition, but ultimately, expressing integrity. Hardness and liquidity, adaptability and strength, separateness and integration. The egg shape is an artist's delight, as well, and a beachcomber's, and a builder's. Any smooth round shape can be soothing to see, to hold, and to contemplate in meditation, because the associations are many.

That the ...

A guest is an easily recognized symbol of spiritual presence in Eastern mystical story, koan, and poetry and being a good host is considered a sacred duty. Welcoming, showing kindness, and demonstrating hospitality to strangers is paramount in many cultures. Actually, how one treats a guest - 'Atithi Devo Bhava' (guest is God) - is a foundational and universal theme in stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the Bible to Greco-Roman tales, the Odyssey, to Sir Gawain, Shakespeare, and the Grimm brothers.

Sometimes, a god decides to test someone's temperament and attitude by disguising themself ...

The Nandi statue outside the Sri Chamundeshwari Devi Temple on Chamundi Hill in Mysore, India, is a marvellous creature. He’s massive, he’s meticulously bathed and cared for, he’s awesome to look at and soothing to touch. Nandi is associated with Shiva, and that combination of Bull and Shiva speaks of the power of nature in the spring - fabulous, shimmery, light green growth, fecundity and birth, overflowing streams, hot days/cool nights, and gusty, impetuous winds. Nandi is even more - his immense strength symbolically supports the four directions of the earth and he has command over all four elements ...

The dancer’s work is vibrant, athletic, and precise, yet to the viewer, it’s free and though powerful, speaks of masterful ease. It’s quite difficult to entertain the thought that the purpose of life is contained within dance, but in many cultures, dance is the ultimate expression of union with the divine.

Ecstatic dance is the individualized route to circumventing the intellect and entering another realm of thought or non-thought. Sufi whirling is a deliberate, structured repetition of a circular action in order to experience an in-body/out-of-mind state more attuned to the inner vibrations and the spiritual source. Spontaneous ‘shaking’ and ...

Welcome Chinese New Year, the year of the horse. This year, this world will present increasingly more difficult tasks to perform and endure, our ‘horsepower’, more than ever, required to sustain us and our communities. Horses represent a 'call to action', and this is a 'fire' horse year, the horse that embodies intense energy and rapid change - no better time to mobilize strength and commitment than now.

Horses are known for fierce independence, yet they're loyal, social, and form lifelong emotional bonds with each other. They understand group dynamics and necessary cooperation amongst all members. 'Horses are herd animals, ...

Heads are universally revered in part because they enclose and shield the brain - and we, as a society, are very brain oriented! Similarly, we protect our heads with toques, scarves and shawls, from the cold, from injury, from prying eyes. We also adorn ourselves with headdresses, hair pieces, fascinators, and crowns. The intellect resides in the brain and we think the mind lives there, too (although in the ancient past, the heart was the mind's dwelling place). Many cultural groups believe the innermost essence of a person is in the head. Certainly, the senses are there, perception is ...

The coming of Spring is Nature's miraculous awakening expressed by a warmer sun, evidence of green, and birds building nests 'from coast to coast'. Like elementary schoolchildren, list signs of spring in your neighbourhood - are the red winged blackbirds back in their summer home along the railway tracks? Have you spotted red tailed hawks, floating on the updrafts? Plangent bird cries are a universal wake up call in song and story, dispelling darkness and despair and signalling the arrival of hope and illumination.

As if in perpetual winter, much of the time we are oblivious, we're ...

Act, allow; grip, let go: hold, release. Let’s take a closer look at one of the most challenging of many human dilemmas.

Holding a posture is what we are expected to do in yoga schools that prize accomplishment, where striving is a virtue. We may not realize or want to acknowledge that physical, material progression depends upon time and space and ceases eventually. Living includes undoing - we all face decrepitude and loss. Determining what is possible to retain, keep close, even develop and what deliberately to set outside, put away, give away, shapes our thinking and ...

In Cree, trees are 'who' not 'what'.

- Tomson Highway

We are profoundly attached to trees. We were arboreal creatures, after all. We also look like trees - sturdy layered spine/trunk, deeply earthing toe/roots, long demonstrative arm/branches, dexterous nimble finger/twigs, blooming flower faces.

Trees support, nourish, oxygenate and hydrate. They sing, soothe, shelter and hide. They grant focus, speak of longevity and balance the landscape. Trees symbolize evolution, potential, self-renewal and creativity. They appear dead and as if by miracle, come vibrantly alive. They are bridges from the unplumbed crystalline centre of the ...

There are many songs written with the subject matter of spring, 'It might as well be Spring', 'They say it's Spring', 'You must believe in Spring', in which the singer's voice is light and soft and spring is associated with tulips, robins, love and yearnings of the heart, melancholy equally with hope and gladness.

'You must believe in Spring and love…

And trust it's on its way

Just as the sleeping rose

Awaits the kiss of May...'

- Bergman, Bergman, Legrand

But as spring rolls around, we ...