Posts Tagged ‘yoga’

Yoga and Prayer: The Psalms of Ascent

September 11th, 2008

For yoga today I did a sequence of poses and had a verse from the Psalms of Ascent that went with each pose. We got into the pose and then I said the verse that went with it. A lot of the poses were repeated throughout the sequence and each time the same verse was read with them. For me there is something very powerful about hearing a verse and also feeling that verse as your body is in a specific position and having that same experience over and over again. In a way it’s like the verse begins to sink into more than just your conscious thoughts, it starts to sink into your muscle memory and your psyche.

For music today I used the cd, Rounds, by Four Tet

So, here’s what we did today:

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Upward Salute - “I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Standing Forward Bend - “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy”

Low Lunge (right leg back) - “I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven.”

Downward Facing Dog (bend each knee one at a time like you are walking in down dog) - “Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways.”

Low Lunge (left leg back) - “I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven.”

Plank Pose - “If the Lord had not been on our side – let Israel say – If the Lord had not been on our side…”

Child’s Pose - “…the raging waters would have swept us away.”

Upward Facing Dog - “We have escaped like a bird. The snare has been broken, and we have escaped.”

Downward Facing Dog - “Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Standing Forward Bend - “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy”

Upward Salute - “I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Warrior I (right foot back) – “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mountain Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Warrior I (left foot back) – “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mountain Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Warrior II (right foot back) – “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mountain Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

Extended Side Angle Pose (right hand over head) - “The Lord watches over you – the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Warrior II (left foot back) – “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mountain Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

Extended Side Angle Pose (left hand over head) – “The Lord watches over you – the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Wide Legged Forward Bend - “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Tree Pose (right leg up) - “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’ Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Tree Pose (left leg up) – “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’ Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Chair Pose - “My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

Mountain Pose - “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Hero Pose - “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”

Bharadvaja’s Twist (to both sides) – “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”

Seated Forward Bend - “Put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.”

Bridge Pose - “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.”

Half Shoulder Stand - “The Lord will keep you from all harm – he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forever more.”

Corpse Pose – “May the Lord bless you from Zion all the days of your life… Peace be upon [you].”


Peace be with you.

If you live in Prague and you are at all interested in joining us in this Prayer and Yoga experiment please let me know :)

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Yoga and Prayer: Breathe

September 4th, 2008

So, off and on for the past few weeks I have been doing yoga and prayer with a few other women (see Here for more on the original idea). I am still figuring out how to do this and what’s really going to work but it’s been a wonderful experiment for me so far. Over the next few months I will be leading yoga and prayer for women (everyone’s invited, so if you are in Prague and would like to be included in this please let me know). I would like to share on this blog what we do each week and a little about how it goes. So, here’s a little about today…

Today’s yoga time ended up just being me and my good friend, Carrie, which was a little disappointing for me, but God knows what we each need. So, I stuck with what I had planned and we had a nice time of reconnecting with our breath, our bodies and our God.

I started the yoga time by sharing what I’ve been calling God this week, “God who is”. That’s who I needed God to be this week… I needed him to just exist, to be. I needed to know and experience that God is. I needed Him to be with me and in me and with those I love and in them.

Then we watched the Nooma video, Breathe, letting the thoughts sink into our minds and our bodies with each breathe. Breathing in the blessing at the end, “May you come to see that God is here right now with us all of the time. May you come to see that the ground you are standing on is holy. And as you slow down, may you become aware that it is in ‘Yod,’ ‘Heh,’ ‘Vav,’ ‘Heh’ that we live and we move and we breathe.”

After that we did this yoga routine with a the cd Sigur Ros ( ) for music. (Disclaimer: I made this one up and I have no formal training or teacher’s certification. I researched the poses and did the best I could putting together a sequence but if you choose to use this sequence on your own do so knowing that it was not made by a certified professional):

Skull Brightener Breath

Mountain Pose

Upward Salute 

(Repeat mountain pose and upward salute 3 times – inhaling as you come into upward salute and exhaling as you come back into mountain pose)

Downward facing dog

Upward facing dog 

(Repeat downward facing dog and upward facing dog 3 times – moving smoothly from one to the other as you breathe)

Chair pose  

Upward Salute on an inhale

Mountain pose on an exhale   

Eagle Pose (without crossing the legs)

Upward Salute on an inhale

Mountain pose on an exhale  

Garland Pose 

Upward Salute on an inhale

Mountain pose on an exhale   

Gate Pose

Camel Pose

Hero Pose

Lion Pose

Childs pose                                                  

Bharadvaja’s Twist to the right

Staff pose

Bharadvaja’s Twist to the left

Seated forward bend

Bound Angle pose 

Revolved Head-to-Knee Pose with right leg straight

Head-to-knee forward bend with right leg straight 

Half Lord of the Fishes Pose with right leg over left

Staff pose

(Repeat last 4 poses on left side)

Fish pose 

Pull knees to chest and rock back and forth

Happy Baby Pose

Corpse pose

While lying in corpse pose I read this quote from the book With Open Hands by Henri Nouwen:

“The man who lives from God’s breath can recognize with joy that the same breath sinks into the lungs of his fellowman, and that they are both drawing from the same source. At this mutual realization, the fear of another disappears, a smile comes to the lips, the weapons fall, and one hand reaches out for the other. He who recognizes the breath of God in another can truly let another enter his life, too, and can receive the gifts which are given to him.”

Peace be with you.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Lessons from Yoga: Savasana and Letting Go

August 14th, 2008

Savasana, or Corpse Pose, is a yoga pose in which you lay down on your back with your arms resting comfortably at your side. You lie on the floor and allow all of the muscles in your body to relax. It is usually practiced at the end of a yoga session as a time to allow your body and mind to settle after practicing yoga. It is a restorative and rejuvenating pose. To me it is also a pose of surrender.

I have a difficult time surrendering. I struggle with letting go. I have a hard time relaxing. Savasana is difficult for me. To lay on the floor, open and vulnerable to God, to relax and allow my mind to quiet and my body to rest in God’s presence is not easy for me.

Lately I feel like God has been calling me to live more open handedly. To not cling to my own imagined control but to let go and allow Him to work. I have especially been challenged with this in my prayer life.

Sue Monk Kidd writes in When the Heart Waits about how there are two levels of letting go.

“First, there is the active work we do with the conscious, surface attachments in our life – those patterns we recognize and can campaign against… to let go of these ‘you pray and suffer and hang on and give things up and hope and sweat.’ … The second level deals with deeper, more unconscious patterns – what Merton called our ‘secret attachments.’ To uproot these he cautioned that ‘we need to leave the initiative in the hands of God working in our souls either directly in the night of aridity and suffering, or through events and other men.’… We let go our letting go. We stop struggling, stop saying, ‘I will let go, I will, I will.’ Instead, having done all we can, we allow God to work directly on the more secret and deeply ingrained attachments we have to self. We allow god to release us through the experiences, encounters, and events that come to us.”

I’ve been thinking about that lately, the deep letting go that comes by letting go of letting go – The rest that comes from allowing God to work change in us instead of just striving to change ourselves. I want to be able to rest in God and allow him to do his work within me, but it’s difficult for me. I want to control even the process of letting go of control. I want to hold on to my old self, my old life, my old ways, my hidden sins, and bad habits. I want to come to God and with open hands allow him to do his work within me, but I also want to run away from the transforming work He is doing in me. I want to let go but I am scared.

“It seems that at the moment of our greatest possibility, a desperate clinging rises up in us. We make a valiant attempt to ‘save’ our old life. In the words of Daniel Day Williams: ‘We fear it is all we have. Even its sufferings are familiar and we clutch them because their very familiarity is comforting… Yet so long as we aim at the maintenance of this present self, as we now conceive it, we cannot enter the larger selfhood which is pressing for life’.”

Then yesterday I started to again read With Open Hands by Henri Nouwen. The first chapter is entitled With Clenched Fists and it talks about how prayer begins by opening our clenched fists to God.

“Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow the other to enter into the very center of your person, allow him to speak there, allow him to touch the sensitive core of your being, and allow him to see so much that you would rather leave in darkness… to let him into that place where your life gets its form, that is dangerous and calls for defense… The man invited to pray is asked to open his tightly clenched fists… But who wants to do that?… you don’t want to let go. You hold fast to what is familiar, even if you aren’t proud of it. When you want to pray, then, the first question is: How do I open my closed hands? Certainly not by violence. Nor by a compulsive decision. Perhaps you can find a way to prayer in the words of the angel to the frightened shepherds, the same words the risen Lord spoke to his disciples: ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Don’t be afraid of him who wants to enter the space where you live, or to let him see what you are clinging to so anxiously… Don’t be afraid to offer your hate, bitterness, disappointment to him who reveals himself as love.”

Today as I finished my yoga practice and lay in savasana (corpse pose) I heard the gentle whisper, “don’t be afraid, let go, just let go and be with me.” And as I lay in that open posture, spread out before God with nowhere to hide, I felt my heart and my body surrender and relax and if only for a moment I let go of my grasping for control. I think that God had been trying to take me to this place for a while now but it wasn’t until I took my body to a place of open relaxation that my heart and soul could follow.

Lord, I need that. Lord Jesus, I know I need moments when I fight to become the person you want me to be and when I fervently and actively pray for the things you have placed on my heart, but I also need moments when I just rest in you. When I let go of trying to become and let go of the hidden places in my life I try to keep hidden, and let go of the desires and control I try to seek after in my life. I need times when I am just with you, Jesus. When I open myself to you and surrender completely to you. Lord, I am yours. And I have no life apart from you.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

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Lessons from Yoga: Warrior Poses

August 1st, 2008

Ok, so the other day I realized that I almost never do Warrior poses in my personal yoga practice and I asked myself why. Why do I avoid Warrior Poses? So, I started thinking about this and it was really revealing for me. Here’s what I came up with…

First, I don’t do these poses, or when I do them I don’t hold them for very long, because my legs are actually fairly weak. I don’t do these poses often (I haven’t actually done many standing poses in general lately) so these muscles haven’t had a chance to build strength.

My second reason for not doing these poses often, or not holding them for long, is much more mental and emotional and it is really the thing that was revealing for me. Basically Warrior poses are very assertive poses. They are strong, powerful poses. They are very much “warrior” poses and there is a feeling of assertive warriorness that comes to me when I do them. And I don’t like that. I don’t like being or seeming assertive. I don’t feel that I should be powerful. I think there is a very real internal feeling in me that feels that it is not right to be powerful and assertive. I think there is a part of me that feels that being assertive or powerful shows pride and arrogance instead of submissive humility. I value humility but I don’t value assertiveness. So, I don’t like doing warrior poses. They feel too powerful and that scares me.

But, as I’ve been thinking about this I’ve been realizing some things. For starters God is a warrior God and a powerful God. And He calls his people to fight powerfully for truth and justice. There is a time for asserting ourselves on behalf of others. There is a time for powerfully standing up for another. I think that fighting for justice is something that I have very little experience in, but it is something I have felt God challenging me on and in a strange way I think the first step He is asking me to take is to start incorporating Warrior pose into my yoga practice. Maybe it sounds weird but I think the first step for me is to experience God’s warrior strength and power and heart for justice in my body and then to take that out into my everyday life.

The other thing that I have been thinking about is that humility and submissiveness really can be taken to an unhealthy place. I used to not like when people said that. I thought aren’t we suppose to completely die to self and thus not care if people walk all over us? But, really I’m realizing that what I often do when I don’t stand up for myself, when I let people walk over me, is that I give into fear. So, often I don’t share what I really think or feel, or I don’t stand up for myself because I am scared of what people will think of me and scared that I will hurt their feelings. But, I don’t think I am really helping them or me when I do that. I think the other thing that I have been realizing is that in cowering and not standing up for myself I am often lying. There is a place for setting your own needs and desires aside in favor of another person’s needs/desires. But, there is also a place for being honest and standing up for yourself as one of God’s beautiful creations. I’m starting to learn that there is a place for asserting yourself.

So, God has been challenging me to start doing warrior poses and to start allowing myself to be strong in my yoga practice and in my daily life – asserting myself on behalf of others and on my own behalf (when appropriate) as well.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Theology Thursday: Some thoughts on the Physical Body

July 24th, 2008

Ok, so today is Theology Thursday, but I am not really sure if these thoughts I’ve had could be called theological… If anything they are more about the study of man then they are about the study of God. But, I believe that there is something that I learn about God through this realization. I believe that God loves the whole me – not just separate parts of me. I believe that God is about more than just saving my soul – He wants to save and recreate my body too. Isn’t that the hope of the resurrection?

With that said I share these thoughts for today…

As many of you who read this blog know I have struggled with some health problems for years and especially so over the last few years. I have tried a lot of different things and throughout it all I have learned a lot about the human body and my body in particular.

For a while now I have believed that a person’s mind/emotions can play a role in how they feel physically. In some ways this is common sense. We acknowledge that when we are nervous this can show up in our body as “butterflies in our stomach” or when we are stressed we will often complain that our shoulders feel tight. I have known for a while that there was some connection between my hormones and emotions and my health but it wasn’t until recently that I started to wonder how deep that connection really goes.

I’m started to notice lately that I can go from feeling fine to feeling miserable in no time at all and I started to notice a bit of a pattern when that happens. I have known for a while that my hives seemed to get worse when I was stressed or upset or uncomfortable, but lately I have been noticing that my nose gets stuffier when I feel certain emotions and my throat closes up and I get asthma when I am feeling certain things as well. It sounds sort of crazy but it really seems to be true for me that my mind and emotional state really radically affects my body.

In the past week I have had a number of different things that have been emotionally draining and I have never felt worse physically. I started noticing that when I calmed down (for example after doing yoga or after talking through the emotions with a friend and letting them out) I physically felt better – my nose would clear up, my hives would go away, I’d be able to breathe clearly. But, then when I would start thinking about one of the stresses in my life or start talking about it with someone I would tense up and my nose would get more stuffy, my hives would start to bother me, my breathing would become more shallow (often resulting in asthma). It was an amazing realization.

Then today I realized something else. I started to pay attention to how I mentally and emotionally handled things when my body started to feel sick. I noticed that I would feel really frustrated when my nose started to get stuffy, I would even get angry with my nose. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to myself or someone else “Can I just cut my nose off? I don’t really need it do I?” I say it jokingly but the feeling is real. I get the same way when I have a breathing attack. I start to feel scared and start to say things like “Why is this always happening to me? I hate my body! Why can’t I be normal?” I realized today that if my emotions are really that closely related to how I physically feel then I am not making it better by feeling angry and scared and frustrated with my body – I’m just making it worse! And that seems to be exactly what happens when I start to have a reaction of some sort I get upset and then it gets worse.

So, here’s what I want to try from now on (granted it may be a process of getting to this place though)… I want to try thanking my body and celebrating it, even when it does seem to be betraying me by feeling so icky. Next time my nose gets stuffy and runny, instead of getting frustrated and angry at it I want to tell it “I accept you. I love you even now. What are you trying to tell me by getting stuffy? Is there some emotion that I am feeling right now that you are trying to communicate to me? Am I just not treating you very well or giving you enough focus so you are trying to get my attention? Is there something that I ate that you are telling me you didn’t like? Or something in this environment that is a problem for you? I value you and want to listen to you.” I know, it sounds a little weird to say that to my nose, but I feel like it could help.

My body is made by God. It is the temple of the Holy Spirit. I think for too long I have really truly hated a lot of my body and the way that my body is instead of accepting and embracing it for being exactly the way God made it to be. I think for a long time I have tried to ignore what my body is telling me and tried to negate it or drowned it out by taking anti-histamines (even if they are natural one’s).

Lord, help me to know and accept that you created this body of mine and that you call it good. I know that I would have chosen a different body, but I want to learn to accept this unique body that you have given me. Help me to see my health problems not as a struggle to fight against but as something to accept as a gift from you and as yet another way that you can communicate with me. Help me to recognize that my body and my mind and my emotions are not separate. You created me as a holistic being and every part of me interacts with all the other parts of me and You, Lord, interact with each part of me as well. Lord, be in my body. Teach me to hear you speaking to me through the feelings I feel and the physical ailments I experience.

Rejoicing in the journey –
Bethany Stedman

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