A Joyful Practice

What’s [Today’s] Story? (a Monday post-practice note) April 24, 2023

“Happy Riḍván!” to those celebrating “the Most Great Festival.” Many blessings to everyone, and especially to anyone Counting the Omer!

This is a post-practice note related to Monday, April 24^th. Some embedded links will take you outside of the blog. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es).
This week you can also click here to Kiss My Asana Now! (Or, you can also click here to join my team and get people to kiss [your] asana!)
Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.)

“Everybody knows a thousand stories. But only one cocklebur catches in your fur and that subject is your question. You live with that question. You may not even know what that question is. It hangs around a long time. I’ve carried a novel as long as twenty years, and some poems longer than that.”

– Robert Penn Warren quoted from a 1981 interview

Looking back at some old blog posts related to April 24^th, it took me a second to realize why the 2021 post wasn’t just a copy or and expanded version of the 2020 post. Then I remembered. In 2020, I focused on telling the story of the Library of Congress, which was established today 1800, and preserves by (and about) people like including Anthony Trollope (b. 1815), Carl Spitteler (b. 1845), Robert Penn Warren (b. 1905), Sue Grafton (b. 1940), Eric Bogosian (b. 1953), and Kelly Clarkson (b. 1982). In 2021, I focused on telling the story of Robert Penn Warren.

In both cases, however, the practice was all about how our minds and bodies tell stories.

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly telling stories. We tell stories verbally, visually, and viscerally. We tell stories in the ways we move and, also, in the ways we don’t move. We tell stories about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going – and we do this on and off the mat. Whether we realize it or not. On the mat, the storytelling is done through the poses and sequences. Since our bodies are different, we can each tell (and understand) the same “story” in different ways. Since our bodies change over time, we can learn different things about ourselves each time we tell the “story.”

“Social tensions have a parallel in the personal world. The individual is an embodiment of external circumstances, so that a personal story is a social story.”

– Robert Penn Warren quoted from “A Conversation with Robert Penn Warren [with] Frank Gado / 1966 (From First Person: Conversations on Writers and Writing, by Frank Gado” as printed in Conversations with Robert Penn Warren, edited by Gloria L. Cronin and Ben Siegel   

Just as literal and physical storytelling is a big part of my practice, it is a big part of what happens at Mind Body Solutions (MBS). Matthew Sanford, the founding teacher of MBS, calls the stories we tell “healing stories.” If you click on the link above for the 2021, you will find the healing stories of people who have directly benefited from practicing adaptive yoga and who directly benefit from the Kiss My Asana yogathon. If you click on the link above for 2020, you will find a “piece” of a healing story that is still being told.

Then there’s this….

What’s the story here? Check out the Community Page on my YouTube channel to find out.

There is no playlist for the Common Ground Meditation Center practices.

A 2021 playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “04242021 All Sides of the Story”]

You can click here to Kiss My Asana Now! (Or, you can also click here to join my team and get people to kiss [your] asana!) 

If you’re interested in my previous Kiss My Asana (KMA) offerings, check out the following (some links only take you to the beginning of a series ad/or to YouTube):

• 30 Poses in 30 Days 
• A Musical Preview
• 5-Minute Practices (the playlist)
• 5 Questions Answered by Yogis
  • The 5 Questions Playlist
• Answers to Yogis Questions
• A Poetry Practice
• A Preview of the April 1^st Practice
• Some Stories
• Prāņāyāma
• The Body/Chakra offerings
• Did you miss the last two offerings?
  • KMA Day 1, 2023
  • KMA Day 2, 2023 – Part I and Part II (with the picture)

### YOU COULD KISS MY ASANA… RIGHT NOW! ###