"What Is The Body?", by Jelaluddin Rumi
An invisible bird flies over, but casts a quick shadow. What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe. #rumi #poetry #whatisthebody
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Using the tools of yoga for transformation
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susanalabordeblaj
- Aug 28, 2022
- 1 min
"Poem Of The One World", by Mary Oliver
My friend Toni Goodman shared this beautiful Mary Oliver poem with us. Thank you Toni, my poetry mentor! Poem of the One World Mary Oliver This morning the beautiful white heron was floating along above the water and then into the sky of this the one world we all belong to where everything sooner or later is a part of everything else which thought made me feel for a little while quite beautiful myself. from A Thousand Mornings. © The Penguin Press, 2012. Since I have not take
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susanalabordeblaj
- Aug 4, 2022
- 1 min
"You have endured...", Poem by Morgan Harper Nichols
We have a wonderful community of engaged people in my online yoga classes, and last Monday one of the students mentioned this poem in the conversation prior to the asana, pranayama & meditation practice. She particularly mentioned the end of the poem, which is: "And it is okay if there are days when you feel a little out of frame and you hear rumbles of thunder from where you thought the sky had cleared. Though you cannot control the storm it cannot hold you forever. This is
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susanalabordeblaj
- Jan 15, 2022
- 1 min
"Heal At the Pace...", by Yung Pueblo
I recently bought the book Clarity & Connection, by Yung Pueblo, and the first thing that I have been doing in the morning is to open it randomly and read a page. Here is one poem for you, which I read a few weeks ago in class. heal at the pace you know is right for you what works for someone else may not be what you need each person holds a unique emotional history discomfort is part of growth, but constant discomfort is not healthy self-love is balancing serious inner work
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susanalabordeblaj
- Mar 31, 2020
- 1 min
"For Loneliness", by John O'Donohue
I bumped into this poem, by John O'Donohue, from his book "To Bless the Space Between Us" For Loneliness When the light lessens,
Causing colors to lose their courage,
And your eyes fix on the empty distance
That can open on either side
Of the surest line
To make all that is
Familiar and near
Seem suddenly foreign, When the music of talk
Breaks apart into noise
And you hear your heart louden
While the voices around you
Slow down to leaden echos
Turning silence
Into something s
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susanalabordeblaj
- Jan 13, 2020
- 1 min
"To Learn From Animal Being", by John O'Donohue
I recently read a phrase by Pierre Alais, yoga teacher, and student of Shivananda & T.K.V. Desikachar, a phrase that stayed with me: "Nous ne défendons pas la Nature, Nous sommes la Nature qui se défend" (We do not defend Nature, we are Nature that defends itself) Mary Paffard, one of my teachers, has a whole workshop dedicated to see our body as part of Nature. Today, on a similar subject, my inspiration comes from this poem by John O'Donohue. To Learn From Animal Being by J
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susanalabordeblaj
- May 13, 2019
- 1 min
"Unbroken", by Rashani Rea
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being. There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which i
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susanalabordeblaj
- May 7, 2019
- 2 min
"Being Human", by Naima Pettiman
I wonder if the sun debates dawn
some mornings
not wanting to rise
out of bed
from under that down-feather horizon if the sky grows tired
of being everywhere at once
adapting to the mood
swings of the weather if clouds drift off
trying to hold themselves together
make deals with gravity
to loiter a little longer I wonder if rain is scared
of falling
if it has trouble
letting go if snow flakes get sick
of being perfect all the time
each one
trying to be one-of-a-kind I wonder
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susanalabordeblaj
- Mar 21, 2019
- 1 min
"I Worried", by Mary Oliver
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took m
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susanalabordeblaj
- Feb 14, 2019
- 1 min
"Of Love", by Mary Oliver
I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh
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susanalabordeblaj
- Jan 21, 2019
- 2 min
"To Begin With The Sweet Grass", by Mary Oliver
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift. 2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbi
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susanalabordeblaj
- Dec 31, 2018
- 1 min
"Year's End", by Ted Kooser
Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind. "Year's End" by Ted Kooser, from Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press,
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susanalabordeblaj
- Dec 10, 2018
- 1 min
"You and Art", by William Stafford
Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home. Year after year fits over your face—
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone; and you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow. #poetry #willi
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susanalabordeblaj
- Dec 3, 2018
- 1 min
"Quo Vadis", by William Stafford
Sometimes I choose a cloud and let it cross the sky floating me away. Or a bird unravels its song and carries me as it flies deeper and deeper into the woods. Is there a way to be gone and still belong? Travel that takes you home? Is that life? - to stand by a river and go. #poetry #williamstafford
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susanalabordeblaj
- Sep 4, 2018
- 1 min
"Being a Person", by William Stafford
Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.
A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.
Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
w
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susanalabordeblaj
- Aug 28, 2018
- 1 min
"At Blackwater Pond", by Mary Oliver
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened? #poetry #maryoliver
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susanalabordeblaj
- Jul 23, 2018
- 1 min
"Time for Serenity, Anyone?", by William Stafford
I like to live in the sound of water,
in the feel of mountain air. A sharp
reminder hits me: this world is still alive,
it stretches out there shivering toward its own
creation. and I'm part of it. Even my breathing enters into this elaborate give-and-take,
this bowing to sun and moon. day or night.
winter, summer, storm, still--this tranquil
chaos that seem to be going somewhere.
This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it.
This motionless turmoil, this everything dance
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susanalabordeblaj
- Jun 5, 2018
- 1 min
"My Species", by Jane Hirshfield
even
a small purple artichoke
boiled
in its own bittered
and darkening
waters
grows tender,
grows tender and sweet patience, I think,
my species keep testing the spiny leaves the spiny heart #janehirshfield #poetry
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susanalabordeblaj
- Apr 24, 2018
- 1 min
"Poppies", by Mary Oliver
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold, black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson. But I also say this: t
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susanalabordeblaj
- Mar 24, 2018
- 1 min
Rainer Maria Rilke: "I,1"
The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met. "I, 1" by Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours, translated from the German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. © Riverhead Books, 1996. P
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