Prana Pages

As is occasionally the case, we asked that instead of financial payment for our services, Gary bless us with his own talent, jewelry design.  We asked him to make us something special in return for our service to him.  He made us the most beautiful pendants, a gold one for me with Ted’s birthstone, and silver one for Ted with my birthstone.

When we opened the gift from Gary, we felt the power of the intention behind the pieces.  In the card that accompanied the pendants, Gary wrote, “My intention was to make something that would somehow mark that day, the day you left to begin your journey into eldership, and also the day the two of you first worked together…The theory behind the pendant is to mark the sun’s position in the sky relative to you on that particular day.  The stone in the center is your birthstone, and the diamond represents the sun…so when you wear the pendant you have a part of each other with you, and also a reminder that when you are together, magic happens.”  I have worn the pendant every day since, and have received countless comments and compliments on its design.

If you have a special occasion, or just want to have a beautiful talisman to present to a loved one that holds spiritual significance and a magical charge, contact Gary Stucchi of Stucchi Jewelers in Natick MA for a custom design of your own.  Gary is a yoga instructor, Reiki practitioner, jeweler, artist, and friend.  His custom design jewelry is inspired by yogic tradition, astrology, shamanic teachings, esoteric wisdom, love, and divine guidance.

I ordered a simple kobe burger, and started with an appetizer of cool sesame noodles, finished with an almond marscapone cheese torte.  But, I dined with five friends, and we were compelled to dine “family style” and pass the plates around the table.  I tasted many items from the menu and enjoyed everything to the fullest.  However, unlike any other fine dining experience where my tastebuds usually overide the size of my stomach, at Maxwell’s I only ate until I was satisfied, not craving a bite more than my body needed.  Despite the fullness of the flavors and the delight of my tastebuds, something stopped me from wanting more than was nourishing.  I felt complete, satisfied, and took home enough for dinner the next night.  I have never experienced this phenomenon in a restaurant before.

A few days later I had the pleasure of offering a chakra reading to Mitchell Maxwell, and I learned quickly why my dining experience  at his restaurant (on an energetic level) was so fabulous.  Mitchell is a born chef.  Everyone has a dominant chakra, and sometimes my clients reveal to me a secondary dominant chakra.  The dominant chakra is the one that holds the energy most closely related to that individual’s divine purpose.  A secondary dominant chakra is one that feeds and supports the energy of the primary dominant chakra.  Mitchell’s dominant chakra, the root, and secondary dominant, the heart, support his life purpose to nourish people with food, provide sustenance and support on the physical nutritional level.

If you live anywhere in the New England area, Maxwell’s Restaurant and Mitchell’s loving support to your digestive needs is an experience you cannot miss!

Always consult your physician before attempting to change your medical treatment!

Pose of the Month
WARNING: Skipping SAVASANA could be hazardous to your health!!!

this article is dedicated to all those yoga teachers out there who have struggled to teach their students the value of savasana.

Throughout the process of a yoga class, many wounds are opened.  It’s like removing the bandages on the wounds of life to get some air.  We start slow with an integration series, and slowly, piece by piece, we peel away the bandage.  Sometimes it sticks to the wound and opening the energy is a little painful.  Other times the fresh air feels nice.  By the floor series, the wounds are fully exposed.  The exposure is good, allowing the rawness inside us to breathe.  Now, a doctor wouldn’t undress a wound, clean it, and send you back out onto the streets raw and exposed.  A nurse would lovingly redress the wound and provide instruction for promoting further healing on your own.  The same is true for a yoga class.  Every yoga class ends with a savasana, usually a namaste or closing chant, and a diligent teacher reminds students to drink plenty of fluids and keep smiling.  Savasana is the re-dressing of the wound.  The sealing of the energetic space to provide protection.  A similar procedure is offered in an energetic healing session such as Reiki, Healing Touch, Qigong, or even a simple Swedish Massage.  It is a necessary component of the process to offer protection and further the healing.

When you skip savasana in your own practice, you are leaving class as an open channel to receive whatever energies come your way.  Imagine it, you spend almost ninety minutes sweating, detoxing, breathing, and working to bring yourself to a pleasurable state of bliss, then you leave early because you have to get to an appointment. As you open the door to leave there’s bound to be one or two yogis in savasana slinging a couple of energetic arrows of disgust for your rudeness your way.  Those arrows hit you in the back and they are coated with yogic love, so you don’t notice them right away.  But, when you get to your car, suppose there’s a parking ticket on your windshield.  It doesn’t really bother you at first, but what you don’t realize is that the meter maid was in a particularly pissy mood that morning, and she was taking out her aggressions on the cars with expired meters.  Her anger went into the ticket, and as you picked up the ticket, your wide open energy accepts all that aggression because the filter of savasana pose wasn’t put into place after you left.  Driving out of the parking lot, you get flipped the bird from a man in a hurry.  His middle finger sent a laser beam of aggression right into your heart.  By the time you get to the second stoplight, you’re tapping your own fingers on the steering wheel when the car in front of you didn’t notice the light change right away.  By the time you get to your appointment, thirty minutes after your yoga class, most of the calming effects of the practice have been completely erased by the negative forces you have encountered, and you don’t know how to be sweet with the receptionist when she tells you that your appointment needs to be rescheduled.

This example is superficial in nature.  However, I have worked with a couple of clients who spoke to me about how their worlds had been shattered in more ways than one since beginning a yoga practice, about how they are realizing the hugeness of the traumas of the world on a whole new level, and they don’t know how to handle it.  In each case,  the result was major injury or illness that brought the yoga practice to a screeching halt.  The client had to develop a whole new approach to yoga, learning the value of yin, the power of Sukha (surrender), and the necessity of savasana, as that was the only pose their body allowed anymore.

It’s true.  Yoga opens up the wounds.  It changes your life.  It makes you face your shit.  It’s hard enough to open up your own wounds and face the issues and results of them on and off your own mat without having to deal with the crap of everyone you encounter.

So take savasana.

Allow yourself two minutes (more is better) to redress the wounds, to seal the surface so that you can maintain the blissful state just a little longer each day you practice and not accept other people’s dirt into your rawness.  If you absolutely MUST leave class early, skip the hips or the final twist and take savasana early.

Oh, and be kind to those around you, set yourself up in the back of the room, inform the teacher of your intentions to leave early, and get your little butt out the door before their savasana begins.  The Emily Post of yoga would thank you.

So when I asked him to come support the community and myself through my elder initiation, I had no doubt that Dad would make friends with everyone on the land.  Within minutes, he had made himself right at home.  He happily cleaned up the kitchen mess left by a goblin peanut butter and jelly lover.  He swung an axe splitting wood while asking questions to elicit lifetime stories from fellow workers.  By sharing my childhood stories with my friends, he unwittingly brought a deeper level of intimacy to my friendships.  He observed everything quietly from behind the scenes, and did whatever he could to soothe bruised egos, to smooth rough waters between individuals, and to soften the jagged path of daunting tasks.

At the Homecoming Celebration, Dad was acknowledged by the community.  As I was honored as an elder, my friends and fellow elders also honored my father for his willingness to serve, lovingly and unconditionally.  Somehow, the words spoken by others to me about my father matched almost identically the words spoken by others to my father about me.  Like father like daughter.

Although I cannot express in words the power of my initiation experience, I have realized that since becoming and elder I have a greater capacity for love, a greater ability to appreciate and validate every person, despite and because of their faults and failings.  In essence, becoming an elder has imbued upon me the responsibility of being a friend to anyone and everyone, at their best and at their worst, at any moment in time, as I have witnessed my father do my whole life.
I have come to learn that the wisdom I attained during my initiation has always been in my DNA, gifted to me by my father. For this, I am forever grateful.