Home University

07 Nov 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2018, a sense of the ridiculous II, circling round yoga II, coffee book #2, defiant doggerel, swedish book, Uncategorized Tags:

Home University📚

 

I have a university within my house.

Inclusive of a thousand, thousand, thous-

and words:

Books, all kinds of printed works –

Brochures and articles collected,

Information; omni-forms connected,

Music notwithstanding.

I could spend a hundred years at home

Enclosed in school and domicile:

Cloistered in this all-in-one.

 

In bed, awake at four (still night)

A candle lit,

Deep breathing done,

Radio to mutedness,

Gradually bcoming restless,

Lying still, a book ‘took’ up,

Tired still, (it’s dark as poop)

Inspired, but wildly, child-ly hungry,

 

Toddling downstairs for a cup to take back up –

(Lovely coffee and a scone

With marmalade and cheese on)

Back in bed head propped, it’s heaven!

By this time it’s almost seven.

 

Read into “Windows For Dummies”,

(reminder, this first writ’ two thousand-seven)

“Treatment of the Heart Through Yoga”

(made that up)

Taking up the pen and paper:

University in bed,

Bedside and in my head!

 

Awaiting morning light,

The January Swedish night

Still uppermost in nature,

Marks a template oft repeated;

Meant to humble the conceited,

Meant to deepen and mature,

The one who needs to self-explore:

A university for sure.

Home University1.20.2007/Revised/re-written 11.7.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Defiantly Doggerel; Coffee Book “2; Circling Round Yoga II; Swedish Book; Arlene Nover Corwin

 

Sitting Up In Bed Inventing Yoga

03 Nov 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in circling round yoga, circling round yoga II, Uncategorized

Just when I was thinking that I’d run into a wall of writer’s cramp…✍️🧘‍♀️
Sitting Up In Bed Inventing Yoga
Four a.m.
An eighty-four year body/mind
That finds
it hard to
Sleep the night through
Worms and squirms,
By turns discovers
Easy and (before then) hidden ways
To speak to body plagues
Tinged by a wakefulness unhinged by age.
So starts the binge of
Untaught, unforced, instinct movements
That discover secret stiffnesses
Inside/out. Minutes which disprove
A long held thesis that the ‘if-i-ness’
Of stiffness can’t be met
By touch and clutch and doing such.
With all inclusive stretching,
Stitching bone and cartilage and ligaments
To muscle and the whole to sentience.
Yes it can and yes, it does.
After not too long an hour
There is power,
Loss of ache and soreness,
Twinging, squirming
With returning restfulness
And heavenly, beguiling sleep (at best),
Sitting Up In Bed Inventing Yoga 11.3.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Yoga I & II; Arlene Nover Corwin

There Is No One Method

20 Sep 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2018, circling round yoga II, Didactic II, I Is Always You is We, Uncategorized Tags:

            There Is No One Method 

To Remember:

There is no one method, 

No one anything that works for all.

No food, no style, no exercise, no smile.

One ‘does’ as circumstance demands

Adapting to the moment, strands

Of will-less-ness  in stillness,

And a stillness in the will-less-ness.

 

Often, mostly, dare I mutter,

Driven by the smut of fear

Undercurrent dragging us

Down into pools that spiral, whirl

And worst of all,

Of which we’re not aware,

There tumbling round us, 

Recognised too late

As fate – no, fright.

There Is No One Method 9.20.2018 Definitely Didactic II;I Is You Is Me Is We;Circling Round Yoga II; Arlene Nover Corwin 

  

Teaching Yoga

19 Jul 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2018, circling round yoga II, Didactic II, God Book II, Uncategorized

Teaching Yoga🤔🧘‍♀️✍️

When you know the system
You don’t think about the names.
You just ‘do’ the system.
Knitters knitting by TV
Are counting automatically,
Not thinking perle knit, perle. Pianists
Do not think C major
When they play C major.
They just know and they just do.
They say Turner lost his spelling,
Photographically remembering
Every scene, each hue.
One ‘does’,
When as the Swedish saying goes,
The system’s “in the spine”.

As for the name of God
You can use nomenclature at the start,
But when system’s shrine
Is in the spine,
Just let it, be it, ‘do’ it.

Teaching Yoga 6.7.2014/revised&finished7.19.2018Circling Round Yoga II; God Book II; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Power Of Observation

27 Jun 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2018, circling round yoga II, definitely didactic Tags:

Still editing my next book of poetry called Definitely Didactic wherein every so often I stop and share one with you. It also gets to be a tedium when you’re dealing with 420 poems (i.e.pages), and I’ve got to take a break. You, you lovely people are my break.
 
Power Of Observation✍️
 
One or several (power/powers)
Don’t you care, it doesn’t matter
Whether it is one or more;
When you do your yoga,
Use your brain!
Observe what, where
The hurt, the strain.
Let me explain:
You feel, sense, imagine it,
IQ raised,
You’ve praised the part
From organ, ligament to cartilage.
 
 
Whatever age you are,
As said before, ‘it doesn’t matter’.
Something good results:
From tumult in the psyche calming,
To the farming body,
Harvesting a better life.
Noticing a change means adding to the
Powers of invention,
Range of dreams you will accomplish.
Observation has dynamics
Of an unsuspected magic.
 
Power Of Observation 1.26.2014 Circling Round Yoga II; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin
 
 
 
 
 
 

Taking Care Of Body Parts

22 Mar 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2017, circling round yoga II, nature of & in reality Tags:

Taking Care of Body Parts

 

Take care of the body parts.

All the same, remember that

Most of what is going on,

Is going on inside you.

 

Organs, blood, I don’t-know-what,

Brain, realms therein.

All in-, invisible.

Cause encased:

To be addressed.

 

Take care of the body parts.

They show.

It’s nice and comfortable to know

they work,

And more than that:

A pointer signal to research

The itch that doesn’t cease,

The lump or bump, the crease

Here, there or anywhere.

 

Of course take care,

But find what’s there –

And not.

Fix the flub on neck and throat.

Booboo unattractive,

But beware, take care and ‘suss it out’.

 

Remember,

No appendage or a member

Is the issue.

It’s what’s going on inside

That describes the living you.

 

Taking Care Of Body Parts 3.22.2017

Circling Round Yoga; Nature of & in Reality;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

My Yoga Girls

05 Mar 2017 2 Comments

by arlenecorwin in 2017, circling round baths II, Circling Round Woman II, circling round yoga II Tags:

       My Yoga Girls

My yoga girls are over fifty;

Nifty, flexible and strong.

They’ll live a long, long life, I’m sure,

All striving to discover who they are,

Where, what their star,

Their own par-

ticular

And special star.

 

They’re wonderful, their aim my aim.

My yoga girls are reaching

And a reason for my teaching,

It so satisfying and exciting,

Dare I say delighting

And delightful.

 

We don’t bother with the Sanskrit names,

A game I used to be involved in.

It is yoga in the everyday,

With tools around to play around with

Everywhere, even while watching Wednesday’s matinee.

 

Table, chair, each surface in the house:

Tub, floor, door, bed –

No jot can stop the focus

For a body use:

All excuses to expand the head,

Find mind in muscle, skin and bone,

Synapse, neuron, hormone.

All alive and full of jive.

 

When I speak of yoga,

My technique and yoga,

And my little clique of yoga girls

Nothing makes me happier.

 

My Yoga Girls 3.4.2017

Circling Round Baths II; Circling Round Yoga II; Circling Round Woman II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

 

Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys (revised)

27 Aug 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, a sense of the ridiculous II, circling round yoga II, Uncategorized Tags: ,

 

Sitting on the floor

Watching James bond overpower foes.

A complicated character with

A subtle ethic, ice-chilled wrath –

Most of all, a yogic path

Of duty and detachment;

Yogic while the villain,

Mega-bombs his own routinely –

Ligaments and muscles blown,

Royal houses overthrown!

And yet we have so much in common.

 

Villain cool, detached but mean,

Followers his kill machine.

Bond the Lancelot,

Jaw-dropping stunts his lot,

Fencing, boxing, crashing cars;

Fights and scars his calling cards –

And when in need of surgery

He heals quickly.

 

Evil lurks, Bond never shirks, and still

His life is filled with perks:

Hotel suites, girls en suite,

Dry martinis, Aston Martins (note the plural)

Sure of all

And unequivocal

Bond’s megastar, ideal and idol.

 

This poet rather fond of Bond,

Both yogis of a different kind:

He the running, driving soldier,

I, the yogi on the floor,

Each connected to a power.

Grinding skills the Bond-dynamic,

Mine the tranquil skill-iambic.

 

I give in to un-excitement’s

Ordinary daily yoga;

Bond the knight with right to kill

(Nice guy James with license, aimed at

Ordinary evil ogres –

There you see the box of riddles:

Bond the paradox in middle

Fighting off the oh, so evil bad guys!

 

 

Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys 2.10.2015/revised 8.28.2016

Circling Round Yoga II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;

Arlene Corwin

 

Playing With Your Self

21 Aug 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, circling round reality, circling round yoga II, to the child mystic II Tags:


One’s mantra ought to be,

‘No people, things; no things, no people’;

Energy that’s wasted swishing

Thoughts around illusionary realms

That kindle wish and drive desires

Rooted in the mind, and of the kind

That should be cast into a fire –

Wish/desire that sways, that leads astray.

 

You ask, “What’s left when one’s bereft

Of thoughts of things and world?”
Two words:

Your self, its traits.

All other thoughts flung out to space,

Mind’s tissue

Focused on the one essential issue: you,

You! To face the real deal you

To play with self’s true

nature.

So remember,

Slow eradication of the need to talk,

Think worldly thought

Is to awaken from the slumber

Of illusion’s juggernaut.

 

Playing With Your Self 8.19.2016

Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Yoga II; to The Child Mystic II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

In Life As Well As The Gym, Do It Badly

18 Mar 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2015, 2016, circling round energy, circling round reality, circling round yoga II Tags:

 

                                                 

You don’t need to train and strain to make your muscles grow. You need to repeat. That’s all. If you do a thing long enough benefit comes of it.

There is no single ‘must do’ exercise that can’t be replaced with something else.   Be clever, be creative, use your noodle. You can find substitute practices that achieve the same result.

You have a bone structure that makes you better suited to some exercises than to others: long arms, short arms, long legs, short legs: Find out who you are and don’t kill yourself trying to put toe up your nose. Look at others, learn from them, be inspired, then do it your way. Take flexibility: there will be borders you’ll never cross.   Learn about them. Accept them. Focus on your own body and its limitations.

Take your time. Don’t rush. Slow is good. Fast makes it more difficult to focus mentally take apart what is happening in your body.

Interestingly enough, there is a gene called COL5A1 which is linked to a hereditary level of flexibility. One version of the gene means you’re quite flexible, the other means you’re not. Don’t be embarrassed or disappointed because you aren’t a spaghetti or, as an older person with less active growth hormone your muscles don’t bulk up as quickly as they did when you were young – or at all.

There is a point at which you’ll stop making obvious improvements; but don’t stop practicing whatever it is you practice. The benefits become more subtle, more refined.  More energy, stability, self-knowledge. It’s quite enough to stretch what’s tight and strengthen what’s weak and notice that your powers of observation are greater than they were. Nothing stays the same. You’re either going up or you’re going down. Even when you don’t notice either.

Resistance is a good training. Good to observe, good to exploit. For example, when doing yoga poses, reach the point of resistance and wait it out, staying as long as you can. Use resistance in your daily life too. Push against tables, your knees, the door frame. There are dozens of ways to be creative using the principle of resistance.

One more thing: if you work hard all of the time, you’ll start to notice little aches, pains and tears everywhere. Be sensitive. Pace yourself. Learn when to push and when to let go – in life as well as in the gym.

Your body isn’t a machine. Rest it. Work hard but don’t kill yourself.

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

 

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