SuperForest

Good Morning, SuperForest!

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never actually seen a Star Wars movie. But despite my ignorance, I do know enough about it to know that “Star Wars Yoga” is an absolute gem. Created by writer/designer Matthew Latkewicz, “Star Wars Yoga” goes where few geeks have gone before and creates “a bold fusion of two seemingly disparate cultural phenomenons” with mighty poses including “X-Wing”, “Downward Facing Wookie”, “TIE Fighter”, and “Speeder Bike”.

Looks pretty complicated? Not to worry. The fine folks at TIME have put together a nice instructional video!

Check out more of his poses on his blog!

(via the jailbreak!)

SuperForester Julia just sent this in!

“HIIII Team Superforest!

This weekend DC launched ‘DC Yoga Week’ and kicked off with five hours of yoga love on the National Mall.  As part of a partner yoga exercise, the instructor had us create a human penrose triangle.  As an avid Superforest reader, and after seeing the triangle everyday on your blog, I was inspired to share the photo from this beautiful day.  Hundreds of people participated in an hour long class accompanied by live music shortly after.  Hope you enjoy the picture.  Keep on spreading the good love.

x,
Superforester Julia”

YES!  Absolutely awesome!  Cheers to D.C. for putting on D.C. Yoga Week & SuperForester Julia for sending this in!  We love that yoga Penrose!  If you are in the D.C. area and are interested, or just want to find out more about Yoga and D.C., head over to D.C. Yoga Week’s website!!

Thanks again Julia!!

~SFM

If I were a landscape, right now, I would be this one; calm, serene, balanced, pretty much just blissed out. My regular Sunday evening habit is a Yin yoga class; it’s a nice way to wind down from the week and prepare for the one ahead.

A Yin yoga practice is basically a very, very slow series of stretches and poses that are held for long periods of time, and it’s meant to target the deeper connective tissues, joints, and bones, getting at those parts of the body that are not normally reached during a Yang yoga practice.

On Yin and Yang…

Yin and yang are relative terms: they describe the two facets of existence. Like two sides of one coin, yin cannot exist without yang; yang cannot exist without yin. (via.)

Yin and Yang help me wrap my head around life, in the realization that happiness cannot exist without sadness, that light cannot exist without dark. It is helpful to accept that sadness can be embraced rather than feared, because without it, we would not know happiness. Being sad is okay! Just as we should not fear the inevitability of death, we should not fear the inevitability of sadness or loneliness. Life is always in a constant dynamic state of change, and in accepting the bad we allow room for the good.

Want to Yin yourself? Some videos here and here and everywhere, if you search for them.

Love,

Amy

I saw this recently and felt embarrassed by my sometimes week-long bouts of inactivity. This is Bette Calman, the 83-year-old who teaches up to 11 yoga classes a week in Melbourne.

Photography David Caird

Unreal, right? This leads me to believe that age might be largely in the mind. Bette Calman, on behalf of SuperForesters everywhere, I high-five you.

Here’s some of Bette’s wisdom, as told to the Herald Sun newspaper.

I’m proof that if you keep at it, you’ll get there. I can do more now than I could fifty years ago.

You’re never too old. The body is a remarkable instrument. It can stretch and stretch, and get better all the time. Forget age.

Even a basic posture, or just going to the window and breathing deeply, can have big benefits.

Never have I gone to a yoga class and wished I was somewhere else, because I know I’m going to come out feeling on top of the world.”

(indoor garden pic via photobucket user nukidog)

Good Morning SuperForest!

Happy Friday, February 13th to All.

In my apartment building here in New York, I am perplexed by the buildings fear of its own thirteenth floor. The building definitely has a thirteenth floor, it’s just marked “14.”

That means that everyone here who says they live on 14 actually live on thirteen, everyone on fifteen is actually on 14, and our building is one floor shy of its stated height. As in, I live in a sixteen story building that says it’s a 17 story one. I live in a fibbing building.

Why?

I’m not entirely sure…

I hereby humbly request that all thirteenth floors be set aside for community space. Every thirteenth floor should be open layout, free for all occupants of the building to use. With kitchens and recycling centers, indoor gardens and composting, daycare centers and classrooms thirteenth floors around the world could become bastions of sanity and usefulness.

Every time someone thinks of a 13th floor, they should fondly recall a yoga class they took on 13, or a delicious tomato they ate right off of the vine from the indoor community garden on 13, or the amazing conversation they had with a neighbor while that neighbor was baking “13th Floor banana bread”.

Right now we’re hiding our 13’s like we’re afraid of them. But 13 is nothing to be afraid of… it’s a grand ol’ number… Why, 13 is nothing but six times 2 plus one! Or, it’s fourteen divided by itself plus twelve.

If 13 is bad, is 26 twice as bad? What about 52? (eeeeeeek!)

Why do we let arbitrary numbers have such power over us, even to the point of lying about how many floors our buildings have in order to deny that 13’s exist?

Oh wait, I get it now… It is all to make SuperForesters laugh!

Thank you planet Earth! You set aside a special day every year to remind SuperForesters that life is capricious, random, and delightful. Friday the 13th is a day to celebrate how many times we’ve overcome irrational fear!

So, if we remove the fear of the 13th, what shall we put in its place instead?

New Superstitions!

Love to All.

Laugh and sing and be in love. For today is our day to smile.
And every time you get into a building whose 13th floor is marked “14″ know that it was done that way just for you. Solely to make you laugh.

Yours,

Jackson

This came in from SuperForester Jesse via Guru Singh…

“Dear Ones…. Sat Nam

Every planet has the power of being a lens — a lens that increases the affects of the cosmic forces always moving through our solar system. The planets do this by focusing them through their gravitational field and the angle of location in the solar system. Sometimes one of the planets will focus this lens directly onto the Earth. Sometimes—more rarely—several planets will align and combine their focus of these forces on the Earth.

On this day (February 11, 2009) a day of just such a planetary alignment . . . the lingering affects of the Solar Eclipse and the Lunar Eclipse along with a Mars/ Saturn /Uranus alignment and Moon/Jupiter linked.

A moment of tremendous opportunity or tremendous challenge, whichever angle you choose to approach it with . . . the binary universe has a reaction for every action.

It is important to know; there will come a moment when we will all look back at this larger period and see it not so much as a time of change, but as the beginning of real time.

These days will then be known as a moment when the seeds of reality were planted in the soil of our collective fantasy (maya), and the actual technologies of this physical/material world were finally understood.

As one of those pioneers of this planting, you can often find yourself outside the lines of normal, bucking the trends and defending progress . . . we see it at every level of society and in the news every day. You are probably uncomfortable–some of the time–until realizing that being outside these lines is exactly where you, in fact, want to be.

Today’s “normal” may rest with the majority, but it is not normal, nor very appropriate, and it is definitely not safe or real. Relax and begin to truly enjoy your pioneering place in society . . . the adventure of discovering what is, and the role of being a teacher of this discovery.

Always with Sacred Love, Blessings, Prayer and Gratitude . . .
Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur”

Whoops! This was for yesterday. But now you know why you felt so amazing yesterday.
Hope hope.