The Sassafras Podcast: Recent Episodes
Sassafras Yoga
The New Year's Day meal in this part of the Deep South is peas, cornbread, and greens. Usually also pork. I've been thinking about how this meal evolved from what folks ate for dinner most days every week--simple, everyday foods that you just have around--to a once-a-year meal that requires stress and planning and extra efforts to obtain the "right" foods for the prosperity ritual.
My ancestors made this meal, and spent time New Year's Day cultivating gratitude for the ordinary, cultivating desire and enjoyment of the smells and tastes that would usually fade into the background. This year, I plan to appreciate the utterly unremarkable. And to be grateful for the parts of myself that experience desire and pleasure in food.
The Feasting Table. Human beings have loved to build a fire, share food, and tell stories, for as long as we have had them. Annual celebrations and gatherings are places where we learn what we "should" be grateful for. What we learn depends on our family culture and the values it emphasizes.
In this visualization, you are invited to engage with an imagined Feasting Table, and the personal meanings it carries for you.
I invite you to explore the ways your family and other social systems value "competition" or "cooperation" or both, in the stories they tell, their beliefs about abundance, and the ways they express gratitude around the Feasting Table.
This is the first in a handful of winter meditations about ancestors that I have in mind.
As we head into the coming Abundant week, I've been thinking about two things:
1) The difference between Accumulation vs. Abundance
2) The complexities of Abundance for those missing lost loved ones, experiencing health challenges, or struggling in whatever way
Noticing Abundance is about being engaged with the world, celebrating its gifts, and using only what we need. Indulgence at the table as celebration is connection with Abundance, as long as we don't make it our daily mode. We can't truly be in connection with Abundance if we deny or suppress our Needs.
Abundance provides the fuel we need to go and seek fulfillment of our Needs. The two are not contradictory, but complementary. If we breathe deeply and focus, we can quiet the Judging Mind and gain clarity around Need and Abundance.
Count Your Blessings, but Name Your Needs.
I love that human beings recognize the two days of the year when light and dark are most equally balanced, and the two days of the year when they are the most polarized. As you consider your own Being, as part of nature, as reflective of and in need of natural processes, consider Balance. Is Balance a rigid, permanent state? Or is it simply one of many natural states within a greater process of dynamic Alignment?
If you are "out of balance," you are exactly like the sun cycle, 363 days out of the year. A lack of perfect Balance does not necessarily indicate a lack of Alignment.
Consider for yourself, the distinctions between Balance and Alignment, any judgmental words or feelings that come up around either one. Notice your feelings of Balance and Alignment today, compared to yesterday, compared to how you hope tomorrow will be. What kinds of memories and expectations do you form around these concepts?
This has been on my Patreon for a few weeks, and now it's here! The place where the metaphysical becomes the physical, where information, realization, and epiphany occur. White light, beyond ultraviolet, beyond the physical spectrum. Ether, beyond air, untouchable. The thousand-petaled lotus, connecting the limited body to limitless expansion.
I hope you've enjoyed this series, and I would LOVE to hear how well this worked (or didn't), any yoga or wellness topics you're interested in, or meditation themes that resonate with you!
I ramble a little bit about love, and then read a few reflections from the Instagram account Black Liturgies. This account is written by Cole Arthur Riley who has a book, "This Here Flesh," coming out this month. I have been turning to this account for mantras and appreciation of the complexity we are all negotiating daily. I'm excited about the book, and I hope you will check out her work!
https://colearthurriley.com/about
https://www.instagram.com/blackliturgies/
I almost didn't record this episode. I love my strong imagination, and I use it for everything from my own enjoyment to working through practical problems. But we are in such a fraught time for this part of human life and perception. How do I invite you into working with this energy, entertain concepts like "seeing more clearly" and understanding multiple perspectives, when we are all surviving a constant onslaught of disinformation and manipulation from media, politics, and our own social circles?
Over the past year, I have sat down to try to record this episode at least a dozen times, and either deleted it or didn't even get started. There's "insight" and then there's "illusion," and a lot of the time, they look the same. Who am I to imagine I can create content on this subject and ensure that it gets interpreted in the spirit I intended?
Hopefully, listeners will take from this my emphasis on discernment and being picky about credibility. I didn't get overly specific, but if even one person comments on this content with questions as to that, I'll get all the way into it on a future episode.
The place that both perceives and commands, the third eye or Ajna energy center involves both physical vision and mental impressions, memories, imagination, visualization, projection, and all things light. In this space, three major energetic pathways converge into oneness. In this episode, I explore not only how powerful but how vulnerable this energy center is in our current culture.
If you listened to the free bonus episode, you might have noticed me processing why I say the things I say, and how I am heard or received by others. I talked about the importance of creativity to rise up and out of structures that are not working. In this meditation, explore the energy of self-expression and articulation, of strong listening and mutual understanding.
Working my way back to you, babes! Talking a little bit about what I've been up to during this terribly long pause, and trying to get my allergy-impaired voice warmed up for your next soothing meditation!
Love. Connection. Resonance. Equilibrium. Unity. The heart chakra energy moves all of these, and balances the earthy energies closer to the ground with the ethereal energies reaching toward the sky. Dive in for rest and rejuvenation in this vital energy center.
Conspiracies and dissociation from each other and from the truth are dangerous parts of our world. Unfortunately, a good many teachers in yoga, fitness, wellness, health, supplements, and coaching offer up these dangers in order to tantalize and gain market share. As someone who wants to do what I call "ethics out loud" in the way that I frame and offer yoga and meditation, I found it important to take a pause between the dense, earthy energies of muladhara, swadisthana, and manipura and the airy, etherial energies of anahata, vishuddha, and ajna.
In this episode, I will talk through some history and philosophy of yoga, why I have any standing to offer it to you in the first place, influences from my educational and work background, and ways to ensure that you are in a safe and balanced place to engage these practices without hands-on guidance.
I invite all good faith questions, critiques, and respectful engagement. For more resources including texts and insights from me, please see my blog, http://sassafrascottage.com.
Connect to your inner fire--will, power, and transformation--your third chakra. This meditation is meant to open and interconnect the experiences of your body and mind, not to transcend your body by denying it, but by accepting the whole truth of your lived experience, understand your needs, identify the things that are meaningful to you, and to connect your power to purpose.
This was a very windy recording day, so there are a few extraneous sounds as well as cat contributions.
Discussion of sacral chakra energy, a yoga nidra for deep relaxation, and a guided visualization to cleanse and rejuvenate the "seat of the self."
A brief introduction to Muladhara or Root Chakra, followed by a deep relaxation Yoga Nidra and a Guided Visualization.
With love and appreciation for all those who have taught and shared with me to make this podcast possible.
Have you ever seen a sassafras tree? Know what one looks like? Why it might be THE perfect tree to name a yoga business after? Relax and learn, and hear about a series of new episodes, coming up!
If you have never meditated before, here is some introduction to meditation practice and suggestions for common problems. If you're an experienced meditator, just close your eyes and enjoy hearing a few meditation and mindfulness basics again before simple silence and deep breaths. You can turn on some tones or sounds or white noise in the background if you want. Sounds for meditation can be very personal. What one person loves, another person might find distracting or unpleasant. As much as I enjoy background tones myself, I won't use them for every episode. Allowing ourselves to experience silence is also important for our inward listening process, so if you meditate regularly, use some of that time in full silence.
Join Forrest from Sassafras Yoga for 10-15 minute meditations after the Weekly Wednesday Community Yoga class on Facebook Live. Stay tuned for announcements of guided meditation series to come. Thanks for listening!