I hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend! This is considered the beginning of the summer season in our country. This is the time to be outside and be on the go to take advantage of the sunny longer days of this season. Even though it is great to do this, the yogis tell us that we can have a deeper enjoyment of all this activity if we make time to turn within. It is a constant playful pulsation that we are invited to participate in. Turning in before we turn out.

As many of you know my nephew was visiting me for a week. It was so much fun to spend time with him and show him New York City. Actually, I made the point to help him discover his own New York. The first thing he wanted to do was to go to the pizza place where Peter Parker worked in Spiderman 2. We went on a ghost tour in Greenwich Village. He is interested in history and swords and daggers so we went to through the Metropolitan museum for four hours taking pictures of swords, daggers, and armors all over the museum. We did many other things too. What was fun was to see New York City through the eyes of the twenty three year old man that he is. It was great to get to know him more and also to experience New York City anew.

Reciprocity

In 1862 Darwin was sent a sample of the Madagascar Star Orchid which has a very long nectar tube. Upon seeing the orchid Darwin predicted that somewhere in the orchid's environment there must be an animal with an extremely long and thin tongue to be able to suck the nectar out of this orchid. People ridiculed him for making this prediction. A few years later a variety of the Hawk Moth was discovered. This moth has a tongue that is about 11.8 inches long. Apparently the moth had never been seen sucking the nectar out of the orchid because it feeds at night.

In Sanskrit the word Haṃsa means Swan. In yoga philosophy Haṃsa is a mantra the represents the sound of the breath. The sound on the inhalation is represented as "Haṃ" and the sound of the exhalation by "sa". This mantra is usually used to meditate by repeating the first syllable with the inhalation and the second one with the exhalation.

A while ago during a retreat a yoga teacher saw a person that was walking very fast and was visibly agitated. She stopped this person and asked him if he was ok. This person was one of the organizers for the retreat this teacher was teaching at. The man then shared that he was late for a meeting and that there were so many things that needed to be done. The teacher acknowledged that yes there were many things that needed to be accomplished that day but that he could still choose to move about with ease.

A while ago I heard a story from Joseph Campbell, a writer that taught extensively about myth and how it relates to the human experience. He said that this particular story taught us about how  in order to know the deepest aspect of who we are we first must come to understand and accept life in life's terms. Life that can be divine, beautiful, and exquisite, at the same time so terrible and horrific, and also everything in between.