I’m going to be clear here about something….especially for Bible people who send anonymous messages and have others send messages to stage four cancer patients about yoga.

Yoga means to yoke or Union.

Unless you are in my brain, you don’t know who I am joining myself to. It isn’t a religion, it’s a philosophy.

It now has scientific studies to help cancer patients.

Science is also finally catching up to what the ancient yogis knew-that nothing is solid and everything is moving.

Energy.

It’s also breath-work. I’ve had it work when I’ve had to have my blood pressure taken over because it was high. I’ve used the techniques I’ve learned and it lowered.

So please.

All you bible twisters who use it to scare people, especially stage four cancer patients just trying to find ways to get through the day…

Stop.

Stop using the Bible as a weapon of fear.

Stop judging and “being a good Christian” and maybe read up on what you are twisting.

I know my God.

I know my Jesus.

So stop.

You see…

My ear hurts, I didn’t sleep, and I got another message yesterday on my blog from someone hiding behind the moniker “a caring friend”. My lymph node hurts and my armpit is itchy.

I got another message this week that some people should be blocked because apparently they are judging me, talking about me with friends, and Facebook.

I opened myself up on here to control the rumor mill beast, and maybe also help a person or two.

Some days I really regret it.

Other days I get messages or comments from people thanking me for helping them, or find new research that gives hope.

I’m on a see saw while playing whack a mole over a graveyard.

So I’m throwing this out there.

Don’t unfollow me.

Defriend me please.

Don’t judge me or discuss me.

Maybe look at your own life and see what you should do to change, maybe become someone who doesn’t judge a woman with a terminal illness trying to stay alive.

Don’t tell me yoga will anger God and imply I wont get into heaven, or have my prayers to be healed heard. Keep your scary twisty versions to yourself, thank you very much.

That’s it.

I’m posting this to my blog as well, because yesterday I got a twisted ignorant message.

I’ll pray you, “a caring friend”.

See?

THAT is what a good Christian does.

May my ear stop hurting, my lymph clear up, and all cancer be gone.

In Jesus’s name, amen.

In Yoga Teacher Training, each of us had to give a Dharma Talk. We were to weave some of the yoga principals into a talk that was personal to us. I chose the theme of “Surrender”. This was my talk….

“Surrender, Clouds, Leave it on the Mat but take it all with you”Niyama (personal Observance)

I chose Isvara pranidhani because the past two years I have been learning to surrender to God. I’m still working on that, as I still want what I want….Complete healing from breast cancer, and forty more years to watch my children grow up.

When I was first diagosed, I was graspng, in a state of panic. Eat organic? Give me all the kale. Do the Gerson therapy? Bring me to the Giving Room for all the juices. Fasting? I wont eat for days if I have to. Exercise? I’ll get a rebounder and do yoga and qi gong, and walk a 5k. I was doing everything…and what I needed most to do was nothing.

Be still and breathe.

The cancer diagnosis was a huge cloud that made it hard for me to see. I went to a meditation class and the teacher explained we are mountains, and everything else is clouds. Notice the cloud, name it for what it is…fear, anxiety, anger, sadness…then let it float away. Just let it be, and be. I prayed and truly learned what “Thy will be done” really means…

Isvara pranidhani.

Isvara pranidhani-Celebration of the spiritual-“Lay all your actions at the feet of God” It is the contemplation on God “Isvara”, in order to become attuned to God and God’s Will. Ishvara pranidhana focuses not on ego but on the sacred ground of being, it reunites us with our true Self. As Indian yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar states in his Light on the Yoga Sutras, “Through surrender the aspirant’s ego is effaced, and…grace…pours down upon him like a torrential rain.”

Ishvara pranidhana provides a pathway through the obstacles of our ego …the clouds we try desperately to blow away….and it sends us toward our divine nature—grace, peace, unconditional love, clarity, and freedom.

As humans, we carry with us an expectation of something in return for our dedication. I ate the kale, I drank the juice, I did the yoga, I breathed, I forgave…Why do I still have cancer? But it is not for me to know the answer to my why’s, for the act or surrender to the why’s is what will me wise.

Yet I still I want results. So I come to my yoga mat and breathe. I want peace and joy and love. I want to be a better human being. I want to be healed. How many of us can say we would keep returning to the cushion or mat if we hadn’t at least once felt our bodies opening and our hearts responding? We find peace and surrender at our mat, and faith that as we surrender, so shall we be saved.

I believe it is this unshakable faith and devotion that ishvara pranidhana, the final of the five Niyamas, wants us to cultivate. It can be translated as “devoting oneself entirely to the Divine,” and Patanjali mentions it more than any other Yama or Niyama.

The gentle voice in the Yoga Sutras that began with ahimsa, saying—Let go of who you think you are, and become who you truly are—becomes a roar.

We have to surrender from the “I” and return to love.

Because love is all there is.

When we surrender we see through the eyes of love, we start to accept life in its crazy, beautiful entirety, and in doing so we free ourselves up to do what makes our heart sing. We begin to let the divine spark inside us express itself. Life becomes an adventure.

But the challenge is we have to trust the outcome. When we are fully surrendering, we have no expectations.

I am not looking for peace. I am peace.

I am not looking to be made perfect. I am perfect.

I am not looking to be healed. I am healed.

I am not looking to be made whole. I am whole.

I am not looking for love. I am love.

I practice yoga for the love of yoga, not because I want to be a better person or think yoga is necessary. I practice yoga so I can live in the present, and become wholly open to what is, and devoted to love for love’s sake.

It’s difficult to surrender when times are hard, clouds cover you in your mountain, and it becomes so dark. Yet I have learned things in the dark that I could have never learned in the light. Things that saved my life over and over again. There is only one logical conclusion…I need the dark as much as I need the light. Healing is a process, it ebbs and flows, like the phases of the moon. “All in all, the moon is a truer reflection for my soul than the sun that looks the same way every day. “_Barbara Brown Taylor.

So I will continue to dance under the moon in the dark, surrendering to the push and pull on my soul. When you surrender and let go…love flows gently in. I am learning to leave all of my ego and expectations on the mat, and take all of the love I get in return with me when I leave.

May it be so.

I am healed.

In Jesus’s name, amen.

It’s hard to get everything done in the morning, between chemos, supplements, teas, packing for the day, mouthswishing, juicing celery juice, cutting the lemon for the water, adding Manuka honey to the chaga…

I just have to get up earlier.

I’m sore today.

It was an intense weekend at Yoga Teacher Training. Friday night I gave my dharma talk to the class, and that took all of my energy to get through it.

Saturday we did a lot of assists and wrote up practicals, and I arranged for Qi gong after class as an offering to the other teachers. Yesterday I made corn muffins and a crock pot of chili to feed the class.

I think I feel like a fraud sometimes in class, surrounded by others who have so much more time to devote to the practice, and know all of the meanings of the hard to pronounce words for poses and what the koshas, bandhis and sutras are. So I fed everyone chili.

But near the end of class, after I admitted my energy was way off, my friend laura came over and told me that it’s normal. The first time she took teacher training she felt the same way. It made me feel so much better. Then she gave her talk on the sutras and it all clicked.

I’m out of my comfort zone…

But I’m still in the game.

Im grateful to be able to play.

Saturday we did crow pose, where you lift up your body and rest your knees on your elbows. I couldnt get up, and only one foot could come up. It was frustrating.

Yesterday?

I focused, put a blanket in front of my head so I had a cushion when I face planted, (which apparently I’m an expert at), took a deep breath, Rose up on my tiptoes, slowly bent my knees and car down and spread my knees wide, put my hands down shoulder width apart, rested my knees above my elbows, squeezed my arms into my chest, lifted my hips high, lifted my feet off the ground…

And I flew.

I shocked myself and fell over from the shock.

The I did it again.

And again.

At the end of the public class I showed

everyone I finally did it. Paula took a picture for me.

Instead of looking at myself with a critical eye…the wig looked off kilter, I’ve gained weight from the chemos, why the heck did I wear patterned pants?

I saw me.

Flying.

Strong enough to hold the weight of my body up in suspension.

Not giving up.

It felt good.

I may be a crow in kindergarten today.

We will see if my achey body allows.

Today is Monday.

It’s a new day, a new work week.

A new chance to start over.

May we all have a beautiful week full of peace, joy and love…

And healing.

ALL the healing.

In Jesus’s name, amen.

Xoxo

Keri