“What is our relationship with holding a grudge, with not being able to let go of our anger at someone, or our jealousy and pride and lust and craving, wanting, grasping?
Songyal Rinpoche uses the word “handshake” to describe having appreciation rather than criticism for what we see in ourselves, as a way for things to be able to be ventilated and to move…move on. In other words, if something is frozen like ice, warmth is what allows it to melt.
The attitude of warmth or loving kindness, of tenderness, of unconditional acceptance, is not the same thing as saying “oh my anger is good, my grudge justifiable.”

Pema Chödrön and Songyal Rinpoche’s “Handshake” practice

Our SPRINKLING of AYURVEDA:  Abhyanga – Self Oil Massage

The traditional practice of Abhyanga:  Sneha is a sanskrit word meaning both oil and love…

Abhyanga (Full body massage with warm herbal oil) is one of Ayurveda’s most beloved self-care holistic practices. How can lubricating the tissues with warmth and touch, loving kindness and tenderness towards oneself, benefit our nervous system, our relationship with ourselves and others?

Brihat Trayi and Laghu Trayi texts of Ayurveda-Dinaycarya

Abhyanga, the Ayurvedic practice of self-massage with oil, is an excellent way to nurture your whole being every day, and can be done at home. Massage has been proven to have many benefits for the body, including releasing tension in the muscles, supporting healthy circulation, and leaving the skin feeling replenished and hydrated. In this video, we’ll show you how to give yourself a massage the Ayurvedic way, including self-massage techniques and best practices. In Sanskrit, the word sneha can be translated as both “oil” and “love.” So in Ayurveda, there is an inherent connection between enveloping the body in oil and enveloping it in love. Both experiences can give a deep feeling of stability, warmth, and comfort. Sneha—oil and love—is sukshma, or “subtle.” This allows it to pass through minute channels in the body and penetrate deep layers of tissue ( dhatus ). Abhyanga is a technique unique to Ayurveda. It involves mindfully massaging the body with specific oils for one’s physiology and present health condition. The skin, being the largest organ of the body, performs several important functions. Some include providing a protective barrier, regulating body temperature, synthesis of vitamin D, maintaining water electrolyte balance, providing a storehouse of fat, water, salt and glucose, and creating an acid base equilibrium by maintaining acid-alkaline levels. By allowing the oil to penetrate the skin before daily bathing, it protects, nourishes and supports one’s mind, body and spirit. Over time, with routine practice of abhyanga, one’s health and well-being are dramatically improved to the deepest and most subtle cellular levels.

How to Do Abhyanga

Abhyanga can be practiced daily or as time allows. You can apply oil to the whole body or to specific locations like the feet or head.

Benefits of Abhyanga-Self-Massage

Although receiving a massage from a professional massage therapist is sometimes advised, there is a lot to be gained by learning and practicing Ayurvedic self-massage techniques. With self-massage, the fantastic benefits of abhyanga become readily available to you in the comfort of your own home. In fact, in a recent clinical trial studying the effects of self-massage, abhyanga proved to be an effective way to decrease stress levels, improve quality of sleep, and enhance one’s overall quality of life. Over time, self-massage becomes a regular act of self-love you can look forward to every day.

Read more on Abhyanga here.

Michael Johnson is a compelling mix of creative yoga instructor and curious student of the mind. The root of his interest in meditation lies in its ability to help with neurological disorders and for developing wellbeing. Michael’s worldview and meditation practiced changed when he read Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius. In this book, they explain how we can literally reshape our brain for greater happiness, love and wisdom through a combination of modern science and ancient teachings. Implementing these teachings into his own life, Michael eventually divested himself of the dogmatic & religious interpretations of meditation and instead focused on a more scientific approach.
He brings awareness to the foundations of meditation from various traditions including Zen (Dogen’s rules for meditation), Vipasana (Midnfulness, awareness of breath and body scanning), Vedic teachings (chakras), Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali, Metta practices from Tibetan Buddhism bringing a systematic flow to his guided meditation.
– Ānapānasmṛti ≈ mindfulness of inhaling and exhaling
– Vipaśyanā ≈ insight
– Maitrī ≈ loving-kindness
– Vicāra ≈ inquiry

Learn more here.

CONCEIT: 

She speaks about conceit where there are several meanings to the word and one meaning is it is an idea , a conception. Nowadays we tend to think of conceit as a kind of Pride…. somebody praises you and if you’re conceited, thinking we’re better than other people. It can mean thinking we’re worse than other people because that’s a kind of conceit also. Most of us compare ourselves with other people a lot of the time – it’s a part of the critical mind to which we are all prone: seeing fault in other people or seeing thoughts in ourselves as well kind of conceit in a sense comparing making endless comparisons between ourselves and others. If we didn’t make comparisons there’d be no judgment no ground for criticism. All this comparison is not the reality, it’s just an idea we have so that’s related to conceit in the oldest sense, a conceit of something that really isn’t true. The Buddha said:  thinking I’m better than somebody else is deluded thinking,  I’m worse than somebody else is equally deluded and even thinking I’m equal to somebody else is deluded. And we all do this we all compare ourselves with others it’s a habit of mind that we might often not even be aware of. It’s just so endemic somehow if we tend to think generally that we’re better than other people we tend to look down on them and we don’t really respect them. You might be dismissive or rude, you might prejudge somebody based on our own biases or maybe we just don’t like that person so we tend to think they’re less good than we are in some way or we think they’re not as smart or as wise or competent or whatever as we are. We might not even be aware that we’re thinking we’re Superior to other people. It’s just a habit of mind we are caught into and we don’t even see it because we’re used to it or we think it’s true: “well yes I really am better than other people! What’s the problem? I’m seeing clearly.” Or you might think: oh no I’m not like that I think everybody’s equal I don’t think I’m better than other people I respect everybody but if we look more closely we might see those little seeds of conceit little waves that we think we’re better than somebody else because we all have them. We might have a little bit of conceit but praise is always in relation to unpraise! …it’s a proud vs inadequacy thing as Rev. Master Jiyu used to say: the two sides of one coin. We we try to prop ourselves up if we’re feeling badly about something. We look for thoughts on another person to make us feel better sometimes…thinking I’m anything if deluded. it’s separating ourselves off from other people: there’s me over here and then others over there. And this is the false conceit that the Buddha talks about: the false view of oneself that we think is real. …Our body is impermanent, painful and subject to changes. it will age it’ll change and eventually it’ll die and it’s just a body we’ve been given. There’s no cause for pride in it at all. The illusion of being a me, a self with its attributes a strong body or a weak mind-all those attributes that we might attribute to ourselves. In fact they all change they all come and go, Nothing lasts forever. Our minds change constantly – thoughts-they’re not our own. Whoever we think we are, we’re responsible for what we do with them. We can actually keep letting go over and over and over.