Scientific Ink

Category: Ann Arbor

  • A decade in my meditation community (gratitude #23)

    I just realized that this is my 10th year in the local Siddha Yoga Meditation community. At the time I first went, it was about a block and half from my apartment, but it took me several months to get there. I don’t know the date of my first visit, though it would have been around this time in 1998. That was a hard year for me: my father died at the end of April that year, and I was also pushing myself to finish a dissertation in biology but my passion for academics was depleted.

    I came with the hard questions in mind: how to be at peace with my father’s life and death (lived on his own terms, not in agreement with mine), how to be still, how to be present, how to let go of my expectations and be open to life as it really is.

    I had an intuition that meditation would help. But sitting in meditation was excruciating. Moments passed like hours, my body ached and my mind worried and fretted. I came to the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center of Ann Arbor at the invitation of a friend, after a frustrating meditation class elsewhere. I came with the intention of learning to meditate, but my heart got caught up in chanting. Good thing, too, because it took me several years of chanting to be able to sit well for meditation. I suppose I had to clear my system, or else get comfortable, or maybe just grow into it. Hard to say. But now, after 10 years, I can see all that I have received from Siddha Yoga.

    What a blessing the center, the community, the teachings, shared chanting, shared meditation, the friendships, and the grace of the guru have been for me.

    Over the last 10 years, I have become:

    • more gentle with myself,
    • more thoughtful and grateful,
    • more able to receive,
    • more connected to others and more open to connection,
    • more content.

    Some of this is, perhaps, the wisdom acquired through an additional decade of living, but much of it was gained through the inspiration and teachings of the Siddha Yoga tradition and through applying the practices of chanting, meditation, and self-inquiry modeled at the center.

    The Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor is at 3017 Miller Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103. It’s just west of Ann Arbor, on the NW side of M-14. We have public programs Thursday evenings 7-8:30PM and Sunday mornings 9-10:30AM (often followed by breakfast/brunch). (edited to reflect new location in 2012).

  • Rope Yoga at Vie in Ann Arbor

    Rope yoga, or Russa yog, started here in Ann Arbor. I have seen the studio on S. State Street (between Washington and Liberty) and the Ann Arbor Observer recently profiled the studio/founders. For some reason I never made it to the State Street studio, it’s one of many Ann Arbor yoga studios I have on my list but never seem to visit. This week, Vie fitness studio on S. Ashley is starting to offer classes, and I went to a free class on Tuesday night.

    Now, when I was a kid, and we had the “climb the rope” activity in gym, I was always one of the earthbound kids, watching with a mixture of awe and jealousy as some tiny, wiry kid got to the ceiling and back on the rope. Maybe it is because I’m tall (and therefore heavy), maybe it is just because I’m weak, but pull-ups, chin-ups, and any kind of rope climbing have always been something to shun for fear of embarrassment or worse.

    Still, my yoga classes at the Ann Arbor YMCA often featured “rope work”. The old Y had all sorts of pegs in the wall, and we’d essentially tie ourselves to the pegs to get different stretches than normal. For instance, downward dog when the wall (or a partner) is pulling back on my hips is an altogether different stretch. I get a little less hamstrung and a little more stretch elsewhere. So, I knew ropes + yoga = good.

    I overcame my fear and signed up for a free course. All I had to lose was a little dignity and an hour of my evening. The yoga class got me into Vie’s upstairs studio (previously I’d been in the downstairs spinning studio). They have weights and other fitness equipment upstairs, and a glassed studio with about 8 ropes hanging from anchors below the ceiling.

    Fear snuck back in as I approached the rope. It was kind of rough, and I wished I’d brought my cycling gloves. But, I started the class by hanging from the rope and stretching my side closest to it in a gentle C-shape, nice. There were some moments where I struggled to pull myself up (or push myself up), but doing Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III) using the ropes was lovely. I got the same feeling of flight that I have achieved for a moment here and there in previous attempts, but the ropes stabilized it and let me absorb it. Power! Joy! Balance! Yoga!

    So, I think I still will try to make a class at the “mother” studio on State Street, but I’m happy I tried Rope Yoga at Vie and will probably try again, I have to keep working on my core and my upper body strength, after all.

  • Ann Arbor in Bloom (gratitude #21)

    It’s the time of year when everything is bursting open – while my tulips have faded, the redbud in the back has finally decided (after several years of skipping flowering and going straight to leaf, just to spite us) that it is, in fact, a redbud. We’re thrilled it has deigned to bloom in our backyard, joining a host of other redbuds planted throughout the city. The neighborhood’s Forsythia are greening up now, after their show of yellow flowers. And, perhaps the best of all, the lilac just over the fence from our deck has gone crazy with blooms.

    We have a cat, and the cat lives for being outside in the summer time, especially in the evenings. In a moment of weakness, I let him outside this evening. This means that I have been outside calling for him several times, one time I spotted him under the car in the driveway and he moved out of sight to snub my attentions. Cats!

    Likely it will take a few more trips to the deck to call into the night to convince him to join me inside. Well, at least tonight the dizzying scent of the neighbor’s lilacs are rewarding me for each otherwise fruitless visit to the back deck to call a cat who hears me and chooses not to listen. I have a special relationship with this lilac. It lives on the other side of the fence, but bends its boughs into the sunlight on our side too, and I’ve set my compost pile at its feet, nourishing it quite accidentally, because it is close to the kitchen door. So. perhaps I share just a small bit of responsibility for its the frothy blooms and the fragrance. Now if only I could get my cat inside, all would be about perfect.

  • Cool planes at KARB

    There were wonderful planes today at the Ann Arbor Airport (KARB).

    The Stearman was out, but Chris is often there with it. He was offering flights in it as a fundraiser for Great Commission Air. Perhaps the jets were there for the same reason?

    We went for a joyride to Marshall and back, and on our return we were surprised to hear of “traffic” landing before us that was currently at our 5 o’clock (that is, behind us). After the Alpha Jet completely dusted our Cessna-182, we landed, hearing a MiG talking to Ann Arbor Tower, arranging for a touch-and-go after our landing. Well, as we taxied back to the NW T hangars, the MiG buzzed the runway 2x, never even touching. It came in really fast and quite low (just feet off the ground), the second time it had its afterburners on. Wow!

  • My random notes from ArbCamp

    ArbCamp was Saturday 10/27.

    What amazed me was the number of students who were able to attend – driving to Ann Arbor from E. Lansing, Flint, and some coming from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area. Talking to the students was a highlight for me. The only business cards I exchanged were with students. I think my first business card was post-grad-school-graduation, so this particular crop of students has several years of wisdom on myself at that age. They impressed me for their preparation, their entrepreneurism, and their networking skills.

    Here’s a list of websites I jotted down:

    Here’s the “new idea” that everyone else seemed to know but me: microformats.

  • Black walnut bounty

    a photo of a pile of black walnut fruits
    Black walnuts that were “squirreled” away in our garage.

    Today is a beautiful fall day, clear blue skies, high 70s, warm sun. I decided it was time to rake the leaves in the backyard. We have a big, beautiful black walnut tree back there. It has lovely, feathery leaves, and when we fly over our neighborhood, I think it is the biggest tree on our block.

    Every fall, it drops its leaves, its leaf rachises, and its fruit. The fruit is about 1.5-2 inches in diameter, with a green skin, and they drop with a bang onto the roof of our garage.

    This year, the neigborhood squirrels seem to have been especially active. They salted away so many nuts in the planter for my dwarf orange tree that they eventually completely uprooted it, killing it. Today, when I went into our garage to get the rake and the lawn & leaf bags, I saw that the squirrels have decided to take a new tack. They have been piling up black walnut fruits onto a work surface in the garage–they have filled Dave’s old ski boots, filled some ceramic pots, and even started to place black walnuts along the groove in our ski rack.

    After seven years of living here, this is the first time we’ve seen anything like this. Either our squirrels have learned a new skill, have forgotten what they know about burying nuts, or are preparing for a very long winter.