Fingertips and Toes

Reading from Tuesday, December 6, 2011 yoga class

"There are so many things that can provide us with peace.  Next time you take a shower or a bath, I suggest you hold your big toes in mindfulness.  We pay attention to everything except our toes.  When we hold our toes in mindfulness and smile at them, we will find that our bodies have been very kind to us.  We know that any cell in our toes can turn cancerous, but our toes have been behaving very well, avoiding that kind of problem.  Yet, we have not been nice to them at all.  These kinds of practices can bring us happiness."

                                                                                                Thich Nhat Hanh

"According to the craftsmen of the Middle Ages, that's why we have spiral patterns on our fingertips.  They thought the whorls there are the marks left by the soul entering or leaving the body.  In this imaginative way of thinking, we infuse the people and things we touch in the world with soul by the care and attention of our touch.  Our soul emerges from this mysterious place inside us and out through our fingertips, ensouling the wood we carve, the gardens we cultivate, the children and animals and lovers we touch.  To me, this is a poetic way of imagining how we bring soul back into our personal lives--by paying attention to the very way we touch, as with the way we prepare food or the care we give our work or the manner in which we touch the earth."
                                                                                                  Phil Cousineau

                                   Both these pieces appear in the book Spiritual Literacy
                                             by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Yoga teaches us to be aware... and the more we practice yoga, the more aware we become... one of the gifts of practicing yoga!!    Yeah for yoga.