Welcome

This site has notes from various classes taught by Lorin Roche - The Radiance Sutras, Syzygy training classes, Instinct and Intuition.

Magenta Ain’t a Color, People!

By Liz Elliott of biotele.com says, “Magenta ain’t a color.” A beam of white light is made up of all the colours in the spectrum. The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. But there is one colour that is notable by its absence.

Pink (or magenta, to use its official name) simply isn’t there. But if pink isn’t in the light spectrum, how come we can see it?

Here’s an experiment you can try: stare at the pink circle below for about one minute, then look over at the blank white space next to the image. What do you see? You should see an afterimage. What colour is it?

You should have seen a green afterimage, but why is this significant?

The afterimage always shows the colour that is complementary to the colour of the image. Complementary colours are those that are exact opposites in the way the eye perceives them.

It is a common misconception that red is complementary to green. However, if you try the same experiment as above with a red image, you will see a turquoise afterimage, since red is actually complementary to turquoise. Similarly, orange is complementary to blue, and yellow to violet.

All the colours in the light spectrum have complements that exist within the spectrum – except green. There seems to be some kind of imbalance. What is going on? Is green somehow being discriminated against?
From boitele.com, thanks BoingBoing!

What goes through your mind when someone says "Let's go for a drink"?

You have to admit this is funny, and true of some women. Camille instantly said it was true for her.

Broadway Kirtan

All music is kirtan. Every note is praise to the creator, and awe at being part of this magnificent creation.

I love “official” kirtan music sometimes – that is, sung in Sanskrit, with a harmonium, a drum, and stringed instruments. During the 1960’s, I used to listen to a lot of kirtan music, the traditional stuff that was available then on records – remember vinyl records and cassette tapes? But after awhile, I got tired of the sappy level of emotion - the forced devotion. And I realized that regular old pop music is devotional. Most music is praise to God, some aspect of God. The ups and downs of love.

This morning I felt like listening to Hello Young Lovers, the song from Oscar and Hammerstein’s The King and I.

Gesture Interface

This new computer interface uses gesture - mudras - to control what you see and how the data is processed. I am surprised it has taken so long.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Now take the metaphor inside. Realize that with your everyday motions, asana practice, and meditation, you are activating the shaping the energies of your life.

Nice Work if You Can Get It

A friend of mine sent this photo from a yoga workshop she attended with Pathabi Jois:

Guru-ji giving “adjustments”

This is Your Mind on Meditation

Cartoon by Richard Kinsey, http://www.richardkinsey.com/

Dear Lorin: I have been attempting to get into a morning meditation practice but my mind is SO NOISY. I just sit there and percolate with thoughts. - Restless in the Rockies

Dear Restless, There needs to be a genre of music called, “What I think about when I meditate,” maybe Snow Patrol could start it off. The structure would be OM for one second, then, “what’s up with my boyfriend/girlfriend, wife/husband,” for a couple of seconds, then on to, “hmmm, soymilk or cream in my coffee?” a mental list of all the things you forgot to do yesterday, then daydreaming about a vacation that you totally need and deserve, then coming back with a start and wondering what time it is.

The basic principle is this: whenever you have a quiet time, your brain and body will start to sort though whatever is unfinished. Your attention will be called to the texture of your relationships, and your to-do list. This is healthy. If you want your mind to be quieter during meditation, then have a separate time when you just sit and make lists and prioritize and sort through your feelings and catch up with yourself.

Link to the OMTIME newsletter.

This is Your Brain on Meditation

Neuroplasticity and Meditation

The Dalai Lama invited Richard Davidson, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior to his home in Dharamsala, India, in 1992 after learning about Davidson's innovative research into the neuroscience of emotions. Could the simple act of thinking change the brain? Most scientists believed this idea to be false, but they agreed to test the theory. One such experiment involved a group of eight Buddhist monk adepts and ten volunteers who had been trained in meditation for one week in Davidson's lab. All the people tested were told to meditate on compassion and love. Two of the controls, and all of the monks, experienced an increase in the number of gamma waves in their brain during meditation. As soon as they stopped meditating, the volunteers' gamma wave production returned to normal, while the monks, who had meditated on compassion for more than 10,000 hours in order to attain the rank of adept, did not experience a decrease to normal in the gamma wave production after they stopped meditating. The synchronized gamma wave area of the monks' brains during meditation on love and compassion was found to be larger than that corresponding activation of the volunteers' brains. Davidson's results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November, 2004 and TIME recognized Davidson as one of the ten most influential people in 2006 on the basis of his research. Link to Wikipedia.

Fabulous Bollywood Parody Music Video

I have to admit this video has me chuckling. Natalie Portman and her boyfriend, Devendra Banhart appear in this music video which is a takeoff of a Ramayana-type epic. The song is Banhart's single "Carmensita." Natalie Portman appears in the video as a princess who is rescued from an evil king by a prince, played by Banhart.


If you click somewhere on the bottom right, you can expand the video to fill the screen, or go to YouTube.

Talk about Fusion! A Hindu epic told in the style of Naturalismo, in Spanish, by a Texas-born guy raised in Venezuela who went to the San Francisco Art Institute. Thank God - or rather, Thank All Gods, that someone is really making sport with the alchemy of East and West. (See also Devendra on Wiki).

Magnetism

Syzygy means, “the union or marriage of opposites” and is from the same root as Yoga. In Syzygy training, we notice the opposites that are at play in our life, and play with them. We dance them, breathe with them, meditate with them. Electricity and magnetism flow between the opposites.

Visualizing Magnetism

One of the dynamics we become aware of as we tune our senses by yoga, tantra and meditation is that our bodies are continually generating magnetic fields. So is everyone else. So is the Earth. As we play with the forces of life, the physical body and subtle bodies shimmer with alivenesss and electricity. We are also immersed in oceans of magnetism emanating from the Earth and the interaction of the Sun’s rays with the Earth’s own field.

This movie, by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, uses computer animation to create visualizations of electromagnetic signals from the earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere.




Here is the same movie in slightly higher resolution at Vimeo

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Bio-Magnetism

I think that electromagnetism and the magnetism living beings generate are separate forces. In other words, our auras are not affected by our iPods. Our magnetic emanations will be modulated with the emotions we feel while listening,

The Sacred Art of Alex Grey

For many years, Alex Grey has been painting the human body as the intersection of forces, flesh and divine energy co-mingling.


Alex has also done some movies, and interesting clips are available on YouTube. This is the trailer for a feature length documentary:


Here is a preview of a television show about Alex:



Amazon link to books of Alex’s art.

Hidden Majesty of Everyday Phenomena

These high-speed photographs of milk droplets hitting coffee remind me of meditation. Sometimes in the midst of a breath, thinking a thought, listening to a sound, everything pauses. Or perception speeds up and the majesty is revealed.











Link to TECH BLOG
Found by Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing.net - thanks, Mark and TechBlog!

For me over the years, the most reliable side-effect of meditation is enhanced perception, especially visual and kinaesthetic. I can count on meditation enriching the way I see the world and enjoy colors. I do not experience "stop-motion," but something akin to it, and it's enchanting.

Cat-Cam

A guy in Germany attached a tiny camera to his cat's collar. The cat's name is Mr. Lee. The camera is set to take photos at intervals, so we can see what Mr. Lee does all day. These are the pictures, taken at intervals through a day. Link. I love the glimpse we get into the CAT WORLD.

The Trip Begins . . . (seeing through Mr. Lee's whiskers)


An unknown backyard.


One of his friends?


Watching the birdhouse.


Is there a cat meeting under the car?


Seems to be a pleasant place!


How it is done:

Mr. Lee with his camera

Click here for more of Mr. Lee's adventures.



Fritz, one of Mr. Lee’s spy-cat allies

What is Your World?

We each have our own version of the cat world. You have your world, the one you see, listen to, touch, and taste and smell as you move through your world. As an exercise, pause every hour or so as you move through your day and open up all your senses. Take a multi-sensory, feel-o-vision snapshot. Move on.

© 2008 Lorin Roche, Ph.D. put "yoga" or "meditation" in the subject header the first time you email me