Bhuvaneshwari, Amma and my mother

Bhuvaneshwari is a goddess I had more problems relating to than the other goddesses I have studied so far.  She seems so perfect and kind it was hard for me to identify with her.  The idea of the nuturing mother who is spaciously there for you is one that I don't visualize so well because I had a difficult relationship with my mother where I often felt forgotten.

My mother was a career woman always busy with work.  She always moving, always doing many things at the same time, over committed, working until exhaustion until she just collapsed in the bed and then asked us children to lie beside her as she slept.  I am very much like her, the joke of the gods/goddesses, is turning us into what we didn't want to be and hated as children.

When Amma was mentioned in the lecture I began to understand Bhuvaneshwari in a much fuller and more positive way.  I have seen Amma and felt her embrace.  I write about my experience being hugged by Amma is 2013 on my blog if anyone wants to look at it.

http://nyapatrinos.blogspot.com/2013/12/amma.html

Spaciousness is something I need.  I pack up everyday with a million activities as if I am afraid of the breath, afraid to take a pause (just like my mother).  What scares me about expansiveness and spaciousness I am not sure.  I just know it is hard for me. I often laugh at myself calling myself a "Bisy Backson" as so wonderfully described in the Tao of Pooh coming from a note that really meant to say but was misspelled "Busy Back Soon"

Yesterday I was very angry from a week of work with people I have been finding quite difficult. I knew I needed to do some yoga but I wasn't sure what or where.

 I ended up going to the 4pm class at the Iyengar studio I sometimes visit.  I always promise myself I will do more Iyengar because Iyengar is good for the body, but I hate all their rules with specificity of the folding the blankets and the intricacies of tieing the ropes (isn't life hard enough without being under the microscope in yoga class because you folded the blanket the wrong way or have the fringe facing in the wrong direction)? So usually I tell myself I am going to go to Iyengar and end up at my sloppy hot yoga class and sweat and move as I wish with out the alignment cues I'd love to have.

But this 4pm Iyengar class was really great.  We started hanging upside down on the rope wall for ten minutes and I felt like my vertebrae were getting more room and my neck was elongating.

 Everything was becoming more expansive and spacious as in Bhuvaneshwari was inhabitating my body and opening it up,

just making incredible amount of room like when you open all the doors and windows of your house on a mild summer day the delicious breeze flows through.

I am interested in the idea of Shoonya  not being the same as Spaciousness

 I can never quite understand what Shoonya is.  Although Swami Satyananda talks of it in the blue book on Yoga Nidra and most Buddhist texts talk about.  Maybe I can't grasp it because I haven't experienced it.  Spaciousness I have felt, experienced, tasted.  I think it is something that usual comes for me in Savanasa, or looking at the moon,  although yesterday I touched it hanging on the rope wall.

And I do want to make more room!

 I do want to give some things up. experience down time, and float.  It is just for me extremely difficult to do.  Bhuvaneshwari please guide me towards expansion and spaciousness. Help me make some room.  Help me breathe.