St Nicholas

Christmas celebrations in the Netherlands begin on the last Saturday of November, when Saint Nicholas arrives via steam ship from Spain. Sound odd? Dutch Christmas traditions have melded political ideology, folklore, religion and legend into the holiday symbol of Saint Nicholas.

With its long coastlines and flowing rivers, the Netherlands has long been the patron of sailors.

In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas (nicknamed Sinter Klass) is depicted as a tall, slender man wearing a red bishop’s robe and tall bishop’s hat. He carries a bishop’s miter and rides a white horse. His helper, Black Peter, who is garbed in the Renaissance fashion of puffed velvet breeches, rides alongside Saint Nicholas on a mule, his face covered in soot. Black Peter’s 16th Century clothing is a reminder of the Spanish dominion over the Netherlands, which finally ended in 1570. Black Peter was often depicted with horns and red eyes. Dutch children were told he was the devil, whom Saint Nicholas had captured and made his servant.

Children in the Netherlands believe that Saint Nicholas arrives on December 5th (the eve of his saint day) along with Black Peter. Black Peter would jump from roof to roof, sliding up and down chimneys, leaving gifts in the little wooden shoes left by the hearth. Children would fill their shoes with hay and carrots for Saint Nicholas’s horse and Black Peter’s mule.

The idea of good fortune coming via the chimney goes back to pagan days, when people thought good spirits could travel as swiftly as smoke. It was very similar to the German holiday tradition of Heartha, Goddess of the Home. Mothers reinforced the idea of Saint Nicholas and Black Peter by cleaning out their hearths just before December 6th. They told children that cleaning it out would make it easier for Black Peter to deliver presents.

Over the course of the medieval period the legend of St Nicholas continued to develop and spread enormously, especially after the theft of his relics nd their translation to Bari in southern Italy in 1087. Indeed, the cult of St Nicholas eventually rivalled that of the Virgin Mary in many regions, to judge from church dedications. In addition to becoming the patron of sailors as part of this process, St Nicholas also became known as the patron of children. This important development was a consequence of the popular tale of his rescue from death of three children, who had been pickled for eating by an innkeeper. When combined with his reputation as a gift-giver, all the key elements were in place for the transformation of St Nicholas into the modern giver-of-gifts to children. The most significant manifestation of this, from the perspective of Santa Claus, is the Dutch Sinterklaas. Whilst Sinterklaas clearly derives from St Nicholas and his feast-day of the 6 December, he differs from the earlier portraits of St Nicholas in a number of ways, not least in his flying white horse. These differences are usually explained as a result of the legends of St Nicholas being fused in the medieval period with those of the former pagan god Wodan (the Norse Odin, who did possess a flying horse named Sleipnir), although one does have to wonder whether all of the aspects of the legend of Sinterklaas which are sometimes claimed to derive from this fusion really do so. Whatever the case may be, in the Early Modern era there were several unsuccessful attempts to stamp out the Sinterklaas tradition for religious reasons; more recently it has been attacked as a 'racialized tradition', due to Sinterklaas' companion Black Pete, but it remains nonetheless popular in Holland.

The Origins of Jack Frost

Jack Frost is the elfin creature that we say has visited when we see the fine lace work of ice on our windows on a crisp frosty morning. He crisps the fallen leaves in autumn and makes mirrors from the puddles in spring.

The origins of Jack Frost go back as far in time as Viking folklore, the name coming from the Norse term "jokul frosti" meaning icicle frost. He was the son of the Nordic wind god Kari. He was known as an artistic sprite, traveling through villages in the night and decorating them with his ice art. This is the original version of our perception of him as an elfin creature.

Russian folk tales have the frost produced by a smith forging water chains for the earth, and parts of Russia give him a partner, Frostwoman, who with him controls the winter weather and must be placated. The German tradition has an old lady shaking out an eiderdown and in Australia the aboriginal tale is of the seven sisters of the Pleiades throwing ice daggers to the earth.

The depiction of Jack Frost as we in the west think of him was first popularized by the artist Thomas Nast in a picture published in Harper's Weekly in 1864. The picture, Central Park in winter, depicts Jack Frost as a creature covered in icicles, though perhaps not so elfin as we now see him. Thomas Nast is also responsible for many of our popular images of Santa Claus and Christmas.

Jack Frost was never really associated with Christmas, in the way that Santa Claus is, but more generally with the weather. This has been changing in recent years as Hollywood has used him as a character in several films, not always in a complimentary way. He is a serial killer in one (Jack Frost 1996, and a sequel), and in the 1998 film starring Michael Keaton he is the victim of a fatal accident on Christmas Eve. Most recently he appears in a film with Tim Allen (Santa Claus 3) where he attempts to take over the role of Father Christmas. Authors have long been wise to his appeal however, and he appears as a minor character and as a central part of several fantasy books.

Yule Log Celebrations with Friends & Family

While most people have heard of the Yule Log, few people realize that its tradition can be traced back to the days of the pagan Norsemen, or Vikings.

Need an excuse for a Christmas party? How about a "traditional" excuse. If this year's party is already planned, add this old tradition to it. Burning a Yule log is probably the oldest Christmas tradition there is. It started even before the first Christmas. Celebrating Yule means no work as long as the special log burns. It does require gathering family, friends and neighbors for songs and stories, dances and romances, feasts and fun.

At first, burning a Yule log was a celebration of the winter solstice. In Scandinavia, Yule ran from several weeks before the winter solstice to a couple weeks after. This was the darkest time of year, and the people celebrated because days would start getting longer after the solstice. There was quite a bit of ritual and ceremony tied to the Yule log, for it marked the sun's rebirth from its southern reaches. The Yule log gets its name from the Scandinavian tradition, but the ritual burning of a special log during winter solstice took place as far west as Ireland, as far south as Greece, and as far north as Siberia.

In the fourth century AD When Pope Julius I decided to celebrate Christmas around the Winter Solstice, the Yule log tradition continued, but the fire came to represent the light of the Savior instead of the light of the Sun.

On or about Christmas eve, a big log was brought into a home or large hall. Songs were sung and stories told. Children danced. Offerings of food and wine and decorations were placed upon it. Personal faults, mistakes and bad choices were burned in the flame so everyone's new year would start with a clean slate. The log was never allowed to burn completely, a bit was kept in the house to start next years log. The log brought good luck. Any pieces that were kept protected a house from fire, or lightning, or hail. Ashes of the log would be placed in wells to keep the water good. Ashes were also placed at the roots of fruit trees and vines to help them bear a good harvest.

The burning of the Yule log marked the beginning of Christmas celebrations. In Appalachia, as long as the log, or "backstick" burned you could celebrate. Often a very large "backstick" was chosen and soaked in a stream to ensure a nice long celebration. In the early nineteenth century, American slaves didn't have to work as long as the Yule log burned, so they would choose the biggest, greenest log they could find. If they did have to work while it burned their master had to pay them for the work.

Almost everywhere, the fire was started with that bit of the last year's log, to symbolize continuity and the eternal light of heaven.

In some parts of France, a special carol was sung when the log was brought into the home. The carol prayed for health and fertility of mothers, nanny-goats, ewes, and an abundant harvest. Of course the French were probably the first to eat their yule logs. They started out burning them like everyone else, but when big open fireplaces began to disappear in France, they moved the tradition to the table by making a cake roll that looked like a Yule log, called a "Buche de Noel".

You have a choice. You can burn your yule log like the English. Or if you don't have a fireplace, you can eat it like the French. If you don't need anymore Christmas goodies around the house, you can light a special candle as they do in Denmark and Norway. Or you can use a decorated log as a center piece like the Italian "ceppo". However you mark your Yuletide, the spirit of the tradition requires gathering family and friends for a warm and cheery celebration.

Absolute Relaxation: Emotional Energy & Intuition

Absolute Relaxation: Emotional Energy & Intuition

Emotional Energy & Intuition

Our emotional energy converts into biological matter through a highly complex process. Just as radio stations operate according to specific energy wavelengths, each organ and system in the body is calibrated to absorb and process emotional and psychological energies. That is, each area in the body transmits energy on a specific, detailed frequency, and when we are healthy, all are "in tune". An area of the body that is not transmitting at its normal frequency indicates the location of a problem. A change in the intensity of the frequency indicates a change in the nature and seriousness of the illness and reveals the stress pattern that has contributed to the development of the illness.

Energy Being

"... think of yourself at all times as an energy being as well as a physical one." Anatomy of the Spirit Caroline Myss, PhD.

This breakthrough view of mind, body, and spirit, based on fifteen years of research into energy medicine, presents a unique program for promoting spontaneous physical, emotional and spiritual healing. Anatomy of the Spirit shows the links between emotional and spiritual stresses ands specific illnesses in the context of the anatomy of the human energy system.

Deep breathing for Stress Relief

Deep breathing is a simple, yet powerful, relaxation technique with its focus on full, cleansing breaths. It can be practiced almost anywhere, almost at a moment's notice and provides quick relief to stress levels helping to keep them in check.

Deep breathing is the cornerstone of many other relaxation practices, too, and can be combined with other relaxing elements such as dance, slow movement, aromatherapy and music.

How to practice deep breathing

The key to deep breathing is to breathe deeply from the abdomen. When you take deep breaths from the abdomen, rather than shallow breaths from your upper chest, you inhale more oxygen. The more oxygen you get, the less tense, short of breath, and anxious you feel. So the next time you feel stressed, take a minute to slow down and breathe deeply:

If you have a hard time breathing from your abdomen while sitting up, try lying on the floor. Put something on your stomach, breathing so that you feel your stomach rise as you inhale and exhale.

Tai Chi for Stress Relief

If you’ve ever seen a group of people in the park slowly moving in synch, you’ve probably witnessed tai chi. Tai chi is a self-paced, non-competitive series of slow, flowing body movements. These movements emphasize concentration, relaxation, and the conscious circulation of vital energy throughout the body. Though tai chi has its roots in martial arts, today it is primarily practiced as a way of calming the mind, conditioning the body, and reducing stress. As in meditation, tai chi practitioners focus on their breathing and keeping their attention in the present moment.

Tai chi is a safe, low-impact option for people of all ages and levels of fitness, including older adults and those recovering from injuries. Once you’ve learned the moves, you can practice it anywhere, at any time, by yourself, or with others.
Making tai chi work for you

As with yoga, tai chi is best learned in a class or from a private instructor.

Although tai chi is normally very safe and gentle, be sure to discuss any health or mobility concerns with your instructor.

Tai chi classes are often offered in community centers, senior centers, or local community colleges.

Relaxation Practices that Reduce Stress

The body’s natural relaxation response is a powerful antidote to stress. Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, visualization, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, and yoga can help you activate this relaxation response. When practiced regularly, these activities lead to a reduction in your everyday stress levels and a boost in your feelings of joy and serenity. What’s more, they also serve a protective quality by teaching you how to stay calm and collected in the face of life’s curveballs.

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Meditation

In meditation, the mind is focussed. Practice the means by which meditation can happen, using tools of self awareness, eye focus, mantra, imagination, inward focus allowing yourself powers of concentration, recharging mental, physical and spiritual aspects of ourselves.

If you are engrossed in a conversation with someone, do you notice everything going on around you? As long as you are absorbed, you do not. This is the entry point into meditation. The senses are capable of responding, but they do not because they are withdrawn.

Stress itself is not harmful, but our inability to deal wth our bodies' response to it can be. If you can learn to cope with the changes that life presents you, or change your response, you can handle life's stress. To this end, developing a meditative capacity and practice is invaluable.

While meditating, explore your awareness, exploring the inner frontiers of your consciousness with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a lover.

Yoga

Yoga reaches parts that other forms of exercise cannot event contemplate. It exercises very muscles in the body; it tones and invigorates every organ; it flushes and cleanses every blood vessel; it pacifies, tones and harmonises the nerves, body tissues, it enhances skin quality, it clears and relaxes the mind, it focuses attention, it generates energy.

In yoga we use the body to harness the mind. By recalibrating the body we recalibrate the mind. By liberating the body from its restrictions we liberate the mind from its limitations. In Yoga the body is the gymnasium in which we train the development of the mind in attentiveness, concentration, and subtlety, clarify the comprehensiveness. All of these qualities are required and cultivated by the postures. All of these qualities then become characteristics of the mind – characteristics that are then available to any and all of the activities of everyday life.

You do this in yoga simply by paying attention to the way your body feels as you move it, to the rhythm of your breathing, in and out of different postures. Nothing weird, nothing esoteric, nothing complicated. Just moving, breathing and feeling. While how you move in and out of the postures is important, it is staying still that really counts. It is this that distinguishes yoga from other forms of training, giving yourself time to stop still, to listen to your body, to feel yourself as you are.

The benefits of yoga are not in proportion to the difficulty of the postures. Most of the benefits of yoga result from the more basic postures.

Yoga must be approached with integrity. This integrity is one in which the attentiveness and sensitivity of the mind are used to activate each part of the body into a harmonious whole. This is a harmony of body and mind; as one. The guiding link is the breath. As you become more comfortable in your body, and more at ease in your mind, you will feel better and better about yourself. It helps you to drop the tension, anxieties, and inhibitions that prevent you from being fully and freely yourself.

What this means is that yoga is not simply a matter of establishing the greatest possible movement in a muscle or muscle group. It is not simply a matter of lengthening muscles; it is a question of returning all the muscles of the body and their relationship to each other. This returning is not done in order to bring about flexibility. It is done in order to bring about efficiency and harmony of all physical activity. It is a question of the organic activity of the vital systems of the body; respiratory; circulatory digestive, reproductive, immunological, nervous, etc. Nevertheless, flexibility is an obvious and beneficial effect of this process.

The more you put into the practice of yoga the more you will get out of it. It can be used to develop flexibility, strength, stamina and general fitness; to promote relaxation and good posture; to correct muscular imbalances. But it can give you much more than these things, while including them also. It can give a deep and resilient peace of mind which comes from self awareness and self acceptance that reset upon the self determination and self responsibility which the method demands. No one can do your practice for you. Once you begin to feel the way that it opens you to yourself, allowing you to feel and be yourself more fully and more freely, you will greatly appreciate this fact.

As you become more comfortable in your body, and more at ease in your mind, you will feel better and better about yourself. It helps you to drop the tension, anxieties, and inhibitions that prevent you from being fully and freely yourself.

Theory

The yoga training method is designed to bring about total relaxation. It is only the presence of physical, emotional and mental tension that restricts the flowering of our innate potential. As these tensions are removed, our potential is realized accordingly. As the natural harmony and integrity of our body and mind are more able to express themselves, the more immune we become to the stress and strain of life.

The practice of yoga stabilizes our nervous system and our minds. This stability spills over into our lives allowing us to face the unexpected with a calm clarity.

The effects of yoga are very broad and very deep. They touch every aspect of one’s being; most immediately they give back the capability of the body to move freely and effortlessly. At the same time they give the mind focus while bringing vitality.

The practice alignment of the body required by the postures brings, little by little, structural reintegration of the anatomical body. Posture, the way that we hold ourselves, improves carriage, the way that we move through space, does too. Muscles of the body are more able to fulfil the way that we move through space, does too. Muscles of the body are more able to fulfil their role in supporting the moving the rest of the body once they are free from tension.

The deep stretching that yoga brings to the muscles, and the effect of improved circulation, brings oxygenated blood to tissues that my have been neglected due to poor circulation. Those parts of the body that have been or are beginning to stagnate, are brought back to life, to vitality.

Just as respiration and circulation are improved, so too is digestion
Method

Respecting the body/mind means not trying not to impose on them. Imposing on the mind brings frustration, conflict and confusion. Both kinds of imposition are acts of aggression, of violence against yourself. Practice should be an open inquiry carried out with honesty and sensitivity.

Yoga is about balance. There are five main aspects to the practice of yoga – by doing this we can make sure that our practice is balance. These five aspects are structure, movement, breathing, energy and awareness.

We need to make balance between effort and ease applying enough effort; but not too much, being relaxed but not compromising, structural integrity; introducing balance between power and fluidity; between developing and utilizing the ability to resist gravity and more freely and not fighting with our blocks; finding the parameters within which we can challenge our resistance; introducing balance between striving and enjoyment between achievement and pleasure.

Practice

Repetition is fundamental to any learning process. Progress in Yoga depends upon regular practice. Yoga is not self-mortification. It can and should be continually accompanied by a sense of release, relief, growth and expansion. This is the same way that infants learn to move and walk. Through hesitant repetition that becomes more and more confident, while a pattern of neuro/muscular action is being learned. When the pattern has been coded in the brain, the action, movement, or posture becomes stable and can be sustained without strain.

A little often is more beneficial than a lot occasionally. However, your progress will be slow and you might not even realise that it is happening.

It is better to have a rest every now and then. This allows the muscles time to assimilate the lengthening work you have been doing. Too much stretching can cause the muscles to tighten and harden up in resistance to overdoing it.

Postures

In yoga the shapes of the posture act like a lens bringing the mind into focus.

Yogic Diet

Eating regular meals will ensure that the body received a steady supply of nutrients that can be utilised to provide energy as well as growth and repair. During the day the body’s energy systems take a leading role, enabling us to carry out our daily activities. At night the energy systems slow down, and maintenance and repairs actions come into force. Any food not processed during the day is sorted and fully digested while we are asleep, and the various nutrients are taken around the body and deposited where they are needed. Any waste matter is then let in our waste products’ department, ready for elimination in the morning.

Healthy eating means that we look for foods that will be advantageous to our own health and take in nutritious food – without it we may lack energy and be susceptible to a variety of illnesses and infections, by not adhering to a sensible diet, actually encourage health problems. Know your ingredients and what they are doing for and to your body.

The yogic diet is one consisting of pure, simple, natural foods which are easily digested and promote health. Simple meals aid the digestion and assimilation of foods. Nutritional requirements fall under five categories, protein, carbohydrates, minerals, fats and vitamins. Eating foods first hand from nature, grown in fertile soil (preferably organic, free from chemicals and pesticides) will ensure a better supply of these nutritional needs. Processing, refining and overcooking destroy much food value.

How to Correct Your Diet

The most important element is breathing having an influence on the body – mind – spirit. Through breathing as the main source of human nourishment, we introduce prana the energy that makes our bodywork.

What is vital within us is then animated by the prana. We can notice its effect on the heartbeat, on digestion, on movements, on thoughts, etc. When breathing is controlled and its rhythm is slow and deep, then our nourishment will change. We will be able to “feel” which is the kind of food that most suits us. Eating in a relaxed way means eating in tranquillity, chewing well, introducing less food, avoiding feeling heavy, having good indigestion.

Healthy eating guidelines that follow the principles of yoga:

· Eat at fixed times, refrain from eating between meals

· Try to eat as little processed food as possible

· Try not to eat meals late at night but if you are very hungry eat something light – perhaps fruit

· Take some lemon and honey in the morning for health and energy and to purify the blood

· Do not eat when you are angry as poisons are secreted by the glands and thrown into the bloodstream when you are angry or upset

Moving Toward a Yogic Diet

Some experts claim that the easiest path to success if a total and abrupt change, but for most people a more gradual approach is needed. If you change a few habits at a time, you may experience less disruption of your life. If you are considering changing your diet, try these suggestions:

· Cut back on junk food and replace with nutritious substitutes; fresh fruit for sodas, whole grain cookies for those made with refined flour, roasted soy beans instead of peanuts, baked chips instead of fired, and so on.

· Add more fruit and vegetables. Focus on green leafy vegetables such as cos and iceberg lettuce (while in season) and Chinese cabbage. The cruciferous vegetables – cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts – are cancer preventers.

· Replace bacon, burgers, hot dogs and sausages with sandwich slices on wholemeal bread

· Use fat-free or low-fat dairy products as often as you can