Ω Thirteen years ago my yoga song began on the island of Hawaii, the newest and southernmost rock in the Hawaiian archipelago. I watched Pele pour her passion in hand-to-hand combat with ocean waves in a torrent that rocked my reach and stretched my learning. My heated engagement with truth force took place in a salty mist on a luminous cloud where a sea rose & circled back in three steps: breath in purach-ah, breath hold kumbach-ah, and breath out rechakh-ah.
Midwest born & raised; I saw the ocean but didn’t recognize it. The ocean’s blue tabla rasa didn’t reflect my gaze or provide a visible boundry. Sans boundaries or witnesses to corroborate my existence, I wondered if I lived or passed and I found myself gazing to the ocean in steadfast longing, the way everyone sits on a Hawaiian beach. Day and night in Hawaii, tide after tide, a rising moon and setting sun animated dormant memories of the deep & charged life with a persistent, wavy exchange. If wolves lived in Hawaii, they would howl at each tide & sing songs while clawing black rocks to raise a fire and flow.
The Hawaiian Islands were born when elemental opposites met in a forceful, earthly dance: fire and water, soft and hard, sand and foam. Yogis call this a dance of sthira and sukha, steadiness balanced in ease. This balance in the energy of opposites meets in practice & steadfastly holds every yogi through serenity or tsunami. Hatha (competing force) speaks an open sesame to the divine comedy of life prompting an exploration of how we are at once stones and flesh, sphinx, cobra, a warrior, then evolving back to a child in repose.
Your evolving is mine, yet my child is unique in my adult. Heating, reaching, & shaping like lava, yogis twist into reformation, inviting love to fall upon the lower, middle, and upper spine. This is yoga’s didache (teaching), a love born of a twisting union which opens ancient embodiments moves the yogi to straddle deep currents.
In their breathcentric release, yogis become the mystery in the ah’ of purach-ah, kumbach-ah, rechak-ah, steady, rising & falling, a tide; and in a calm between waves yogis are touched by a subversive voice whispering of the sacred within. With that, they rise & claim anew.
(One minute afterword).
Leave a Reply