My Purpose? That’s simple.
To live, to love, to tell stories.
This fluid journey called yoga – four years in the making – continues its remaking over me.
My practice takes place in the heated mist of a hot yoga room. It’s a practice of eustress and relaxation which morphs into a luminous cloud, salty and damp.
I am connected to you through drops of sweat.
Your asana is my asana, your bending and shaping is my bending and shaping.
To return again and be in that dusty – but it’s not really dust – cloud becomes the road-map for traveling outward as breath moves to sweet release.
My longing is your longing, my travel is your travel.
I’m dragonfly, now rabbit, then camel, now fish – now myself.
Then I evolve once again, going back and yet forward at the same time to child in his innocent repose.
Your evolving is my evolving: we go back to child.
“The way in is the way out,” my guru said
Her wisdom, “the way in is the way out” comes to me from her bloodline far to the east, from a practice that bent and molded her matter-mind, from evidence etched into the soles of her feet. Tucked in like a child, she steps back and forth over the soles of my feet and east meets west.
Moved to low places like water, propelled by gravity, heating, bending, and shaping, I’m an ongoing story of learning. My teachers are ancient yoga reformers.
My reformation is your reformation, my learning is your learning.
I slowly twist into my unique physiography. Lumbar, Thorax, and Cervical Spine rotate, flex, and extend. I collapse: breathe, rest.
Your resting is my resting, your twisting spine is my twisting spine.
And I speak of my body in its fluid journey, but the movement of heart is more important. I learn to live, to love, to tell this and other stories.
My heart is your heart, my story is your story.
I pause in gratitude, slowly open my eyes and track my gaze from ground to horizon to sky. I’m aware of a new ascent, a new energy exchange. My body is only the shell of a deeper transformation.
I promise myself to continue. I remain patient for every commencement which I know only echoes another level of a first child’s rising.
Your rising is my rising, and my rising is yours.
MEDITATION
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight.
–Bruce Springsteen
Leave a Reply