YOGA SONG, coming this summer.

 

YOGA IS A SONG, AND IF YOU DO YOGA, IT’S YOUR SONG

Lyrics from “Woodstock,” by Joni Mitchell, suggest that we are made of cosmic energy and matter: “We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year old carbon . . .”

We seldom hear such grandiose and luminous words to  describe our being, but when we yoga we are grand shining billion-year old carbon participating in a pattern that moves the stars and positions us to touch the inner Om at the core of our being.

In a soft chant of Om, rooted and expressed from the core, our cares are set free allowing us to take note of our deepest truth; that we are beings at one with a divinely animated critical mass of stardust and carbon waiting to greet, meet, and welcome us home.

Cultural voices bombard us with a cacophony of dismissal, a poisonous milieu designed to make us feel small and inadequate. News and current events can leave us thinking we’re an insignificant cog in a great drama that’s happening elsewhere.

Somewhere along the way, our freedom and joy took flight when we traded our truest selves — luminous stardust and sacred beings — for narratives that dim the light and joy of our being. But to trade our identity as golden children imbued with cosmic energy and force for anything else is a trade down.

Creating the sound of Om and meditating on its meaning invites us to experience this divine breath that the Hebrews called ruah, the Greeks pneuma, and the yogis call prana. In the moment of Om, divine breath puts our strategic and analytical brain on pause while firing the existential and experiential brain.

When we chant Om, we may discover that the only thing missing has been our awareness that we are living embodiments to the truth of Mitchell’s words; we’re beings made of stardust, formed in spirit, animated by breath, joyful and spontaneous at heart.

Coming home, some will chant the sonorous Om of creation, others may vocalize a heartfelt Namaste, some may sing their yoga song in asana and in their own way, and for some a silent song of the heart will rise from a meditative place of deep consciousness.

This is yoga’s song, arising within the body electric in a primordial consciousness both unique and universal. The luminous, internal Om is the well-trod path providing yogis with something the broken world cannot; the deep, abiding peace of coming home.