Yesterday was filled with so much delight. This year’s Connect DC summer solstice ritual will henceforth be known as the laughing ritual. That is what happens when you invoke both Coyote and Hotei, the laughing Buddha. My cheeks were already aching from the London bridges falling down grounding, the hokey pokey circle casting, and the nursery rhyme calling of the elements. By the time we got to the laughing yoga meditation and later the coyote dance throw down, oh my goodness, several of us were holding our bellies as our grins stretched all the way back to our ears. It was glorious!
But this morning I woke up tired.
So after stumbling through the morning service to the feline deities, I reluctantly rolled out the yoga mat. I was convinced that it would be near impossible to squeeze in more than three salutations. Heck I thought as I settled down to chant the invocation, I will be lucky to do one.
So as I started my sixth (!) salutation, I felt such gratitude to my yoga teachers. All these years of stumbling into yoga class, holding on to hope when my muscles seized and joints ached, all those blessed props and adjustments to help those muscles and joints, and here I am joyfully completing six salutes … on a Monday … after a public ritual … when I would have rather slept till noon. Wow.
As I laid down for savasana, I remembered how even the thought of yoga use to frighten me. I had thought that yoga was all about those incredible poses you always saw on book and video covers. I thought yoga was for the fit, the flexible, and the strong. I thought yoga was for slim people who ate nothing but petals, seeds and fragrant rice. I thought that yoga was out of the question for a fat, sick, stiff jointed old reprobate like myself. I was so incredibly wrong.
Yoga is so much more than poses, it is a system of philosophy, a worldview – some would call it a spiritual journey. I read at some point that all the poses are about teaching you how to breathe. Most folks who feel good after a yoga practice do so because they finally got all the oxygen they needed.
But what about those poses?
There is no requirement, at least in Anusara yoga, that you attain the “perfect” pose. What you aim for is your pose, your own variant that expresses the ideal of the pose in your body. But it is not just a game of improvisation. Your pose consists of applying the principles of yoga to the unique abilities and capacities of your body. And the principles, although you can read about them in a book or listen to them on recorded media, are best learned at the hands of an experienced teacher.
A yoga teacher can help you attain your pose by teaching the principles, demonstrating the poses, and illustrating adjustments and props, but more importantly by adjusting your pose. And this is crucial. As I said above, your pose is found by applying the yoga principles to your body. So a good teacher will help you to examine your edges and respect your limits. It is only in this container of self-examination and self-respect that your pose can be defined.
It is a lot like life.
I have had such incredible teachers throughout my life. They have demonstrated the principles of vocation, self-sacrifice, joy filled living, devotion, continuous study, delayed gratification, self care, gratitude, right livelihood, leadership, humility, service, discipline, independence, interdependence, compassion, tough love, resilience, ambition, recognition, and confidence amongst many other gifts. My teachers have illustrated how to move toward these principles by taking one step after another. And they, like my yoga teachers, offered me the assistance I needed to examine my edges and respect my limits so I could discover how each of these fundamental ideals expressed itself in my life … on my journey.
And so this morning I am filled with gratitude. To all my teachers and to all my students who teach me as well, thank you. Today, this very morning, I am grateful for finding my pose.
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".