From A Dream

she is beautiful; mysterious 

she suffers and mourns, but moves in graceful waves. Dancing her pain back to the earth as she tosses her long limbs and dark hair. Speaking a language I do not understand..

he understands; dark and wise; 

I Watch

him, watching her, with a fiery gaze that could permeate any body of water. 

I See

her resist him the way I mold my feet into the sand and strengthen my connection to earth resisting the ocean’s current pulling me forward into it;
until finally, the force is too much.

I am swept beneath.

she is swept onto him. Their bodies become one.

I Feel

they weave like vines, I am one with them intertwined, We are One.

I Wake

cheeks wet, heart pounding a beat between loss and love, body shaking; 

trying to resist, and knowing we are held.

Dancing on the shadows

I fell in love with yoga because it showed me how many boxes I had locked myself in, losing sight my authentic self completely. It taught me that nothing is good or bad on its own, but only when measured against truth, intent, and greater good.

At first it was quite scary to begin breaking down boxes but soon it became exhilarating! At times I can become like the Hindu Goddess, and ego shatterer, Kali, hardly able to control myself.

Still, as a woman, sometimes I get asked to crawl back into my box.  And sometimes I think about crawling back in, all by myself.  But here is my response to that..

Be careful what you ask for, because in trampling out all the negative thoughts I had about myself, I trampled on all the negative thoughts I had about you. In stomping on the judging thoughts about who I was I stomped out the judgements I had made about you. In dancing on the shadows of doubt, and learning to love myself, I started loving you.

When we break down the boxes and walls we build around ourselves, to keep us safe, we break down the barriers we’ve built against each other and we begin to really practice yoga.

If you are my teacher and I am yours, let us not ask anything of each other, just sync your breath to mine and be here. Like we were when we were kids, not swayed by the judging mind, not trying to be something else, and not far from the wisdom we had before. Sharpen your sword of love and cut down any over grown ideas that strangle your true path and keep us from walking it together.

photo by Taya Smyth, Costa Rica

The Space Between

Many of us have experienced it in our lives.. The “something missing” the miss-alignment, and feeling that something isn’t quite whole.  And we have all experienced the opposite. The moment when the gap is filled by a beautiful sunset, or the moment when two souls fall in love.

The alchemy of life is that this feeling crumbles and once again we feel lost in space. We quicken, and in haste, search for the next sunset, lover, or melody that will bring us to that exact place again.  It isn’t about recreating moments.  It is about those times when the unknown becomes familiar.  On a recent trip to India I was surrounded by a culture so opposite of anything I have ever experienced, yet it was the most familiar place I have ever been.

It is like that the first time we see our beloved or birth a child. A familiarity that fills that space. Still these moments always end. The trip always has an end from that perspective. How do we end the cycle of samsara? (The ups and downs and cycle of life)

When we begin to realize that the emptiness is familiar too.  When we quicken to be in silence the way we quicken to be with our beloved.  When we become the beloved.

I think the buddhist have it right by speaking emptiness, which never sat well with me, being a “glass half full” kind of girl. In our rajasic(fast passed nature) society we tend to see emptiness as a bad thing. These teachings help create a familiarity where us as humans, but especially Americans are not familiar.

I remember thinking as a young girl that I didn’t have much time and that every day I had to be better than the day before, but in a very superficial way, like more successful or my waist must look skinner every day to show that I am improving.

We all have the inherent want to better ourselves and to be good, but we need to redifine what good is.

I have made peace with the cycle of life. Life is not as linear as we would like to think. We may not always make more money this year than last, or be more athletic or witty. But in shedding our old conditioned ways, we do have an opportunity to be more authentic, and more accepting of the cycle of the human experience.

 Search for the familiar in all experiences and find comfort there. To end the cycle of pleasure vs. pain, we bring the bodymind back into a state of neutral.  Like a mother craddeling the crying baby back to a state of ease.  Seeing that all is sacred, even the space between that doesn’t have to be filled.

Here is a practical breathing application that I like to use to remind me of the cycle of life and the wholeness that it is.

Coming into a comfortable seated posture. Breath in and out through the nose, focusing on the breath along the spine. As we inhale up to the crown of the head, pause and notice that feeling of fullness and your relationship to that. Exhale down the spine. Pause at the bottom of the exhale. Feel what it feels like to be empty. Notice your relationship to that. Repeat for 2-3 minutes and try to notice if after time you see no difference between the turning of the breath, one continuous flow. Where fullness and emptiness are one.