Sunday Suryanamaskar

Image

Sunday Suryanamaskar

It’s Sunday. We start mysore practice with Suryanamaskara A. Most of the time we forget the meaning of the things we do automatically. We confuse the series of postures as a warm-up–and it is, though somewhat different from what we think we are doing.

We do warm the body, we warm it as we bow to the light of the sun. We melt away the layers that need melting.

We wake from the winter morning, and rise to the springtime of our day. We grow. So that we may enjoy the warmth of summer and later harvest the fruits of our labor, before the sun goes down again, and the cycle starts all over.

Everyday, we move through the seasons. In our practice, in our lives.

The practice is the practice for our practice.

Dance your heart out

Image

Today felt like the inner dance process properly, finally landed in Osaka as four Sprit Yoga Studio students joined the session. It was time to turn things inside for a moment, to experience what is deep within through the body.

With little explanation, a matter of necessity due to my lack of Japanese, we went straight into experience. First, an exercise of feeling the energy moving our hands. Then with a demonstration with Fusako-san, a student from the Mysore program, who attended the first ID session.  As Fusako-san explained her experience, the lightness and the lack of thought in the movement, I looked around. Participants looked calm but a little baffled.

Nothing left to explain, we decided to go ahead and dive in. And dive in we did. I prepared an all Shiva-inspired sound track to help us into the process. Shiva, who is Nataraja, the dancer, would lead us into it. And he did not fail.

ImageThere was dancing. Small, quiet movements. Full, all-out movements. There was some emotion. And a lot of peace.

There is no formula for the dance. But when it works, we simply know it. We feel its power, we feel the opening in the body.

As we shared afterwards, one participant asked what was the purpose of the dance? The dance is a healing modality. It can move energy, emotion stuck in the body. We are able to observe it and then in the observing, release it. But I added that my own purpose was to help people see who they really are beyond all the constructs, to simply remember, if only for a moment, their truest of natures.

Image

The empty room

Image

The empty room

An empty place is a space of great potential. It waits for filling. It has room for it. When we empty out, when we create space in our bodies, in our minds, in our lives, we invite the remarkable new. It inevitably comes. And fills the room until it is time to be emptied out once again.

Spirit Yoga Studio on September 19, Harvest Full Moon Day. The satsang circle waits for students to arrive for today’s Yogic Warrior lecture class.

Photo by Akemi Hakuto

Harvest Full Moon

Image

Harvest Full Moon

Happy moon day! Grateful for those who came to the lecture class today on the yogic warrior. I also want to applaud the students who decided to honor moon day as a day of rest.

So today’s full moon is closest to the fall equinox and was used by farmers as a light to harvest their crops during this time of the year.

With that in mind, I want to ask this question: what have you been growing and cultivating that now needs harvesting? What is now ripe for the picking?

Practice Rain or Shine

Image

Practice Rain or Shine

“If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm” –Frank Lane

Early Monday morning, a typhoon blustered through Osaka. I cycled in the rain to the studio and wondered if anyone else would make it. 6:30 rolled around, nada. 6:45. Then Yuki arrived. Later Yukako. Then Naoko and Ricki. A small room, but steady energy. With flood waters up and some train routes stalled, It was understandable that many were absent. By the time mysore practice was done, so was the storm. The sun had come out, all bright and shiny.

Photograph: Yuki in purvottanasana.