Once again I step into my yoga practice and this is what turns up from the soul of my soul.
Oh, the urge to be defined! “I am this, I am that.” The recipe to the solution is wonderfully simple. “Yoga, Water, Vegetables, Sleep”. How interesting it is to feel clear commitment, to know to what I am unquestionably committed. “If there is tension in your body we will find it.” My body is at peace with its own rhythm. We can tell when we have left the body when we see mental visions and hear mental chatter, following the thoughts down their wandering, pondering, never ending paths. I feel a deep reminiscent longing to return to the present moment. My body remembers the perfect way I felt in the green fields of Somerset; England on a summer day, songbirds hiding in the grass.
Showing up to yoga is the hardest part. Showing up in every pose. Showing up the whole way through. Yoga poses are a seat for meditation. I sit myself in each posture, shapes my body knows intimately, and I feel the tension that has built inside my torso, around my heart and lungs.
Deeper, fuller breaths have become more difficult to draw and my pranayama practice has drifted off since beginning meditation training with the shaman. A shallow breath in the nose, counting the exhales, leaves my body numb and empty. I need to breath with my entire body, feeling the expansion and contraction ripples through every cell.
The numbness develops from months of half-assed and avoided practice. Aliveness returns quickly when my eyes lock into focus, committed drishti burns the fire of attention into my body parts. I begin with the toes. My right big toe is the first place to receive all my attention. With this simple intentional moment of connection, eyes to toe, I return to my practice, the prodigal daughter once again.
From a balcony and a beach in Koh Lanta, Thailand, I enter this body again. I’m called into it again, knowing this is the way forward, knowing this is the path I walk to the center. The practice in the morning awakens my senses so the sand feels grainier, the water feels silkier, the wind feels friendlier, my heart opens wider and my mind thinks few and kinder words.
I run from the practice from time to time, dropping excuses out of my pockets as I sprint away. As I walk back to myself, I bend over and pick up the excuses one by one, kissing them sweetly and returning them to the pocket or tossing them in the ditch if I really am done with them. The colors at the end of the day are more vibrant and pleasing to my smiling soul when vision has been cleaned by the breath and the tension has been released from the limbs. This is all I want; to be fully alive and deeply pleased by this beautiful moment.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde