Swollen With Light

John Friend-Anusara Grand Circle, Wanderlust, photo by Elena Brower

Notes from the Anusara Grand Circle - Wanderlust

Swollen with light ~ John Friend
I have just lowered down from another backbend and am staring up at the taut curves of an enormous white tent. My teacher, John Friend, has been talking about the burgeoning quality of the light at this time of year, the Summer Solstice. One little fragment of his talk still resonates: the idea of being “swollen with light.”  For some reason, this particular phrase delights me. There are a few pregnant women practicing and I imagine them light-filled, their bellies glowing like fireflies.

Pulsation
If you want to learn about the universe, get very quiet. Watch your breath as it moves through your body, initiating your inhale like you are pouring a glass of water. Fill the pelvis – the waist – the ribcage – the shoulders. Everything expands. Now pour out your exhale top to bottom.  What you just felt in your body is what happens in every aspect of nature, whether we choose to pay attention to it or not. The Sanskrit word for pulsation is Spanda. The passage of your breath. The pulse of your heart. The rise and fall of a day. The trajectory of a life.  The structure of a yoga class from the beginning invocation to savasana. Expand to contract. Contract to expand. Spanda.

Intentionality
Intention is an interesting thing in that it can be difficult to discern productive determination from needless grasping. Think about not trying to be like X, but rather, to be X. In this way, as John Friend said this morning, you ”put your will in the flow of the bigger will…then all we’re doing is lining up.” If you align so deeply with your desire, you become it. If you see your desire as a part of you, as opposed to something outside of you, the longing and the longed for become a unified dynamic: two parts of a whole, the question and its answer.

photo by Elena Brower

Dwelling in the wonder of not knowing ~ Hareesh Wallis
All good answers give birth to further questions, like sparks cascading from a firework. If we see an answer as a directional indicator rather than as an end, our worlds become vast skies lit up with the sparks and patterns of our sensibilities. We create our own personal constellations of questions, our own configurations of limitless light. “We dwell,” as Hareesh Wallis said, “in the wonder of not knowing.”

Raising the resonance ~ Elena Brower
Sometimes when I teach a class I feel it so acutely within my body that it seems as if I have actually moved through the entire physical practice. Sometimes when I assist a class I have the same experience. I opted to assist my friend Elena Brower today instead of practicing. The verbal instructions, the manual assists, and the physical practice formed a triangle of communication in which what was said, heard, and enacted upon “raised the resonance” of the experience. As Elena spoke of living ever-more fully within our individual choices and lives, I felt the words permeate my skin, soften my tired muscles, and open into a dense honeyed internal place. We finished in meditation, word, body, and intention melded into a gently glowing intensity.

photo by Elena Brower

We see all places as places of pilgrimage ~ Bill Mahony
Sometimes we journey to find a sense of ourselves. The strangeness of a different context can illuminate our particular qualities and habits. We leave home to come more profoundly home, which is why we’re all here. Bill Mahoney spoke about seeing every place in our lives as a place of pilgrimage. In this context, a place can be an event, a relationship, our connection to the world, or our sense of self. If we treat these “places” as sacred, our world becomes one in which every observation and interaction becomes rich with meaning and worthy of reverence. Our world becomes more substantial, our lives become a moving prayer.

Eversomuch More-So

Sianna Sherman and Douglas Brooks - Paris, May 2011

Yoga is virtuosity in becoming yourself
~ Douglas Brooks

There was a story I loved when I was little called Ever So Much More So. The story, written by Robert McCloskey, revolves around a stranger who comes to town selling shakers full of a mysterious product invisible to the eye and without smell or taste.  Everything sprinkled with it seems to become more essentially itself. The name of the product is Eversomuch More-So.  The people of the town shake it over everything, and are amazed to find that their water gets wetter, a squeaky spring becomes squeakier, and people’s individual characteristics such as a stutter or a tendency toward pomposity become more pronounced. Everything touched by Eversomuch More-So becomes its heightened self.

Two curious boys finally open the product’s container, which appears to be empty. Of course the stranger is long-gone, and the townspeople wonder if they have been swindled, but one older man pours it over the earth, and celebrates as the grass becomes greener, the birds sing more clearly, and the world becomes more profoundly itself in every way. So is it suggestion or is it real? The story ends ambiguously, leaving us wondering: how does something become eversomuch more itself?

I spent last week in the company of two of my favorite people –Douglas Brooks and Sianna Sherman – both of whom have distinct and powerful voices. I was assisting Sianna with her Paris Anusara teacher training, which included people from 17 different countries. The range of cultures, languages, and life experiences was impressive. I listened and gave feedback as everyone brought their particular sensibilities to the conversation, refining the structure and the poetry of their teaching.

Speaking to the group one night, Douglas stated: Yoga is virtuosity in becoming yourself. For yoga teachers in the process of honing their skills, this was particularly meaningful – essential, actually. If you parrot another teacher or take on a persona, your lack of authenticity will be evident.

But virtuosity in becoming yourself is about far more than teaching asana. This is about how you want to be in the world.  This is about gazing inside to recognize that you are the sum of your own individual particularities, and that no one else can speak from your experience, your voice.

Live fully in your strengths and vulnerabilities to sing the song of you. When your song comes from this place, it moves people. You have become eversomuch more-you. Your virtuosity becomes an opening, inviting others to sing their songs.

If you want fluency and depth in your life, you must cultivate a state in which you are always becoming more profoundly yourself. If you want to inspire people – to move people – to offer people a taste of their deepest selves, you have to step into your own virtuosity. Like attracts like. This is the yoga.


How can you invite your green to become greener, your water to become wetter?
How can you inspire your voice to arise from that fertile place of your identity?
How can you cultivate your virtuosity in becoming Eversomuch More-You?

The Beauty of Movement II

Still is still moving to me... ~ Willie Nelson

Definition: Wanderlust

a strong longing for or impulse toward wandering (Merriam-webster.com)
a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about (Dictionary.com)

About 15 years ago I spontaneously visited a friend in Colombia.

It was a particularly wet and miserable February in New York, and I was itching to be anywhere else. I called my friend Luis, and in a week was on a plane to Bogota.

We drove from the city two or three hours to some of the small towns surrounding it. Luis navigated rapidly along winding highways through the mountains, the damp high-altitude fog lifting to reveal trickling waterfalls along the sides of the mountains and explosively green foliage everywhere. Beyond the green in the lower altitudes, the mountains shone orangey-pink in the sun. We stopped by the side of the road, grabbed chunks of the mountain and crumbled it into a terracotta dust that stained our fingers.

At the time, many of the highways on which we drove were guerrilla-controlled, so speed was of the essence, as the guerrillas’ good humor in letting through the supply trucks and travelers’ cars vanished with the day’s diminishing light.

It was imperative that we arrive at our destination before the sun set. We drove through jungle, coffee country, arid towns famous for their clay work, and stayed in small colonial villages where the white walls around the central squares overflowed with bougainvillea, music and cooking smells. The diverse richness of it all was exhilarating. There was also a subtle but persistent edge of uneasiness lurking around the perimeter of daily life that, to my perception, compelled people toward a profound appreciation of the fleeting sweetness of the moment.  We decided that while I was there we should eat like crazy and dance every night. And so we did.

At the apex of our non-stop motion, I had a conversation with one of Luis’ friends who said that he did not leave Colombia much because he didn’t enjoy traveling—that he began to lose his sense of self when he was removed from his everyday surroundings.

This was a stark contrast to what Luis and I were experiencing. Inspired by our constant movement—walking, driving, dancing and eating, I expressed to him how passionately I love traveling; how I find calmness within the incessant movement. The strangeness of new places and experiences makes me acutely aware of my own habits and assumptions, which I find liberating. Movement offers me perspective. Perspective creates self-reflection. Self-reflection cultivates insight and empathy and so on.

Once you get a hit of the stillness held by movement and of movement‘s suspended stillness, no matter where you are, you carry the awareness of it with you. Multiple frames of a movie give us one flickering image. Stare at a still image for long enough and it seems to shift before your eyes. This is the pulsation of nature. In Anusara’s Tantric tradition we call the stillness Shiva and the movement Shakti. Stillness defines motion and motion stillness. We can’t conceptualize one without the other. The beauty is both in the difference and in the merging. We hold them in a continual play. I move. I stop. I pause. I wander.

For the first time this year, I decided to go to Wanderlust. It seemed ridiculous that I have not yet gone, given my love for travel and, of course, yoga. There are yoga teachers who wander all over the globe and there are others who stay put at their home studio. Both roles are valuable and I find myself somewhere in between. My travels make me a better teacher, but I also love the day-to-day relationships I have with my students. What seduced me about this particular Wanderlust is that it is on the East Coast, and is hosting the Anusara Grand Circle, which is the ultimate annual gathering for anyone who practices Anusara Yoga. So I get my fix of stillness—resting in the heart of my community—through my embrace of motion—picking up from my surroundings and leaping into a new experience.

From Wanderlust, I leave for India. From India, I fly to Paris. From Paris, back home to New York. I embrace the mirror that travel provides, holding up infinite reflections of my own identity. I bring back experiences, insights and new perspectives for my students. In August, I will rest, my stillness holding its whirling wandering history like a passionate pulse.

The Beauty of Alignment II

Once, in the town where Krishna lived, a venomous multi-headed serpent named Kaliya took up residence in the local river. Kaliya’s poison had polluted the water so thoroughly that any of the townspeople who went to take a drink, bathe, or even wash their clothing became sickened by its toxicity and died. The poison had begun to creep up the riverbanks, leaving a trail of dessicated grass and plants in its wake, and the cows eating the grass collapsed beneath the withered trees. Everyone was in a panic.

The young Krishna, realizing that he had to take action, leapt into the water, and as the stunned villagers watched, vanished into Kaliya’s thrashing, swirling, vortex at the center of the lake. They waited, fixated on the water’s surface. A few minutes went by in silence. Nothing. No bubbles. No ripples. No movement. The townspeople began to cry in despair. Krishna’s mother fainted and his father began to weep.

But then, in the midst of their tears, the townspeople heard a sudden splashing noise. As they lifted their heads, peering toward the river’s surface and pointing, a smiling Krishna began to rise up out of the water, balanced on one of Kaliya’s poisonous heads. Krishna began to play his flute and dance, hopping from hood to hood, as the dazed serpent slowly swayed, mesmerized by the rhythm. Subdued and remorseful, Kaliya apologized for his violent behavior, explaining that it was his nature, as a serpent, to be venomous. Krishna, acknowledging that it is difficult to control one’s nature, forgave him, requesting that Kaliya move out of the river and into the ocean, where his poison would be less damaging. And so he did.

Invite the story within. Kaliya is a thing out of place – a misalignment. A thing out of place can be toxic, but when placed properly, can be harmless or even advantageous. This is an essential tenet of yoga, and one that both of my teachers, Douglas Brooks and John Friend, emphasize. Douglas frequently points out that it’s called earth outside, but dirt inside. That stuff that looks so rich and fertile in your garden is simply a mess when it’s on your rug. One of John’s key concepts in Anusara Yoga is your Optimal Blueprint. The point of a pose is not to make it look like the version of it you saw on the poster, on the magazine cover, or even like the person practicing next to you. The point is to apply the alignment principles to yourself, building the pose from the inside out in a way that honors the particularities of your own body and lets your mind and heart sing. The point is knowing where to put things.

Alignment is a continual process of negotiation and renegotiation. Even when the waters of your everyday life seem still, there’s going to be something underneath – a thought, an incident - that will bubble up. And if it doesn’t emerge from the muck within it’s going to surprise you from riverbanks. The big question is: How are you going to align with the challenges? How will you choose to negotiate the vicissitudes of life so that your challenges lose their toxicity and take a more appropriate place in the landscape of you?

The Beauty of Desire

Morning Skies (II)

Desire is not a problem – it is our very nature. This is one of the first things that my teacher Dr. Douglas Brooks said when I met him nine years ago in the big kick-off weekend for my Anusara® Yoga Teacher Training. His statement continues to resonate as powerfully for me now as it did that first icy but exciting January day.

Desire is our nature. For me, this exuberantly exploded the popular trope that we are trapped and bound by desire - that we are mired in a cycle of always wanting more and that we can never be satisfied until we somehow free ourselves from that inclination. I listened and thought yes! The fact is that I enjoy my desire. I love that longing, that yearning, that delicious notion that there is always more to do, more to feel, more to accomplish, more to taste…and that my desire can take infinite forms, pointing the way toward a multiplicity of experiences and possibilities.

Desire is what gets me out of bed in the morning – the memory of how much I love that first flowery taste of my hot milky tea, that initial yawningly satisfying stretch of my morning Surya Namaskar, the promise of plans and conversations with friends, the excited wait for that satisfying press and scratch of pencil on paper as I draw. Desire is what motivates me, excites me, inspires me. Desire makes me care passionately about things and about people. I love that I can be moved to tears by a Picasso painting or a Fellini film or the taste of a distant hillside in a great glass of wine. I feel incredibly fortunate that I am so deeply connected to my desirous self that it repays me with joy on a daily basis.

I want to become ever more in touch with my desire. I want to step deeply into the flow of passion that moves through my everyday life. Join me: close your eyes, go inside for a moment, and reconnect to that glowing ember called desire that constitutes your very core.

The Beauty of the Dance

His body is half-naked and ash-smeared with a tiger skin draped across his hips. In his two upper hands he holds the drum of creation and the fire of dissolution. His tangle of matted hair is gathered and loosely held in a knot. Perched on the knot is the pale crescent moon behind which descends the waters of the Ganges, which separate and divert into many tributaries, reflecting his infinite forms. He is multiplicity itself. But here he is Nataraja, the dancing form of Shiva.

As he begins to twist and move, his lower left arm and leg rise, crossing over to the right side, the languid hand pointing gently toward his gracefully upturned foot. He holds a fourth hand palm-out, offering abhaya mudra, the sign of fearlessness, inviting us to dare to engage in our own dance, our own process of creativity. As he dances, his dreadlocks fly wildly out from his head revealing glittering diamonds studding their matted swirling length. They reflect and refract the light, creating a dizzying optical spectacle evoking thousands of white sparkling fireworks. Ash and gem. Nature and culture. Visceral instinct and refined choice. This is our center where our contradictions meet.

Who we were, who we are now, who we may be…it’s all in the dance. The grittiest earthiest parts of our makeup combine with our most refined and cultivated sensibilities, because we contain both. In Nataraja’s undulating asymmetrical dance, he conceals one bit of reality and reveals another because this is the way we experience the world. Something surges into focus, something else recedes like the sound of a train in the distance. He stands on Apasmara, representing forgetfulness, because we remember just enough and forget just enough from day to day so that we get to dance again, tasting our own recalled and forgotten beauty. Nataraja is an invitation to dance our lives more deeply, more artfully, connected to the earth and in love with the stars.

Spring Cleaning with Shiva

I’ve decided to do my spring-cleaning in the company of Shiva this year. Or rather, I plan to tap into those aspects of Shiva within me that shift, clarify, and empower. So as I transition through the gray drizzle of early New York City March into the softer season, when rubbery stems of flowers optimistically emerge around the two trees planted in the cement of my block, I’ll be negotiating the same mysterious process of transformation within myself.

Shiva is my map, my game plan. Look at Nataraja, the dancing form of Shiva. In his upper right hand he holds a drum, representing creation. In his upper left hand, he holds fire, for destruction. He supports himself on one bent leg, displaying sustenance or maintenance. These three of Shiva are the ones on which I am focusing right now. Through the contemplation of these acts: creation, destruction, and maintenance, Shiva Nataraja is an invitation into our own consciousness – a path that offers us the opportunity to deeply engage with ourselves and with the world. Shiva is a mirror, inviting us to gaze upon our own lives – to see the choices we make and to more clearly recognize our patterns, to evaluate what is and isn’t working, and what changes we need to make.

Periodically, I notice that my little stacks of books and paperwork have turned into furniture in the corners of my apartment. I realize that the physical stacks of stuff are some interesting sort of parallel to the inner stacks of stuff inside my head and heart. It is time to dissolve them, reorder them, and create a more sustainable system. So those habitual patterns that aren’t serving me – those ways of thinking that limit me – burn them to ash and sweep them away. It is only from this place of clarity that that I can create something substantial, something worth my energy and effort. By daring to destroy, I can create something new that I am excited about sustaining. This is an endless loop. This is a dance. By fully engaging in this dance, my own consciousness becomes Shiva.

How can you skillfully engage and navigate the vicissitudes of your own personal transitions? How can you take hold of Shiva’s tools of consciousness and meaningfully engage them in your dance?