Yoga Shanti, Focus of the Month - Yogic & Buddhist Philosophy
'Oh Vivid Love' by Heidi Fokine
February 2012
Can you fall headlong into your beingness? What would it take today and everyday to look again and again at what you are? Go deep into the fabric of your humanness and you’ll find connection to the world. Exciting. Breathtaking (you know you don’t own that breath—there’s no holding it. But sometimes we do to keep the desired inside and the undesired out).
Look what happens when people are made to move like machines (goose step…fascism…holocaust). Is there any element of disembodiment in your yoga practice? If your asanas feel like an imposition, or mechanical, look again. Look at the smallest gesture—a handshake…heart to hand to another: it’s a spiral. Or the infinity symbol of a hug. Find the spirals in you, moving through you, extending beyond you, and parivrtta trikonasana will be revelatory. Standing in tree pose could break your heart and wear you down to nakedness. That heart, that little muscular transformer at the center of the circulatory system, giving exactly what it receives is the essence of spiraling infinity. Remember that the sobbing person in yoga class is the bravest person in the room. Happy Valentine’s Day.
