I would be remiss if I did not write on my blog today honoring the International Day of Yoga, June 21, 2022. This year's theme for the celebration is, "Yoga for humanity". The celebration is honoring lifestyles that promote sustainability for mother earth as well as the human race. I love this. We are all connected in oneness. What we do to heal ourselves individually heals all of humanity.
Covid changed many things in our lives and that includes the way many of us practiced yoga. I am a yoga teacher and I stopped teaching during covid because where I taught stopped offering it and classes I attended regularly also stopped being available. My physical practice changed and at times was nonexistent. My meditation practice, which is a limb on the tree of yoga, increased. I meditated with a group online every day for months during covid. The world was changing and so was I. Covid kept me home, but meditation and spiritual classes on zoom kept me connected and expanded in new ways.
I practiced by myself at home during covid and I practiced a few online classes. It is not the same as attending a live class at your favorite yoga studio, gym, church or outdoor venue. Yoga is an individual journey, but it helps us remember we are connected to the whole of life. There is something quite magical about practicing in a studio with a group of people all moving and breathing together and stretching in ways beyond what you currently know.
I will be teaching a yoga class this week for the first time since covid began. It is at a new venue and I will be teaching outdoors. I do not know any of the students or how many have signed up to attend. If I am being completely honest and transparent, I am a wee bit nervous. The what if's have arrived with their less than pure love self-talk and have been taking up precious space in my mind. I breathe and stay present with the chatter in my mind. When I observe the chatter as just thoughts I can let them float by and saturate them in violet fire of forgiveness. I have to surrender the need to know the outcome of this new class. I breathe in trust and breathe out doubt. Trust in. Doubt out. I am taking a leap of faith and I know that the angels will catch me and help me land safely. When my heart says, "leap...and trust"...I leap and fill up with trust! After covid, I begin again.
Yoga is just one of the many practices I have in my life that has been a beneficial and healing tool. It has opened me up to see things from a different perspective. Yoga means union. It is a practice that unites the body, the mind and the soul with the body, mind, and soul of the universe. Yoga taught me to be flexible, strong, present and aware. It taught me to be open to receive, to trust and to believe what the universe had to offer. I am more able to let life in, go with the flow, to get out of my own way and to accept what is without adding to the story or drama.
When I allow the breath to flow softly and quietly in it nourishes every cell in my body. When I breathe out it is a gift I share with nature. When I become calm and still I can let go...I create sacred space within me and in my life that has brought and continues to bring peace, healing and compassionate understanding for myself and it flows out to all I encounter. When you are still, you can hear the whispers of your soul offering you guidance in an expression of pure love, insight and connection to your highest self.
As I fold my hands in prayer at the center of my heart, I say, "Namaste, The light in me sees and honors the light in all of you."
I am filled with gratitude for all of the yoga teachers who have walked on this earth and taught yoga and helped people find their truest, most authentic selves on the path of life. I thank all of my teachers and students who have walked with me on my path.
In my travels I spent time with a great yogi.
Once he said to me,
"Become so still you hear the
blood flowing through your veins."
One night as I sat in quiet,
I seemed on the verge of entering
a world inside so vast I know it
is the source of all of us.
- St. John of the Cross
Angela O'Brien-Greywitt, Intuitive Mystic
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