This is my heartfelt offering to you, my Self and to life at the close of 2013. As I return home from India, I reflect on the journey, as the cycle of this year brings us to the Winter Solstice and the darkest point of the year. I will be honest, I have been feeling very dark, a lot surfaced for me in India, there were challenges, and yet I see it all, embrace it all, even the darkness and bring it all to light, just as the day after winter solstice there is a re-emergence of light.
I wish to honour my teachers, Sianna Sherman and Shiva Rae, who unknowingly helped me beyond words as during my trip. I listened to their teachings from recordings of sadhana courses with them this year and this kept me going, gave me insight….deep pranams ♥♡♥ these words from Sianna still resonate with me…
"rawness and vulnerability are no strangers to me, I recognise them as friends for my own transformation. I commit myself to this transformation as often as i remember"
I forget to remember, forget to reconnect,
I love India, especially the South, Kerala
~ "God's own country", holds fond memories and was the first ever
place I visited over 10 years ago. The land of lush coconut palms, colours, the
beautiful people, the smells, the sounds of the ocean. then there was the deep
contrast in northern India with Delhi and Varanasi, which was polluted, noisy
and chaotic…
But then isn't life like this? we have the
contrast of the dark and the light, the positive and negative, the noise and
the silence. and with these opposites there is the Shakti (the divine feminine power) that breathes life into everything, tat is pulsating, vibrating and breathing life into all these phases
and cycles.
Just for me I forgot this, I failed to see
the Shri of Shakti (beauty and auspiciousness) in the chaos, the dirt, the streets of
polluted Varanasi. yet she is always there just masked, like our forgetfulness... and the invitation is to remember, to look deeper. Now having come home I
remembered... and yes this is also what the practice is about ~ the rekindling,
the invitation to remember, to really connect time after time. I am on this yoga
journey too and I do to make mistakes, I react, I go inwards to the darkness to
find and seek out the light once again.
Rituals open the door...
What I've come to realise upon my return is how important
the daily ritual of the Sadhana is.
For me this begins with my sunrise morning puja, a heartfelt offering of welcoming of the new day before my alter with mantra, meditation, mudra and pranayama then Yoga.
As much as India, especially
the northern trip challenged me so much, I felt raw and vulnerable, yet Kali's rage was cutting through. i was travelling in a group, that wanted sight seeing,
however weren't into spirituality and I was also sharing a room so had no space
for my won practice. I've come to realise that I wasn't meditating every day.I wasn't getting up with the sunrise to invoke the fire of
the Sun into the heart fire of my own self. Now after two days back and waking
up before the sun practicing my pujas and realigning myself, I also came to
realise that my outer alter is a reflection of my inner alter and I need to
remember to be more disciplined or create the meditation i never moment so
India was gave me the challenges me to remember this.
Everything is Shri
I was lost at one point and I wrote to one of my teachers,
Shiva Rae because I had finished doing Lakshmi Puja Sadhana with her just
before I went to India. One morning i did meditate and Shiva came to my mind's
eye and I cried. I wrote I was finding it challenging seeing the pollution, the
dirt, the poverty and was worrying, she replied immediately, yet ironically i
didn't see it for 5 days. Shiva gave me this reminder ~
"exchange the worry for a deeper connection to
Shri. India is the ultimate place for a practice. The surface looks grim but
Shakti is vibration…"
So even in the darkest times, like now as the cycles of
the year takes us to the darkest part of the year with Winter Solstice,
remember to see the beauty in the dark, in the chaos, in the challenges. there's beauty and auspicious in the
light as much as the in the dark, it may
be masked but she is still always there always there…
So I returned to the hOMe of yoga at YogaRelax my classes
have had the theme "cOMing hOMe"…. My intention was the obvious one;
I am home, I have come home! the deeper meaning ~ the practices bring us
to that place of home, the safety, the security of that place we name home. It
is like coming home when you come to know yourself more fully and the yoga
encourages you to peel away the layers and step into the power of the fire of
the practice. I teach that the yoga sadhana is an opportunity to turn within
the temple of your body, utilise the body as the vehicle to take refuge in this
sanctuary space, to observe the mind and kindle or rekindle the sacred heart
fire.
then just this morning as I sat at 5.30am, I began my
practice and was about to invoke my sankalpa, when i was guided to read some
sankalpas I wrote before India… this is what i read…
"I find my voice, I speak clearly about my coming
home…"
this place I name "home' is always present
where-ever you are, the alter I may sit before is truly within me, my heart fire
burns brighter through every experience
I encounter, I vow to remember, even though I know I will forget, the beauty is
in the remembrance and to this I bow again and again and again…. Namastasyai,
Namastasyai, Namastasyai namo namaha
with love, Michelle xx
www.yogarelax.co.uk
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if
you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of
being alive.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and
mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the
full moon,
“Yes.”
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