Inspiration

Any garden is a source of light because gardeners work soul-mulch, digging their passion into the earth. They grow unique spaces of beauty and retreat needed in dark cycles. In preparing new ground, it’s amazing what appears to fertilize the soil.  What that soil produces is often surprising, sometimes extraordinary.  The original seeds tossed out to create Shakti Yoga Dances were from my garden of linking Yoga and dance, spirit and body, creativity and emotion.  My students’ response formed its strong and pliable roots.  They are the ones who have grown and fertilized the seed, expanding this remarkable plot.  Their light has opened new seedlings, unfurled luminous leaves of translation. With fortune and muscle, the harvest is shared, nurturing many.  Shakti Yoga Dances is expanding to larger workshops, and ritual celebrations, producing plants with exotic fruit and sweet scent. The second harvest has grown the first Shakti Yoga Dance teacher training, alive with talent and full-hearted instructors.  We close out 2013  in launching the new website  http://shaktidances.com/   which shares this magical garden, acknowledging it is time for the next seeding, and a larger garden.  The radiant vegetation, expanded far beyond its first imagined seeds, now links into layers made marvelous by the Yoga Tribe. This Breath is in deep gratitude to each and every one of you who has grown this garden, especially my students.  I thank you for your guidance, for sharing your hearts and enormous talents.  You may not be among the bodies on the website, but you are part of Shaktis’ roots, having fertilized her soil in un-imagined ways.  You know what that makes you….very special.  Samantha Cameron as Chauncey.

Before word, was breath Before breath-light  Numinous sound clouds Carried spirit’s  delight.   As it was in heaven, Gathered hand to hand, Song and chant steadied soul’s Descent upon the land.   Sharing who we are We celebrate on earth First, light, next-breath Then word – gives us birth.   Astrology & Yoga of Transformation The old fashioned-rhymed poem reflects the energies of the New Moon we are moving into this week…..perfect for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, (as well as Sunday’s Salon.)  The Sagittarius lunation of December 2nd, asks us to re-frame perception, to see –as well as sing- the invisible threads moving in us, and through, and to re-consider what parameters create our reality. Jupiter, ruling Sagittarius, is the planet of ‘more.’  Jupiter expands not only appetites, but understanding, awareness and vision, and where it makes planetary connection, we broaden into possibilities of shift.  Because Jupiter is moving retrograde through watery Cancer, we are more aware of emotional nurturing, what we need and what we offer.  Jupiter here may also make it easier to move from conditioned childhood reactions and the unconscious programming of family patterns, to a reality of our own making.  The old assumption of, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” becomes, “I’ll see it when I believe it.”   This could be a Sagittarian mantra, and with luck-this week it might become ours. Another underlay to this expanded vision is Chiron squaring the New Moon.  Chiron, an asteroid, represents our wounding, it also teaches us how we can heal.  Chiron in square to the New Moon asks,  “What is the reality that keeps me suffering?”  What ideas prevent me from wholeness? Chiron was a mythological centaur, half human, half beast, half matter, and half spirit . The Chironic journey links the sacred to the mundane to nurture……

The mind-like the wind- is a hard mistress.  She turns every which way; turbulent, twisty, erratic.  Finding shelter from the storm becomes imperative, especially in seasons of change when the world is neither hot nor cold, and we are neither fish nor fowl. Part of the underpinnings for fall and spring is the Ayurvedic- Vata Dosha, a spacey, creative, un-grounded imbalance that occurs when we are working to shift gears, have intimate dialogues, and anchor new ground.  Vata also increases as we age, adding a steeper incline to its slippery slope of mobility and instability. As we shape-shift only faster, with old anchors giving way, it becomes a creative time to grow more resilient shelters, to encounter touchstones of reality we didn’t envision before, to spend time with our transformative Shamanic-Self.  Tranquility and sweetness are no longer assumed to follow us all our days, which adds to the anxiety and emotional upheaval, and Fall has the added intensity of being under the direction of death.  It is the last hurrah for the year, a time of accountability. Astrologically, it is the Scorpio field of deep, dark realities, those of sex, death, and taxes.  Though blithely put, Scorpio tells us how we manipulate pay-backs, who owes, who doesn’t, who has the power, and who will survive because of controlling those issues.  At this time, the ancestors knew whether they would survive the winter.  The old harvest was a visible fruit of labor.  The new harvest is an invisible fruit.  Both bring urgency to see results, to count the year well done.  How are we to assess this if we no longer understand our world, if old structures and lines of power have vanished, if our spirit has not grown to hold the larger need? Taking care everything above the radar cannot……

As this is a very magical day, make opportunity to take to the mat to revamp and renew.  Ask, “What is the Practice that serves me in bringing 2013 to strong closure?” What Pranayama will help break stagnant habits? Where within favorite poses can I challenge my body? How does this Shakti Yoga Dance move me deeper into emotional connection? Which mudra supports my prayer in this moment? Which chant will help bridge reality and desire, moving me across chasms? How do I accept surrendering in Savasana, letting love hold me more sweetly? Today, the heavens are All-Hallowed-worthy.  There is a rare, even bizarre line up of planets in the same 9th degree.  Pluto, Uranus (the famous square) along with Mars, Chiron, Mercury, and the Moon. And include the Sun who is just a minute off. “What does it mean?”  You ask. “I have no idea.”  Says I. Certainly if you have any planets in the 9th degree, or close by, your world is going to shake rattle and roll….. Perhaps in magical, wonderful ways.  If it were me, I’d make a wish, spend time visualizing it coming true, and believe in bizarre dreams being real.  When given a choice, go for the magical, not the fearful.  This All Souls Celebration might have a chance of uplifting the world and moving us all, willy-nilly, toward redemption and Grace. Have you noticed any symbolic parallels between events in the wide world and those closer to home? Any similarity of pattern? Don’t look at the form, but the energy.  Is it break through, or break down?  It’s often easier to see cultural and   social shock waves rocking the high seas, usually more difficult to see our small life boat’s in jeopardy.  The Uranus-Pluto square hits dead-on this week, accompanied by a Solar……

A Yoga Practice asks over and over that we grow the muscle of  ‘compassionate observer.’ There are other practices, completely off the mat that offer, and encourage this resilient growth. The one I encountered last weekend was ‘on the boards.’  It surprised me that sitting in a dark theater became a great Practice. Observing actors inhabit characters who badly needed resiliency, but hadn’t yet learned much of it, and were therefore struggling to stay emotionally afloat in difficult relationships, with a story line that twisted them every which way, was a wonderful way to observe not only their lack of practice, but mine own.  The play offering this emotional maze is at New Rep in Watertown, showcasing the playwright, Steven Dietz’s work, Rancho Mirage. The power of theatre, that conspiracy between actor and audience, between light and dark, real and unreal offer wonderful gifts for practicing.  As actors move in and out of their story, surveying their battlefields of bad behavior, I consider mine own and observe the playground where commiseration, judgment, and empathy square off.  But it’s an objective playground.  Unlike the actors, I can engage, or withdraw. I may not have control over my feelings but being the observer, I can measure how much I’m willing to expand and forgive, or the degree of grudge needing to drop away. If lucky, the story brings up personal minefields where I see old patterns, and can review my failure, safe in the 12th row. We never know how much hearts can hold, or how resilient we need to be.  Practicing is good. Many feel life is a ‘Theatre of the Absurd,’ where making sense has gone the way of the Dodo.  Emotions are absurd, unless they’re OURS.  Theatre reminds us not only of our absurd humanity, but that the world’s a……

The Book of Earth decrees-no death, only translation, and transmutation of dark and light; observer and observed trading visions; body and mind growing soul.  The Book of Earth begs renewal at every turn.  How can death be different?  The gravitas of Earth balances dreams and imagination lifting life onward. Death is ‘the triple’ we accomplish soaring to reach the next trapeze. It is the “Wow” factor. The death we really fear is the death of dreams, when color is wrung from the day, and hope lies dry and desiccated. It is that heavy death arriving when the tongue has no sweet words, and the Moon soars into the night sky- unseen. The Book of Earth asks time and time again for redemption in renewal.  Renewal is risky, and renewing old dreams costs twice as much.  Fear flails and flounders with ghosts of what might have been.  It moves through bone and muscle with the stink of regret, like old, white fat left to mold. In each breath, at every sunrise, in the start to a week, with every cycle of the Moon, soar toward your triple, stretch for the next trapeze. Let “Wow” be the mantra of sweetness on your tongue. It’s a Practice, no?