For 10 years, I was the founding member of a book club. In that time, I read more than 50 books with a group of women that I am lucky to call my friends. When exchanging e-mails with the group, one of the members routinely began and ended her missives with "Aloha." She had visited Hawaii many times, and until my most recent--and first--trip to Hawaii, I did not understand the affection for this word. Unlike the sand I have continued to shed for the better part of this first week back from Maui, finding it every morning in the sheets with me upon waking, I am reluctant to let the way of Aloha, or the spirit of Aloha, slip away.
I like how this word expresses both greeting and farewell as well as love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy. "Aloha," one says, so that love protects one's goings and comings. That's a whole lot of sentiment for three syllables, much like the three sounds of A U M, which are said to express the first three stages of consciousness. Aloha is lyrical, and again like aum, it is a musical healing balm for both the ear and the heart. According to Hawaiian tradition, aloha is not simply a word, but representative of a way of life. Visiting the island of Maui for one week, I found myself infected by aloha from the moment we arrived. I have ever so briefly investigated the word's origins upon my return, and I understand now why our gentleman greeter at the airport, who presented our daughters with leis, had a twinkle in his eye. Like Santa Claus without the beard and the belly, our Hawaiian greeter sparkled. This, it turns out, is part of the way of aloha.
Here is one translation I found of a lo ha: the "a" means to burn, as in energy transformation; the "lo" represents presence, front, face, sharing; and the "ha" is the breath of life, life's essence. Within the word itself, aloha, I discover all of the same elements that I gain from my practice of yoga. Like aloha, yoga is a path and a way of life.
This morning I opened a video link sent from a friend, a fellow yogi and ashtangi. It was a two and a half minute video of Richard Freeman engaged with his students in a Mysore practice. While watching his students move through their practice, Freeman as narrator describes the many ways in which yoga ruins your life. This, in fact, is the title of the video. When my daughter caught me watching it as she passed in the hall, she asked, incredulously, why I would want to watch a video like that when I loved yoga so much. But Freeman is being both playful and provocative. Of course, what Freeman means is that yoga changes us. He says, "Yoga ruins your samsaric life." The term samsara in yoga, as well as in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, means the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The practice of yoga, of which the physical practice--the asana--is but one limb of eight, is meant to release the dedicated practitioner from this cycle. When Freeman says that yoga ruins our samsaric life, he means that the practice begins to transform us. We change in attitude, in posture, in the choices we make in our personal lives. Like the translation of the "a" in aloha, yoga burns away the veils that conceal us from ourselves, so that, like aloha, our awakened energy transforms us. Our lives shine more brightly, our experience becomes more grounded. We begin to understand our place on both the earth and in the universe with a little more clarity.
In Maui, I could not escape the sense of Earth, and I do mean earth with a capital "E," a strange sensation when I thought about how much water surrounded me. Driving to and from Hana one very long day, I recognized that I was smelling the Earth for the first time. It smelled both primal and ancient and fresh and alive; it was natural to feel a connection to it. This, I thought, is the Earth my feet root down into when I stand in tadasana. This is the Earth I sit tall upon when I sit in dandasana. This is the Earth I come from and will return to.
At night, we slept in a small cottage on the grounds of the oldest resort in the Lahaina area. One entire wall of our cottage was a sliding glass door, which we left open all night. And all night we felt the breezes from the trade winds blow across our bodies and our faces, made all the more intimate by the billowing sheer drapery that covered the glass door, by turns blowing forcibly into our room and shrinking back against the screen. Every morning, we were awakened by a chorus of birds and a stickiness in the air that was tempered still by the breezes that lingered through dawn. Naturally, it felt like an Eden to me.
Yoga should ruin more people, I think. So should Maui, and places like it that bring us face-to-face with the natural world, brashly reminding us of the fact that it is not separate from us. Maybe then we would be smarter about the cars we buy, the food we grow, and all the other choices we must make when it comes to sustaining our lives on this planet. To sustain means to strengthen and support, like my spine that I awaken and engage and grow long in when I teach myself to breathe in yoga. I work at strength in my yoga practice, and my body and mind in turn support me. And, you know what, it feels good.
Another definition of aloha I found translates as "joyfully sharing life." When we are ruined enough to understand the bounty we have been blessed with, we may be ready to dwell upon this path of joy. The poet Alice Walker believes as much. She has titled her latest collection of poetry The World Will Follow Joy. Watching the sun rise over the crater at Haleakala and bearing witness to the beauty left in the wake of destruction, I have to believe that Alice Walker is right.
I like how this word expresses both greeting and farewell as well as love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy. "Aloha," one says, so that love protects one's goings and comings. That's a whole lot of sentiment for three syllables, much like the three sounds of A U M, which are said to express the first three stages of consciousness. Aloha is lyrical, and again like aum, it is a musical healing balm for both the ear and the heart. According to Hawaiian tradition, aloha is not simply a word, but representative of a way of life. Visiting the island of Maui for one week, I found myself infected by aloha from the moment we arrived. I have ever so briefly investigated the word's origins upon my return, and I understand now why our gentleman greeter at the airport, who presented our daughters with leis, had a twinkle in his eye. Like Santa Claus without the beard and the belly, our Hawaiian greeter sparkled. This, it turns out, is part of the way of aloha.
Here is one translation I found of a lo ha: the "a" means to burn, as in energy transformation; the "lo" represents presence, front, face, sharing; and the "ha" is the breath of life, life's essence. Within the word itself, aloha, I discover all of the same elements that I gain from my practice of yoga. Like aloha, yoga is a path and a way of life.
This morning I opened a video link sent from a friend, a fellow yogi and ashtangi. It was a two and a half minute video of Richard Freeman engaged with his students in a Mysore practice. While watching his students move through their practice, Freeman as narrator describes the many ways in which yoga ruins your life. This, in fact, is the title of the video. When my daughter caught me watching it as she passed in the hall, she asked, incredulously, why I would want to watch a video like that when I loved yoga so much. But Freeman is being both playful and provocative. Of course, what Freeman means is that yoga changes us. He says, "Yoga ruins your samsaric life." The term samsara in yoga, as well as in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, means the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The practice of yoga, of which the physical practice--the asana--is but one limb of eight, is meant to release the dedicated practitioner from this cycle. When Freeman says that yoga ruins our samsaric life, he means that the practice begins to transform us. We change in attitude, in posture, in the choices we make in our personal lives. Like the translation of the "a" in aloha, yoga burns away the veils that conceal us from ourselves, so that, like aloha, our awakened energy transforms us. Our lives shine more brightly, our experience becomes more grounded. We begin to understand our place on both the earth and in the universe with a little more clarity.
In Maui, I could not escape the sense of Earth, and I do mean earth with a capital "E," a strange sensation when I thought about how much water surrounded me. Driving to and from Hana one very long day, I recognized that I was smelling the Earth for the first time. It smelled both primal and ancient and fresh and alive; it was natural to feel a connection to it. This, I thought, is the Earth my feet root down into when I stand in tadasana. This is the Earth I sit tall upon when I sit in dandasana. This is the Earth I come from and will return to.
At night, we slept in a small cottage on the grounds of the oldest resort in the Lahaina area. One entire wall of our cottage was a sliding glass door, which we left open all night. And all night we felt the breezes from the trade winds blow across our bodies and our faces, made all the more intimate by the billowing sheer drapery that covered the glass door, by turns blowing forcibly into our room and shrinking back against the screen. Every morning, we were awakened by a chorus of birds and a stickiness in the air that was tempered still by the breezes that lingered through dawn. Naturally, it felt like an Eden to me.
Yoga should ruin more people, I think. So should Maui, and places like it that bring us face-to-face with the natural world, brashly reminding us of the fact that it is not separate from us. Maybe then we would be smarter about the cars we buy, the food we grow, and all the other choices we must make when it comes to sustaining our lives on this planet. To sustain means to strengthen and support, like my spine that I awaken and engage and grow long in when I teach myself to breathe in yoga. I work at strength in my yoga practice, and my body and mind in turn support me. And, you know what, it feels good.
Another definition of aloha I found translates as "joyfully sharing life." When we are ruined enough to understand the bounty we have been blessed with, we may be ready to dwell upon this path of joy. The poet Alice Walker believes as much. She has titled her latest collection of poetry The World Will Follow Joy. Watching the sun rise over the crater at Haleakala and bearing witness to the beauty left in the wake of destruction, I have to believe that Alice Walker is right.
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