For better or worse, change is always happening. So we are told. So I have written previously here. It is dependable in that way. Everything will turn into something else. Guaranteed. This is a comfort, the Buddhists tell us, the natural order of things. Consider for a moment how life constantly reveals this to us. A tree grows. A garden flowers. A child learns to walk. The laws of attraction, like momentum, keep life in motion: push, pull, yin, yang, ebb, flow. Hopes rise and fall. The moon waxes and wanes. And every once in a while, as it did this week, even this celestial body is eclipsed by the shadow of our blue planet. Strange, somehow, that we should think all the more of it then as it passes into shadow. The phenomenon increases our wonder perhaps because it increases our faith in our own transformations.
A hummingbird has built her nest among the branches of one of our scraggly rose bushes outside our front door and just inside the front yard gate. I watched her build it for several days amidst my goings and comings from the house. Last night, she began to sit on the nest. It is almost Easter, I thought. Time for eggs.
Meanwhile, our youngest has flown the coop, as they say. She has traveled to New York City with her drama class for five days where she is eating food from street vendors, hailing cabs, riding the subway, going to the theater, and generally being mesmerized by a city that never sleeps. The very first night we received an exuberant text from her, proclaiming in all caps, that she would never ever ever ever ever be coming home. Like those hummingbird eggs outside my front door, I think, yes, and so it begins.
This is how it's always been done, this cycle of coming into the world and turning away from home. Not that we turn our back on home, the place of our beginning. Although this might, indeed, end up being part of our journey. But, like the life inside those miniscule eggs below my office window that the mother hummingbird is intent on hatching, we are not meant to stay put. Instead, we send out roots, like Morse code, tap, tap, tapping our signal out to the universe, extending our range, listening for reports that confirm we are on a path we were meant to follow.
In yoga, we are reminded over and over again about our roots, our root energy, the root chakra--muladhara--and rooting down into our feet to feel the contact with the ground beneath them. To feel our feet making contact with the Earth while standing in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) is a very advanced posture. In tadasana, we are reminded what it feels like to be grounded, to be in our bodies, to be connected, even, to our physical body. Skill in action, which is how yoga is defined in the Baghavad Gita, begins at the root. Being at home in our bodies takes skill; it demands awareness. Energy that is grounded can be harnessed and channeled for specific use. Energy that is grounded leads us to more advanced movement. We must root down in order to go up. We must know where we stand in order to fly. Whether in headstand (sirsasana), handstand (adho mukha vrksasana), shoulder stand (salamba sarvangasana), this essential connection to the Earth becomes the seat of our practice. It is here where we not only learn to fly like the hummingbird, but we learn to stand still like her, too.
The muladhara chakra is the first of seven chakras and is found at the base of the spine. Yoga practitioners are taught that the sleeping serpent goddess, Kundalini, is coiled around this first chakra. Through breath control and movement, we learn to awaken this serpent. We learn how to direct the Kundalini serpent up through the body's energy channels (nadis), through the central channel called the sushumna nadi--translated from the Sanskrit as the Inner Flute. This energy pierces each chakra situated along the spine until the energy travels up through the crown of our head. This is the ultimate and final chakra, the Sahasrara chakra, and is represented by a thousand petaled lotus. Sahasrara in Sanskrit means thousandfold. By piercing this chakra, it is said that we feel our divine connection to the universal energy that is always present, pure and ever available to us.
Maybe this is why we say that a picture is worth a thousand words because beauty comes from a divine place, pure and beyond the realm of words. Maybe this is why the author of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran, wrote that the soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals. According to Gibran, the soul walks upon all paths, the one just inside the front yard gate or along the bustling streets of New York City.
A hummingbird has built her nest among the branches of one of our scraggly rose bushes outside our front door and just inside the front yard gate. I watched her build it for several days amidst my goings and comings from the house. Last night, she began to sit on the nest. It is almost Easter, I thought. Time for eggs.
Meanwhile, our youngest has flown the coop, as they say. She has traveled to New York City with her drama class for five days where she is eating food from street vendors, hailing cabs, riding the subway, going to the theater, and generally being mesmerized by a city that never sleeps. The very first night we received an exuberant text from her, proclaiming in all caps, that she would never ever ever ever ever be coming home. Like those hummingbird eggs outside my front door, I think, yes, and so it begins.
This is how it's always been done, this cycle of coming into the world and turning away from home. Not that we turn our back on home, the place of our beginning. Although this might, indeed, end up being part of our journey. But, like the life inside those miniscule eggs below my office window that the mother hummingbird is intent on hatching, we are not meant to stay put. Instead, we send out roots, like Morse code, tap, tap, tapping our signal out to the universe, extending our range, listening for reports that confirm we are on a path we were meant to follow.
In yoga, we are reminded over and over again about our roots, our root energy, the root chakra--muladhara--and rooting down into our feet to feel the contact with the ground beneath them. To feel our feet making contact with the Earth while standing in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) is a very advanced posture. In tadasana, we are reminded what it feels like to be grounded, to be in our bodies, to be connected, even, to our physical body. Skill in action, which is how yoga is defined in the Baghavad Gita, begins at the root. Being at home in our bodies takes skill; it demands awareness. Energy that is grounded can be harnessed and channeled for specific use. Energy that is grounded leads us to more advanced movement. We must root down in order to go up. We must know where we stand in order to fly. Whether in headstand (sirsasana), handstand (adho mukha vrksasana), shoulder stand (salamba sarvangasana), this essential connection to the Earth becomes the seat of our practice. It is here where we not only learn to fly like the hummingbird, but we learn to stand still like her, too.
The muladhara chakra is the first of seven chakras and is found at the base of the spine. Yoga practitioners are taught that the sleeping serpent goddess, Kundalini, is coiled around this first chakra. Through breath control and movement, we learn to awaken this serpent. We learn how to direct the Kundalini serpent up through the body's energy channels (nadis), through the central channel called the sushumna nadi--translated from the Sanskrit as the Inner Flute. This energy pierces each chakra situated along the spine until the energy travels up through the crown of our head. This is the ultimate and final chakra, the Sahasrara chakra, and is represented by a thousand petaled lotus. Sahasrara in Sanskrit means thousandfold. By piercing this chakra, it is said that we feel our divine connection to the universal energy that is always present, pure and ever available to us.
Maybe this is why we say that a picture is worth a thousand words because beauty comes from a divine place, pure and beyond the realm of words. Maybe this is why the author of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran, wrote that the soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals. According to Gibran, the soul walks upon all paths, the one just inside the front yard gate or along the bustling streets of New York City.
Comments
Post a Comment