Is this not what we do each time we get on the mat, each time we enter the yoga space, each time we sit for meditation? We Center, we remember to remember that we are connected, we are, as Piere do Chardin said, “spiritual beings on a human journey.” Seemingly, this human journey can be filled with decay, suffering, and trauma. In the Jewish tradition, we are here to mend the world, to heal our brokenness, and to find the light that lies within all. In our yoga journey, we embody “heaven”, as qualities of harmony, connection, and integration. And “earth” as gravity, what “is,” and the effect events have on our subtle body. What if we can establish our ”ground of being” in awareness, in the body, and in each moment as a moment of presence…
Before moving into the “unknown” such as standing on your head, or bending over backwards, or public speaking, or surgery, or …, you fill in the blank, we can come into that ground of being, anchored in presence.
How to practice entering into this “presence”, and becoming established in a felt sense of harmony? Do we imagine it? Our intentions, aspirations, prayers can be specific and focused on a particular outcome, like world peace, financial stability, self-acceptance. Until we sense the reality of the “Bhavana” or felt sense of these in our body and in our heart, they remain a thought-form outside of our true experience.
Receptivity is powerful. Being a conduit means that it’s not all up to you. In Tadasana, we can feel the power of gravity and our ability to go with it or connect from the root and rise with the grace of gravity. Embodiment is a felt breath, a felt sense of give and take, a felt sense of every moment unfolding.
In this workshop, we will work with our eyes closed a bit. First with simple poses, eyes open, then moving through a sequence where you individually decide where your felt sense of extension, grounding, expansion lies. There is no right shape or form, rather coming through a sense of ownership, or felt sense in your embodiment, into agency, the doing of the backbend or the headstand.
If you have read this far, then I’m hoping you can join me on April 20th, 2-4pm, at the Center for Yoga LA. Call +1.323.498.0222, email info@cfyla.com, or click here for information, or to sign-up.