Non Sequitur Sequencing

I’m feeling festive on this “eighth-month” eve, and am tickled by how I feel in the echo of yoga class this evening. I really loved teaching a class of two. These are earnest, strong women who know how to affect change in their lives. I’m inspired, every week. And sometimes I find myself in front of them, with no plan in hand, wondering what our 75 minutes together will bring. What will float in on the winds…? Extension in the hip flexors and balance in the pelvis. Welcome! Passive shoulder and heart openers. Mmm… Lifting the pelvic bone to root the feet into Mother Earth! Oh, don’t mind if I do.

I just read a few wonderful little quotes:crescent-lunge

To accept the responsibility of being a child of God is to accept the best that life has to offer you.
– Stella Terrill Mann

Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process.
– Julia Cameron

I’m left pondering my role in guiding my two students through enthusiasm for and to yoga. I understand that it’s not just a practice to illuminate the truth of our realities. It’s also a lifestyle that co-creates the realities that our hearts truly desire. My role, then, becomes one of channelling, not teaching anything but reminding all of us that we are love. I’m just the messenger, from universal consciousness. In another situation, someone else has and will remind me with the same timeless message.

CrowAnd what of festivity? Maybe I’m still celebrating the Equinox, or at least harvest time, but I’m inclined to pull cards. I’ll share them without interpretation. Welcome, month of jack o’ lanterns and hoodies.

6 of Pentacles

Uddiyana Equinox

autumn-equinox My birthday notwithstanding, today is my favorite day of the year. There is harmony and balance between light and dark, and I feel the promise of change on the cooler breezes. All over the world, the Autumnal Equinox is celebrated in a variety of ways. My inclination is to honor Mabon, the pagan celebration of the second harvest and beginning of winter preparations. I went apple-picking yesterday, and even though I don’t can or jar (yet), we’ll be making apple crisps and sauce and decorating the pumpkins and gourds we also picked up.

You could also choose to join the Greeks in remembering that Persephone is returning to the underworld to be with her husband Hades. Or the Chinese in their mid-Autumn festival, gorging on moon cakes – yum! During Higan, the Japanese believe that their relatives reach nirvana. As a light worker, I like that idea, of thinned veils that allow movement from our world to the spirits’ (and back).

yinyangI said to a client the other day that the light and dark in each of us need to integrate, not spoon like the yin yang. What I had in mind was more of a merging that also retains the essence of each. Like yin and yang, the day and the night of this special time of year dance together, clearly in sync as in a mirror.  We need to consciously choose to do the same inside of ourselves, creating patterns of allowing out to play the lightest and darkest parts, each in turn and simultaneously.  It’s essential.

I hope to help ease this transition into darkness, which most of us tend to avoid or blind with forced light. My current yoga practice and teachings are now including Uddiyana Bandha as a way to strengthen our most fearless parts of ourselves, to be able to walk into the darkness without fear. Shadow work. Soul retrieval. These are the tools of modern man who no longer lives a rural life but aches for it in his bones. We can honor our shadow sides by sitting down for tea with our demons, and loving all we find in the murky depths. This honors the land that is cultivated and harvested so you can have cornbread and squash, or apple cider. When we dig deeply into ourselves, we honor the womb of mother earth that holds the divine spark of creation. It’s as simple as that.

Sit in meditation. Listen to the monkeys chatter in your mind. Don’t judge them, or the thoughts, or yourself. Just observe from the most neutral and curious place you can find, and with practice, you will be able to focus clearer than before. Like night vision.

DiaDeLosMuertosHonor your ancestors, and your grief at their passing. The veils between the worlds of the living and spirits are thinnest on All Hallow’s Eve. More about that later.

The Fall is a time to let go of what you need no longer, to sweep it all away with the chilly winds. This creates space for what your heart deeply desires. And can be expressed during the light holidays at year’s end.

For now, let go and let goddess. Make plans that will hibernate with you during the winter (which I hear is going to be “harsh” this year in the DMV). Practice restorative yoga and meditate for clarity around your spring projects.

Time is cyclical, and quantum physics tells us that past, present and future happen at the same time. Ritualizing transition in homage to mother nature is nurturing to all of us.