Home Again

Well, I am home and so happy to be here. I was pretty wiped out by the end of the time in Arizona. While it was a great trip it left me with lots to reflect on and think about and process. Couple all of that with the fact I have been living out of a suitcase since January 26 and well, I was in need of a great nights sleep. Lucky for me I got one.

After my morning practices I ate some apples (spring cleanse time- no milky tea for a while) and then I practiced some asana which really lifted my spirits. Mom and Dad came over for lunch and then I spent some time on the phone with my friend Meg and then I had some furniture delivered for my puja room and so I had to do an overhaul in there. It looks so great. I love it! I puttered around in my office, unpacking from the last month and doing laundry and other great nesting tasks. Then I took a shower and headed out to Breath and Body for my class there this evening.

And what an evening it was. We had such a great group of sincere people there for the introductory talk. I was pretty impressed that people came to a talk about yoga on Friday night but people were really eager to hear and to learn and to be together. I talked about some basics of Anusara Yoga philosophy and pulled a lot from the Kularnava Tantra, the text where we get the name Anusara. That text is a conversation between Shiva and Shakti. Shiva is on the top of Mount Kailas and, as usual, he is deep in meditation and ecstatic bliss. Shakti climbs to the top of the mountatin and asks him to help her. "You see," she tells him, "I have seen people everywhere and I cannot find one truly happy person.I want to help them. How can we help them?"

The text goes on from there and Shiva downloads a path of awakening called the Kula Path. This radical path - the Greatest of All Paths he says- is not a path of renunciation or refusal but is a path of radical affirmation, skillful involvement and the very best of what it means to be human. So radical it is that it even says that "Your enjoyment becomes yoga, your sin becomes art and all life is liberation." This path instructs us to make use of every experience in order to journey to the deepest experiences of the heart. Very cool.

And just as that radical affirmation is at the heart of Anusara Yoga philosophy and at the heart of our method, so too is that conversation between Shiva and Shakti- between the witness consciousness of Shiva and the dynamic aspect of consciousness known as Shakti- always in a conversation within ourselves and in our yoga.

That conversation creates a vibration, a spanda, a pulsation and by entering into that spanda skillfully we enter into the very essence of Grace. And when we step into that flow, the KularnavaTantra teaches us we are "made able" to receive the blessings of Grace.

And really, that is what we are doing together. How cool is that? It was a great evening. I cannot wait til tomorrow!