Fierceness, Courage and Faith

by Sarah Ahimsa Living Yoga Love Yoga

Love.

Photo Credit: Jump for Love

I love exploring and analyzing words, but love is a word with such depth and complexity that it seems beyond the grasp of other words; such a vast range of experiences, actions, and feelings are captured by the word love.

Love is a common theme in yoga classes around Valentine’s Day, but I had no plans to bring it into my classes until I went to a class with Marita Wieser at Sol Yoga and she offered:

What the Hallmark cards don’t often tell us is that deep love requires much fierceness, courage and faith.

And, with those words a passion for speaking about the practice of love was stirred.

Valentine’s Day tends to be associated with what I describe as drunk love. An experience of love that is largely about feeling loved, feeling fabulous, and finding it hard not to smile; usually a deep, consuming, romantic love characterized by a sometimes-reckless indulgence in passion and impulsivity. In a nutshell, the love of fairy tales and Hollywood films.

But, Marita’s words shifted my Valentine’s Day focus to the love of action. The kind of love that isn’t necessarily a reflection of my immediate feelings, but rather a reflection of my deep commitment to cultivate love in my heart, in my relationships, and in the world around me.

Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote, “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” strikes at the heart of this practice of love. We won’t find more love, compassion or peace in this world unless we first cultivate these qualities within our self. And then, move forward with the courage and determination to act accordingly towards others.

In learning to practice love, to move with love, consider this question: Are my thoughts, words and actions fostering love, compassion and acceptance for myself and for those around me?

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

by Sarah Yoga

Sol Yoga studio is in the midst of a seven-week celebration of poetry, and Marita read this poem by Mary Oliver at the beginning and the end of her class today.  It seems to beautifully capture the call to be a yogi.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Finding Comfort in Discomfort

by Sarah Living Yoga

As a new teacher, I am actively seeking and incredibly excited about opportunities to teach yoga, so when Doris called me last Thursday morning to ask if I would teach Thursday’s and Sunday’s classes at Sol Yoga, I said yes with enthusiasm and excitement.  In the same moment though, I was feeling deep sadness for Doris because she was asking me to teach because her father was not well and she had to fly out immediately to be with him.

Holding these conflicting emotions, I had moments of awkwardness where I wondered if I should feel guilty for being excited about something positive that happened in my life as a result of something negative happening in someone else’s life.  But my yoga practice brought me to the place where I could find comfort in the discomfort of these conflicting emotions.

And, this is one of the many gifts of the yoga practice.  We train ourselves on the mat, through a five-minute pigeon hold or a lengthy sequence of warrior postures, to find comfort and peace in the midst of discomfort.

And, we carry this skill off of the mat and into our lives.  We learn to hold conflicting experiences or feelings with acceptance and recognize that life can be messy and that there is the space to let ourselves and our experiences and our feelings, no matter how contradicting, simply be.