A Love Story

      What is love?  On Valentine's Day, it seems like an excellent question.  I have had a life surrounded by love (many thanks to all).  I have had the love of my family and friends and, of course, the wonderful love of my husband and children.  I have so many love stories.
       Last weekend's yoga class with Sianna Sherman is also a love story, though perhaps not it the way you would imagine.  For almost all of these classes with traveling teachers, I come alone.  It feels like everyone else is there with friends, except me.
       Now, I know this is not true, but our perception (not our intellect) is our reality.  So here I was, in this full weekend of classes that were going to be so hard, all alone.  As the class began to fill, a woman and her friend put down mats beside mine.  Sianna's classes are popular, so the room is very full.  There was about six inches between my mat and her's.
         So I introduced myself, she said "Hi, I'm....." and turned back to her friend.  Putting myself in her shoes, totally appropriate, but from my perspective I was now not one of the 'cool kids.'  I knew I was wrong, but there it was.  I spent some time feeling a bit hurt as they chatted their way through the opening moves.
         Then it was time to become childlike without being childish.  Children are open to all of the options, always letting life develop rather than freezing into one sad moment.  I decided that I would love her.  Just spend my practice time in love rather than in loneliness.  Through two and a half hours of serious sweat and heart-opening poses, I stayed in the feeling of love.  Nothing specific, but just the idea that we are all one and everyone is lovable.  It was a bit selfish.  If I am feeling love, I definitely am not feeling lonely.
         We broke for lunch and then it was back to two and a half hours of hip openers.  This means moving into one another's physical space, not more six inches separation and still no small talk.  I just kept loving her.  By the end of the class the barriers had slowly fallen, I had become a person. Now, when we fell it was funny and being so close was comfortable. When we laid down for savasana, as she relaxed her hand gently rolled out to brush mine and she did not move it away.
        I had this unbelievable experience of we are all one.   Everyone in the room was lifting me up and I was in turn lifting them.  Love didn't need to change everyone, all it needed to do was change me.  Happy Valentine's Day.

My Own Hero's Journey

Bhima from
http://openlibrary.org/books
/OL23365037M/Mahabharata

       I had the good fortune to attend 4 workshops with Sianna Sherman over the past weekend. I always look so forward to attending, but it's usually mixed with a bit of fear. People travel from all around just to attend, so usually I am among the least capable yogis in the room.  Add to this a fairly major fall when running two weeks ago (bringing with it a lot of stiffness and loss of strength), and let's just say showing up was a bit of a challenge.
      Our Friday night class was called Mythic Flow.  Sianna tells the class a story from one of the Indian mythic cycles then creates a flow around the lesson learned.  Last Friday it was part of the story of Bhima, son of Vayu, god of the wind.  The picture at left is very fierce, but our story was of a much gentler nature.  When Bhima was courting, he asked his love if there was anything in the world she wanted because he wanted to give her a gift.  She pointed across the field and asked him to bring her the white butterfly floating on the breeze.
        Bhima set off across the field as the butterfly slowly wafted into the forest.  He continued to pursue it ever deeper into the forest, never noticing in his single mindedness that he had completely left his world behind.  Unaware, Bhima began his hero's journey.
      As we began the flow of asana (poses), Sianna continued to remind us that we were on our own hero's journey.  Each move and each breath of the extremely difficult and very fun practice was playing our own edge, following our own white butterfly.  It was very freeing.  That voice of self-judgement is completely silent when life is journey not a destination.  It's time to lay the known aside and run off after the white butterfly.