Committment AND Passion!

It's been an interesting journey this month! Last Friday, I was on my way to class, and my car battery died! I spent the better part of the day getting the battery replaced, and spending time visiting with my father. He took me to pick up my car, and everyone at the autoshop loved him! So, the day started out with fried jumper cables, progressed to a lovely afternoon with my father while we waited for my car, and then a quiet personal practice of yoga at home. I practiced Pincha Mayurasana in the middle of the room, and then Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana, which I'd never done until Brigette's class last week. I felt peaceful and happy.

This week, when I taught my Hindu friends I found my inspirations for teaching coming just hours before, as usual, and I found it to be filled with both Passion and Committment. I came across the phrase: "Committment is to intention what sunlight is to a flower." I feel as if I am daily watering my practice, and the practice of others. As I began to teach my class we were listening to Sheila Chandra's rendition of "Love it is a Killing Thing", and the lyrics caught my attention: "I wish my love were a nightigale for to sit on garden wall, and I to be a drop of dew upon his chest to fall..." finding it to aptly describe the feeling of Bhakti, or devotion to Source. I read a haiku from Clark Strand's out-of-print Zen classic: "Seeds from a Birch Tree"

"All beings are blossoms, blossoming in a blossoming universe"
[In original Japanese:
Hana no yo no
Hana no yoh naru
Hito bakari]

I found my love for the natural world expanding so much, that when Jyoti and I took our usual Sunday walk after class, the winter trees with their branches against the black sky looked like beautiful old gnarled hands filled with love.

I'll be 'subbing' my first class for Chris Yonker in two weeks, and sometime next month teaching an 'audition class' at another studio. After 'officially' beginning my yoga journey with Lynn Magee and Kitty Daly in 1994, and then studying with Erich Schiffmann, Rodney Yee and Chris Yonker, I slipped off the path from 2003-2005. By then I was too weak to do yoga, and so began chanting Sanskrit mantra. To this day, I have been chanting for hours each day, sometimes sitting in meditation as well, or simply chanting silently while doing other activities. This "committment" has been solid since 2005. And my passion for the Divine has not waned, only grown fuller, like the moon.