Seeing a lot of this case lately … This week we celebrated Summer Solstice and International Day of Yoga !
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.
– Rumi
It’s going to be a hot day … time for some yin to cool down with. That heat needs to escape. Or a combustion … In some tantra yoga ideas, the technique appeared to be the worship of the FIRE element – the flames to turn red hot and BURN to ashes all that needs to turn to soot … What are we to do with all that soot? Does it blow away or ??? We wash them away of course. While we need to strengthen our muscles and have what’s called “grit” or toughness, and I know that there’s great health benefits to sweat and we should sweat at least once a day. Sometimes, though, there seems to be over-emphasis on a practice where we “sweat” as though that’s the ultimate detox. Sure, it’s good and it’s one of the things that needs to happen for health maintenance but it’s all about the balance. I used to love Bikram yoga where I would be just dripping and I mean dripping with sweat; As Judith would say – these urges and for the short term, it felt good and I felt SO alive and vibrant but … we carried a residue of agitation. It was a temporary fix … Today, I prefer … the cooling flowing liquidy practice – maybe being a Kapha with some Pitta.
The element of water is essential in human life – in fact we are 70% water … to wash away those things that no longer serves us and constantly replenish – need as much yang of course to enjoy that warming furnace sure, but yin is more my style as I burn up easily. As lectured by a famous Japanese chef, the soul to Japanese Shojin cuisine is ????? I was thinking UMAMI but turns out to be … water, pure water. Yes, water is the key to Japanese cooking and so … Japanese are predominantly … Kapha. An interesting theory. But in a way, my preference for liquid like form and movement comes from there … it’s in our makeup.
We have the ability to still the waves and ripples on the surface of the water & let the whirling sediments settle to the bottom …to find stillness. Pure consciousness flows like rivers and streams within us … To that great ocean reflecting the vast sky with every weather pattern imaginable. Waves flowing and ebbing … it’s the pulse of the Universe within us in which our interior world reflects the outside world … the beauty of it all to behold.
