The Luna Cycle Honored …in physically demanding practices:
Like all things of a watery nature (human beings are about 70% water), we are affected by the phases of the moon. The phases of the moon are determined by the moon’s relative position to the sun. Full moons occur when they are in opposition and new moons when they are in conjunction. Both sun and moon exert a gravitational pull on the earth. Their relative positions create different energetic experiences that can be compared to the breath cycle. The full moon energy corresponds to the end of inhalation when the force of prana is greatest. This is an expansive, upward moving force that makes us feel energetic and emotional, but not well grounded. The Upanishads state that the main prana lives in the head. During the full moon we tend to be more headstrong.
The new moon energy corresponds to the end of exhalation when the force of apana is greatest. Apana is a contracting, downward moving force that makes us feel calm and grounded, but dense and disinclined towards physical exertion.
The Farmers Almanac recommends planting seeds at the new moon when the rooting force is strongest and transplanting at the full moon when the flowering force is strongest. Practicing Ashtanga Yoga over time makes us more attuned to natural cycles. Observing moon days is one way to recognize and honor the rhythms of nature so we can live in greater harmony with it.
– Tim Miller
First American certified to teach by Pattabhi Jois
at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India.
Not necessarily only in the style of Ashtanga yoga, but in any styles of yoga practice, this reverence for nature is intrinsic. In yoga, in whatever styles or in any lineages, we are one with nature. Our body is a reflection of the cosmos, the universe it self. Really felt that lunar energy in Shiva Rea’s Tantric Yin workshop. Her Yin is like no other – melding the Yin poses into slow Japanese BUDO* like vinyasa sequence …flowy and buoyant – with rhythm of ocean waves at night under the stars. Slept like a baby last night – thank you Shiva Rea for sharing the alchemy in allowing the subconscious to emerge, in an “intoxicating” practice, she calls more “advance” practice of “Tantric Yin” in which she guided us into weaving a shadowy night that cloaked us all – a cloak studded with jewels that shone in the night sky …it was magical.
Through my 30 years as student of yoga, I have come to recognize the great truth that the human body is a universe – and that it is one and the same with the cosmos itself. Our bodies are literally made of the same materials that surround us – dirt, rocks, plants, rivers, oceans, and sunlight – and the wild and creative pulse of life that actuates the universe exists within the body itself.
– Shiva Rea, “Tending The Heart Fire”
* Japanese “BUDO” = Path of Martial Arts – slllooooow, in complete focus… after all, back in the old days, it was truly life or death ways of the warriors.
Really refreshing when she used the word as she looks to me like a living statue – in fact, the image if that of Statue of Liberty. She looks more like Nordic goddess or … like Statue of Liberty, only fluid and truly free, not chiseled in marble. Tall, statuesque, long limbs that really projects the pulsation of life!
