Mindfulness Activities

Sep 25, 2008, Paying Attention as Yoga

The Global Mala event was astonishingly beautiful. I think there were about 300 people there - a nice full group with plenty of space to feel the sakti building and pulsing around us. I did all 108(sun salutations), minus the five that I was leading, and that was more than I was expecting from myself, physically, so soon after my long illness. You really do get picked up and carried by the powerful force of the repetitive action, not to mention the collective intention of the group. I will be writing more about that phenomenon, the event itself, and the 300 Portland yogins saluting the sun through the pouring rain, in a page on vinyasa to come.

The day of the event, September 21st, was Peace Day, and it was also the fall equinox. The equinox seemed to really be a doorway to a new season this year. Before Sunday it was summer, and this week is definitely fall. Like everyone, I am thinking ahead already of ways to avoid the winter blues in the months to come. But I have to admit that my present state is pure happiness. The golden light, the cool crisp air on my skin, produces in me a spontaneous joy, a laughter bubbling up from the inside.

I have always loved the transitional months, because I love the feeling of being on the brink of something. The equinox times, and the solstices too, are svandyhas, or midlines of the seasons. A svandyha is a seam - between two realities, two forms, two actions, two anythings. And it is at the seam that yoga happens.

Yoga, simply translated, is a sanskrit word for "union," or "yoke," as in two things yoked together. We often interpret Yoga as the successful yoking together of the opposing currents of energy in the body, achieved through diligent practice of asana, pranayama (conscious breathing) and meditation. But it is also true that moments of yoga can be found already existing in the seams and midlines all around us. Experiencing these moments requires little more than paying attention.

Of course, maintaining this mindfulness can be tremendously difficult, and this is where the diligent practice comes in. But we all can and do live moments of Yoga whenever we accidentally or intentionally notice a midline, or svandyha, in the pulsing eternal movement from one moment, one experience, or one season to the next.

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