All This Beauty

I recently returned from a 2 day yoga conference, I don’t get to go many (ok any) of these because of summer schedule but I pulled a few strings this year and got to attend the Iowa City Yoga Conference. I know what you’re thinking “Iowa?!” but for the 2^nd year of this new festival they rocked some serious asana again.

For the past week I’ve been floating on a yoga cloud a little reluctant to go back and look through my notes and ideas form the weekend because I didn’t want to analyze it, I just want to ride this beautiful wave. I haven’t even set down outlines for my classes since I’ve been back, my students and I have just been winging it and seeing what comes up during the practice. It’s actually lead to some great experiences, a lot of giggling, a lot of trying new asanas and even some impromptu dharma talks. So tonight on my drive out to friends it the country I was pondering how best to share my experiences with my students and even how I should write this very blog entry about it and then in brilliant Wisconsin style I drove over a sparkling river reflecting the just waning moon into the darkness of the woods around me and then The Weepies came on my music box (my Mp3 player). The very song that opens with, “All this beauty, you might have to close your eyes, and slowly open wide…” That song brings and instant smile to face and tonight it also brought and instant answer, there’s no best one way to share my yoga experience there’s too much of it. When you are immersed on something like that there’s just too much to line up, you are literally bursting with enthusiasm and renewed passion. It’s that bursting that is essentially the best way to share this particular feeling I have, not to go on Amazon.com and order a dozen new yoga books (which I have my list ready to go though), or write a profound essay on my revelations from the weekend (which I may actually try to do later on however) and not pound my students over the head with all the new information I learned or re-learned after having forgotten since school (though we did talk more about pranayama and bandhas this week…), nope, for me it’s none of those things. For me it’s simpler it just living my yoga, with all its newness from the weekend, letting myself be free enough to express my yoga in all aspects of my life not just the asana.

In my opinion yoga teacher walk a very thin line, we border on “new age” and not in a good way, in the sort of disconnected from reality kind of spacey/flakey sort of way. So often yoga in the west gets watered down into purely asana, maybe with a little breath work thrown in. But yoga is so much more than that, really on a philosophical level yoga effects everything we do, from how we brush our teeth to what charities we give money to, who we vote for and what kind of bread we buy. In the 8 limbed path of yoga laid out by Patanjali asana, the physical practice, is only step 3. So for me, now at least and the inspiration I came away with from Iowa, yoga isn’t just the asana, though I will continue to rock out some great classes for my students, for me yoga is how I live. And what that will bring, that's something else beautiful to see and, of course, to share. So much beauty…