The flower of life blooms in love and radiates love all around - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Our lives are full but are we living fully.
Reflect on how you feel when your day/week ahead is rammed - even if it is crammed full of nice things. Or maybe it's not just a day or a week that’s rammed, but weeks or months ahead that are full?
How long can you sustain a busy life, even with things you enjoy, before you feel exhausted and overwhelmed.
Summer often feels busy. In an effort to make the most of our unpredictable English weather we tend to pack summer full of social gatherings, holidays, days out, gardening, outdoor sports and so on.
If we're not fully present it can whizz past in the blink of an eye and leave us exhausted. Feeling we did too much or didn't manage to make the most of it before it was over.
The season of summer leans towards fullness. Longer days, full of bright sunlight, the flowers blossoming, trees still bursting with green, their fruits showing a promise of the sweetness of summer. Summer is like the radiant circle of the sun; spinning energy, light, movement, warmth, beauty, activity, expansion and colour,
Watching the rose unfold its multiple petals, the complex beauty of what is held wrapped tight in a small bud, slowly evolving into its striking beauty, colour, texture and smell. Eventually revealing its centre, open to connection, inviting insects in.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.- Anais Nin
Fear or guilt of being too much or not enough holds us back from living fully and all this busyness is perhaps a perpetual distraction from truly becoming our fullest selves.
The pain and exhaustion of being busy feels more familiar and comfortable than the pain of vulnerability and being seen, just as we are.
When we remain closed up and feeling separate we reduce the opportunity for connection. Connection is giving and receiving, a sense of reciprocity that is found everywhere in the complex nature of the universe. We cannot exist alone. Our very survival depends on the complex reciprocal relationships within the universe - beyond our comprehension.
Not everything can be explained scientifically and reductively.
Some things just have to be felt to be known. Direct experience is more valuable than anything experienced through words (written or spoken) let alone through a screen.
Hands-on experiences don’t just physically connect us to life, they connect us to our senses, to the elements which connect us to everything.
“Are you here to experience life or to think about it?” - Sadhguru
I have been drawn to the number five recently:
Flowers with 5 petals,the seat of the rose, the maple and chestnut leaves.
Drawn to working with mudras (hand gestures)
To get my hands in the earth and to creative activities.
All these things lift and fill my heart.
The number five (Sanskrit: Pancha) is significant in yoga philosophy:
The 5 elements: Earth water, fire, air ether
The 5 sheaths of our selves - Pancha koshas
The 5 directions of life force/energy (pancha vayus) apana, upana prana, udana and vyana
The 5 obstacles to enlightenment (pancha Kleshas)
The 5 senses (Pancha jnanaindriyas) touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight
Patanjali's limbs which start with the 5 yamas (relationship with the world) and the 5 niyamas (our self regulation)
The fifth of Patanjali's limbs is Pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses. Ultimately being connected to the world through our senses rather than controlled by them, resting our awareness at our centre.
We can read all about the above in the multiple texts on yoga philosophy, we can listen to the sages, gurus and teachers tell us about the above, but none of that beats hands on, direct experience of these things. We have to be in it to feel it, we have to feel it to understand it.
Yoga teaches us love and compassion, for ourselves and all living beings. This is the realm of the heart.
Last term we explored the triangle, it's symbolism and how we could use it to ground us. Connecting us to earth, giving us stability. Growing upwards from that, this term we will explore inverting that triangle; to expand and strengthen the heart.
To see love and beauty in all beings, forms and things.
There's a soul seed within us that has the entire remembrance of the path, keeping the seed from sprouting is perhaps a sense of scarcity around the concept of love. We fear that there's not enough love for ourselves or for those around us. There's a deeper truth within the universe: the fabric of everything is not love, it's actually beauty. Let us fall in love with the entire matrix of the universe, through seeing all of its beauty. - John Pattern
We’ll explore the five elements (Pancha bhutas) of which all things, all beings and all forms are ultimately composed of and work with the the five cognitive senses (pancha jnana indriyas) to experience these directly.
It’s hard to really feel and experience anything when we’re so busy and distracted.
Let's pause now to think about a day when you took it slow. When you connected to people you love or connected to nature, maybe took a walk or a wild swim, pottered in the garden or made something (cooked, crafted or any other hands-on activity). Connecting to other living beings (human/non human) at a pace where we are alive to our senses, fully grounded and present; evokes gratitude, awe and contentment.
In my experience, this is when I can put my hand on my heart and say, I'm living fully.
As we move into summer, can we make space for moments of connection, to be fully present without always being aware of the time; of the next place to be or the next thing to do.
It's these moments when we fully connect to the moment, using the elements and awareness of our senses, which enables us to blossom fully, to open and connect.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, summer is Pitta season and associated with the elements of fire and water. Light, warmth, movement, connection, flow. Depending on our own personal dosha, we will love or suffer the heat and busyness of summer. Its important to work with our own tendencies and alter our routines and lifestyles to adapt to the changing seasons to maintain balance and well being.
So if our tendency is to run hot and busy normally, then we can easily become out of balance when more of that heat and activity is added through seasonal change. Conversely if we tend to feel the cold and find it harder to exercise or socialise during the colder months, the energy of summer brings us balance.
This summer block of classes will see us harnessing and balancing pitta energy and the elements of fire and water (the elements associated with the Pitta.)
Classes over the next six weeks will include:
Core work (fire chakra),
Hip flexibility (water chakra),
Heart strengthening,
Inversions
Mandala flows (circular, sequenced asanas).
Essential oils and sound
…I can’t wait to connect with you on the mat.
Om shanti
🙏
Sophia
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