What are you open to?

The poet Rumi is the source of inspiration for my practice and teaching this week. He says “Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”

I've been thinking this week about the ways in which I open and close within in my practice and life in everything from people who I engage with, ideas, poses, practices, breath, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc..

I've also been thinking a lot about when I need to be strong, or bring more effort into my practice or life situations, and also when I need to soften, or yield.

I've been mindful to not judge what I am observing, but taking care to reflect on if what I am doing is serving me, or holding me back from experiences and interactions that would serve me better.

To me Hatha yoga is a vehicle for greater depths of understanding within my own psyche and heart. It's a practice of mindfulness meditation, but also of awakening to what is true and alive in the present moment and working consciously with what arises.

So in practice, to help the words of Rumi come to life more fully for me and students, I have connected the principles of muscle and organic energy along with inner and outer spiral to the theme of cultivating balance. Taking those principles and discovering within to what degree those principles can be invoked to bring balanced action within the moment. For me it's been interesting to observe what postures I soften too much in, and also the ones in which I "muscle" through. I even had a fresh observation in my cobra pose when I was practicing yesterday in which I realized I was over doing my skull loop.

It has also been interesting to observe my students bodies in class and to see common themes of where many people soften too much (see this great down dog tutorial by my teacher des which shows too much softness, and then how to bring balanced action), or are too strong, and also the little nuances that each of us bring, our little challenges and also the beauty of balance within so many and how balanced action is different for everyone (and that's why bodies look so different in poses).

Rumi's words have supported me in a friendly heart-opened way to see things as they are and to notice where there is already balance, what is needed to bring balance, and also to remember that balance is like birds' wings, or like breath--changing moment to moment. Remembering that what brought balance yesterday, may not tomorrow, or even in the next moment. It's a continual process of reflection, action, reflection and so on. In this way, nothing is ever static, everything is always pulsing, alive, and moving bringing us, if we so choose, into greater depths of being in the moment.

Have a great week!