reclaiming summer solstice magic
In a fast-paced world, it's crucial to pause and reconnect with the natural rhythms of the Earth. To me, it is an act of reclamation of the sacred that is desperately needed in these times.
Summer Solstice, the pinnacle of light and warmth, beckons us to reclaim the magic that many cultures and spiritual traditions around the world have been celebrating for eons. These ceremonies often involve rituals, gatherings, and celebrations to honor the changing seasons and the interconnectedness of all beings.
The importance of summer solstice ceremonies lies in their ability to deepen our connection with the living world around us, express gratitude for the Earth's bountiful gifts, and inspire a sense of harmony and balance within ourselves and the world around us. They offer an opportunity to cultivate a sense of renewal, set intentions, and align ourselves with the energy of growth and transformation that accompanies the summer season.
Moreover, summer solstice ceremonies provide a space for community, unity, and shared experiences. They bring people together, strengthening social bonds and fostering a sense of belonging and interconnectedness. Participating in these ceremonies can evoke a sense of awe and wonder, igniting a deeper connection to the sacredness of life and our place within the larger tapestry of existence.
Ultimately, the importance of summer solstice ceremonies lies in their ability to inspire reverence for nature, celebrate the cycles of life, and foster a deepened sense of connection, both within ourselves and with the wider world.
Here are a five ideas for creating your own Summer Solstice ceremony - or you can join us on 6/21 for our Solstice Magic Hike and Ceremony (see details below)
Sunrise Meditation: Rise early to witness the sunrise on the day of the summer solstice. Find a peaceful spot outdoors, close your eyes, and immerse yourself in the gentle rays of the sun. Practice mindful breathing, setting intentions for the season ahead, and expressing gratitude for the warmth and light that sustains life.
Nature Walk or Picnic: Take a leisurely walk in nature or find a serene outdoor spot for a picnic. Connect with the elements, soak up the sights and sounds of the season, and engage in conversations about the significance of the summer solstice and its representation of growth and abundance.
Bonfire Ritual: Gather with friends or family around a bonfire during the evening of the summer solstice. Write down any burdens or negative thoughts on small pieces of paper and toss them into the fire, symbolizing the release of what no longer serves you. Share stories, sing songs, and embrace the warmth and transformative power of the fire.
Gratitude Circle: Create a sacred space indoors or outdoors with candles, flowers, and symbols of nature. Sit in a circle with loved ones and take turns expressing gratitude for the blessings in your lives. Reflect on the lessons learned and the growth experienced since the previous solstice, and set intentions for the coming months.
Solstice Art or Craft: Engage in a creative activity that celebrates the summer solstice. Create mandalas with natural materials, paint sun-themed artwork, or make flower crowns. Allow your artistic expression to flow and connect with the energy of the season.
Remember, the intention is not to perform elaborate rituals but to find meaningful ways to honor the solstice and reconnect with the living world around and within you. Adapt these ideas to make them your own and let your intuition guide you in creating a simple and heartfelt summer solstice ceremony.
Standing strong doesn't mean standing alone.
Standing strong doesn't mean standing alone. We are all connected, even in ways that we can't see. Our actions, our thoughts, and our energy ripple out into the world, affecting everything and everyone around us.
That's why collective care is just as important as self-care. When we take care of ourselves, we are also taking care of the collective. And when we take care of the collective, we are also taking care of ourselves. We are strengthening a web of support that can hold us up when we feel like we're falling. It's a beautiful, invisible connection that binds us all together.
Three simple ways to take care of yourself and the collective:
1. Connect with the living world outside: Spending time outside in nature can be a powerful way to recharge and feel more connected to the world around us. Take a walk in the park, sit by a river, or simply spend a few minutes outside each day. Feel into the invisible connection to life around you.
2. Reach out to a friend: Sometimes, all it takes is a simple text or phone call to let someone know that you care or that you need support.
3. Take a break: It's okay to take a break when you need it. Taking time for yourself can help you recharge and come back stronger for the collective.
— For this one, I am attaching a link to a breathwork practice that related to the heart chakra, Gemini season, and tending to our emotional selves.
Watch here: https://youtu.be/mTva4JVpkWE (practice starts at 3:30)
Remember, collective care and self-care are not selfish acts. They are essential for our well-being and the well-being of the world around us.
Are you ready to take your self-care and spiritual practice to the next level? Embodied Alchemy Spiritual Counseling sessions are here to support you on your journey. Through a combination of talk therapy, energy work, and somatic practices, we'll work together to help you connect with your inner wisdom, release old patterns, and step into your power.
This summer, I'm offering Embodied Alchemy sessions outside, surrounded by the beauty of nature. It's the perfect way to connect with the collective and yourself at the same time. So if you're ready to dive deep and create lasting change in your life, book a session today. Let's embark on this journey together and create a better world for all.
New Moon in Taurus: Embracing Embodied Spirituality
As the New Moon in Taurus graces the sky, we are reminded that spirituality is not just an abstract concept or a distant pursuit. It is an immersive experience that calls us to inhabit our bodies fully, engaging with the world around us through all our senses. This poem by Mary Oliver feels so fitting for this theme.
Sleeping In The Forest
I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
During the enchanting phase of the New Moon in Taurus, the cosmic energy invites us to embark on a journey of embodied spirituality, where our physical and spiritual selves merge harmoniously. It whispers of earthly delights and sensual pleasures. It beckons us to indulge in the simple joys of life, to savor every moment and embrace the beauty that surrounds us. This celestial alignment encourages us to ground our spiritual practices in the realm of the tangible, allowing our beliefs and wisdom to permeate every aspect of our being.
Journal Prompts:
How can I bring a deeper sense of mindfulness and presence to my daily activities, infusing them with spiritual intention and pleasure?
What practices or rituals help me feel more connected to my body and delight in the present moment?
In what ways can I honor my physical vessel as a sacred temple for my soul?
How can I cultivate a greater awareness of the divine within myself and others through my interactions and relationships?
What steps can I take to align my thoughts, words, and actions with my spiritual values, thus embodying my true essence?
Embrace the nurturing energy of this New Moon in Taurus and allow it to guide you towards a deeper integration of your spiritual and physical selves. Embody your spirituality with grace and intention, and let your entire being become a sacred vessel for divine wisdom. Let this celestial energy ignite a sense of pleasure and appreciation for the abundant wonders of existence.
Here’s a fun little gift for enjoying this lunation - Old School Reggae + Dub:
Playlist of the week: Strictly Roots
Root to Rise
May flowers are popping up everywhere here in Southern California. With this springtime energy abuzz, it’s important to take time to ground our energy so that we can cultivate a strong foundation that supports and sustains our growth.
You've probably heard your Yoga teacher say "Root to rise" which means that in order to radiate our energy outwards, we must first establish a foundation to support this expression.
Grounding our life force energy or Prana as it is known in the Yoga tradition helps us to strengthen a deep connection to the Earth, acknowledge our interdependence with the natural world, and recognize the land as a living entity. On an personal level, grounding practices help us anchor ourselves, release excess energy, and find stability and resilience.
Through a decolonial Yogic lens, these concepts take on added meaning, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all beings and the potential for collective action and transformation. By grounding ourselves in the wider context of community and ecosystem, we strengthen our ability to promote harmony for all.
To support your exploration of these themes, I am excited to offer a free yoga video for you to learn practices to experience for yourself the profound flow of energy that lives within and around you.
Grounding Yoga for Strong Roots
This video will guide you through a practice that incorporates prana, apana vayu, and grounding energy, allowing you to experience the transformative power of these concepts firsthand.
Let me know what you think!
with love and gratitude
- Jeny Rae
P.S. I am opening up 1:1 Embodied Alchemy Sessions OUTDOORS this season. These sessions include: spiritual counseling, tarot/oracle card readings, somatic experience, breathwork, meditation, movement and energy healing to awaken your personal magic and embodied empowerment. Virtual Sessions are also available.
Seasonal Attunement 2021
I believe that the natural world outside
reflects the natural world inside
and that the seasons can teach us so much.
The turning of the wheel gives us an opportunity to reflect.
Are you feeling it yet?
The seasonal shift,
the draw inward to assess:
what fruits of the last season will be preserved?
what will be returned to the earth?
what can we let fall?
where can we rest and steady ourselves?
how can we let go of doing and redirect energy back
into the core of our being?
Honoring these seasonal cycles helps me stay balanced. Currently at home, I am wrapping up projects from the spring and summer, cleaning out closets, balancing my books, and leaving spaces in my calendar to just BE.
My personal practices for this season have been
anything that allows me to steady myself
as I prepare to let the old fall away.
In our practice together this month, you can expect DEEPENING:
More breathwork and Pranayama
More twists
Gentle Heart openers
And deep floor work (yes, even in Buti!)
Join me in one of my live classes, in person or online, or join Patreon and get access to all of my recorded classes.
Breaking New Ground
This year has been about breaking new ground: in my psyche, in my beliefs, in behavior patterns that held me back.
Breaking new ground this year means that instead of going out & up, I’ve been going in & down. Unearthing the foundational stories that make up my reality.
I fell apart in many ways & allowed the unraveling. I knew that if I could hold fast in the shadowlands, exploring pain (mine, yours, theirs, ours), that I would awaken a deeper compassion.
In the depths, a vision of humanity fumbling around as lost as me, blindly hurting one another while protecting themselves from individual pain of childhood & the collective pain of an exploitative economic system held together by oppression and division. I felt a deep love & compassion for us humans. A forgiveness of myself and of those who have hurt me. We are all just trying our best with what we’ve got.
I wonder what it would look like to weave a new story - one that honored the truths of this land, of our collective history, of our shared connection to our ancestry & through line to our healing for generations beyond.
I have also been wondering- what is my role? I have been teaching for years, in studios - beautiful centers - but always under the comfortable wing of an other. What would it look like to take flight on my own & create a space that felt like home to me & invite my sisters, my friends & community to show up, take off our shoes & breathe together?
I knew I could not create this space from a place of anger, constriction, or any other unresolved emotion. I needed healing and integration first. I needed forgiveness first. I needed to break ground so I could build.
So, if you made it this far, you might be wondering….
What’s coming next? A practice space in Pomona. Then a non-profit to make our classes financially accessible to all.
Why? Because we need to each other.
When? TBD - I am looking for 8 founding members to pay for a 3 year membership up front - this will generate the start up capital I need.
If you are feeling called to support in this way, please email me for more info.
Thank you for reading about my process. It feels important to share it all raw & true. I know that so many folks are suffering right now with their mental health and the forward projection/trajectory of our collective… I want to remind you that you are not alone. I am here to help you in any way I can.
The Yoga of Relationships
As the world returns back to it's "regularly scheduled programming," are you realizing how much has changed?
How much you have changed?
Has your sensitivity to other's energy increased?
Does this make you anxious? impatient? angry? sad?
Interpersonal relationships are where our internal worlds meet and interact with the external world. All of the personal development work we engage with means very little if we can’t be with other people, sit through the fire of conflict, or allow ourselves to be real with our people.
Self-reflexivity is the ability to reflect and consider who one is in relation to others. For me, it is an embodied practice of looking inward, working through my BS (belief systems) and the emotions wrapped up in them, and living in alignment with my values, It is the practice of considering how my energy, my thoughts, words, and actions contribute towards the liberation from suffering for all beings everywhere.
This is a time to anchor in self-reflexivity, love, and compassion. This is where Yoga comes in. Yoga is the practice of embodying union. Unwinding the constrictions ruled by tension in our bodies can be a beautiful gateway towards self-reflexivity. It teaches us to practice while we are on the mat, in stillness, flow, ease, and challenge so that we might be able to engage in this practice of self-reflexivity off the mat, among our colleagues, peers, and families, when things get real.
The truth is... of course returning to "normal" is hard! Our economic and societal systems are not set up to make life easy and enjoyable but to extract as much labor and productivity from us as possible. In order to keep us compliant, they pit us against one another, in suspicion, in conflict, and unsettled.
I believe that by committing ourselves to a lens of relationality, we can build more sustainable movements in solidarity with others towards creating worlds in which all can thrive. I believe that participating in healthy relationships in our community is a revolutionary act. The work starts in our willingness to be in relationship, to do the self-reflexive work, and bring it into every relationship.
So, I encourage you to use this time to commit to a practice of self-reflexivity and radical personal responsibility.
This is Yoga.
For more tools and practice, join me on October 16-17 for a weekend exploration is a discovery of relationships, who we are in them, and how we can better show up in them. We will learn and practice healthy communication skills, boundary setting, working through triggers, resolving conflict and embracing presence and play.
This course is for anyone who is seeking to strengthen their interpersonal relationships, be it romantic, platonic, and familial.
We will meet via Zoom on 10/16-10/17.
Saturday 10/16: 11-1am and 2-4pm
Sunday: 10-1pm and 2-4pm
You are not what they say you are.
You are not what they say you are
You are not their limitations
You are not their victim
Drop your robe of prescribed identity
Move your body wildly to unravel the trappings of modernity
Throw your arms until you break chains that you did not know kept you bound
Stomp your feet until the house of domestication falls
Your greatest weapon of liberation is your body, mind, breath, spirit dancing in union with the divine
Your words spoken with fierce truth
Tempered by compassion and humility
Your vision piercing through shadows and light
Bravely facing all you encounter
Your hands steady, quick and sure
Disentangling and holding your beloveds
Your journey unwritten
Breaking curses and creating new paths
As we walk forward and back at the same time
Ancient futures
Welcome us home
Where we have always been
But never understood
That everything we need is right here
That every single moment is right now
it’s all love, baby!
Hi Friends,
If you know me or have been in my classes, you know I love a good metaphor. So here in the heart of the year, it seems appropriate to be focusing on our heart center in our Yoga classes.
Here are a few things we've have learned along the way:
if we want to open our hearts with authenticity, we better ensure we have a solid foundation. This requires ensuring our lower chakras are aligned with integrity. At the root, we are aligned with the truth of who we are. At the sacral, we are connected and aware of our feelings. At the naval, we find our power from within and so there is no need for external validation or approval. When we access the heart from this setup, we can then access a deep well of authentic and healthy expressions of love from a place of abundance.
at the foundation of every emotion is love. this one is challenging but don't write it off just yet, see for yourself if it works. take a look at the most difficult emotions and look at the underlying factors. under grief, lies a love for what/who has been lost. under rage, love of humanity. under fear, love of life. if we can recognize that love is present, it might make it easier to sit with the difficult emotion long enough to process it and integrate its wisdom.
finally, to "open" the heart in a Yoga pose, it's important to go 360 on it. It's not just about backbends and the chest openers. We can access deep healing and comfort from twists and side stretches too. The Janu Sirasana poses have been deeply nourishing this month. The sides of our bodies are like the walls of our temple. Cleaning the walls is often forgotten but makes the place sparkle.
accountability is personal
Ma’Khia Bryant, Dante Wright, Adam Toledo, and so many many more. My heart has broken a thousand times over. I pray: May the hands of love wrap around your family and comfort them today and all days. May they never feel alone or forgotten. May we work to liberate ourselves from this long standing suffering of separation, hatred, and punishment.
The fact that Dante Wright’s murder happened 13 miles from where Philando Castille was murdered and 11 miles from George Floyd’s murder less than a year later by the same police force for during Derek Chauvin’s trial… And that Ma’Khia Bryant’s murder by police in Columbus happened only 1 hr after Chauvins conviction should give us chills.
All of psychology and many spiritual traditions believe that if we continue to ignore what is arising in our collective consciousness, it will continue to show up until we learn the lesson, do the work to heal our collective pain, and enact new ways of being. “What you resist, persists.” - Jung 🌀 “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches you what you need to know” - Pema Chodron
The insidious nature of our nations racist formation and its imprint on our collective and individual consciousness has never been reconciled. The psychological implications of ongoing and historic collective trauma are far reaching and life threatening. The daily accounts of BIPOC murder, assault and dehumanization at the hands of the our police are overwhelming. This is a traumatic event that impacts us all whether we are white or BIPOC.
Our trauma responses and defenses might look different:
some of us will watch these events unfold in a frozen state - unable to speak or act;
some of us will escape and look away - pretend it’s not happening or doesn’t affect us or create a fantasy that it’s fake news;
some of us will side with the police and talk about warrants, refusal, and blame the victim;
finally some of us will fight.
As we bring to light this ongoing and historic collective trauma, let us not forget that the economic system of capitalism thrives on dehumanizing a labor force in order to extract maximum profits. Expanding even further out capitalism treats the earth in the same manner rendering all living things as resources to be subjugated, to modified, extracted from, used, and discarded. As we consider our involvement and perpetrator trauma* let us not forget to examine our complicity in capitalism. The ghosts of our ancestors have inflicted so much racialized trauma and pain from the very foundation of our nation and the economic system creates and maintains the conditions on which systematic and institutionalized racism are necessary.
*It is a moral injury to our soul when we dehumanize another person. This injury is largely unconscious and repressed but reveals itself during times of triggers and are defended against by doubling down and enacting the same behavior that caused the injury in the first place. This is personal, familial, ancestral and societal. It is a collective historic trauma and a deeply personal trauma.
We must consider where are we putting our power?
Where are we giving up our agency?
Where are we freezing, fawning, and fleeing?
Who and what are we fighting?
Where are we enacting roles of the perpetrator as we look to police and punish unfairly?
Why are we unable to look at the victim and render them as worthy of our energy, action, support?
Why are we tone policing victims when we should be looking at the systems that created this?
Tone policing, bypassing, repressing, are functions of silence. Silence is the single most destructive force at work here. Are we the boot on the neck that silences the cries for help, furthering the moral injury to our collective soul. This is you. This is me. Don’t look away. Step off. Help lift up. And begin to heal.
Guilt, shame, and defense of these difficult emotions are all a part of the process of healing. These emotions evolve and transform us. The remorse that we might feel can open our hearts towards compassionate truth tally and action.
So if you are looking at this news and feeling a sense of defeat or hopelessness, I hear you. It’s an invitation for us all to go deeper and explore the interconnectedness of this moral injury. We find our lane, the place were our work is most effective: whether it is as a writer for social justice, an water activist, an urban planner, a community activist, a parent, a teacher, a healer. We do the work there - not dismissing the harsh reality of the world and it’s history.
You don’t have to do it alone. None of us were meant to do it alone. Find your people and work with them.
Today, I co-facilitated a Teach In, Heal In with my local community. We learned about the radical resistance to police brutality here in Pomona, we visioned what an abolitionist world would look like. We talked about personal accountability, forgiveness and healing. We grounded it out with a beautiful flower ceremony, laying down our prayers, visions, heavy emotions, fears, called in our ancestors, watched the birds fly overhead, and shared stories of grief and joy in the same complex moments. We ate, we organized, we took turns, and witnessed.
I will say, I think we are in a deep process of collective healing, which isn't always pretty, easy or enjoyable. My heart is breaking, I'm sure yours is too. How do we envision futures of liberation from this space? Accountability and resilience.
My hope is that you will take time this week in your own way, lay down some of heaviness, be present with questions that enliven your imagination to new worlds and then enact them.
Leave it Wild
We often think that we are separate from Nature, that it is something outside of us.
I was struck by this paragraph from Gary Synder's The Practice of the Wild and I wanted to share it with you.
“The body does not require the intersection of some conscious intellect to make it breathe, to keep the heart beating. It is to a great extent self-regulating, it is a life of its own. Sensation and perception do not exactly come from outside, and the unremitting thought and image flow or not exactly inside...
The depths of the mind, the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas, and that is where a bobcat is right now. I don’t mean personal bobcats and personal psyches, but the bobcat that rooms from dream to dream.”
- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild
The body is wild. So is the mind. We keep forgetting we are a part of Nature. We keep forgetting (or made to forget) that this earth is not an extension of our body.
Why are we so afraid of the wild, of our Nature? What are we trying to hide when we pretend to be civilized? Or that this is civilization?
So separated from the cycles of death, rebirth, ebb, flow, rest, revival, revelation, we have become so disembodied.
My hope is that we can feel into the wildness of our body – this primal energy – reclaim the connection between Nature and flesh, spirit and matter and, as Mary Oliver writes, “let the soft animal of the body love what it loves.”
Creation, Preservation, Dissolution.. then what?
In the liminal space between Dissolution to Creation, Here in the last days of winter, before the ripening of spring, I wonder how many of us are in these realms of unknowing and pre-emergence.
I wanted to share with you a concept with you first written about by Rajanaka Kṣemaraja in 1000 AD. A great master of Kashmir Shivaism, non-dual Tantra, describes the Five Acts of Divine Consciousness. We may already be familiar with the first three: Creation, Preservation, Dissolution.
But what about that space after dissolution. The void can be a hard place to be. It helps to understand that this is a part of the process.
Concealment and Revelation.
After things fall apart in dissolution, Concealment can feel like emptyness, confusion or forgetfulness. We are in the unknown and there doesn't seem to be any clues as to how to move forward. When we lean to and trust these cycles of Divine Consciousness, we can use this in-between time as a period of rest and rejuvenation - knowing that here is where all things meet and merge - integration.
This is necessary to release, rejuvenate, and redirect. It's as though everything goes dark and we wait for the truth to shine its light.
This is revelation (also called grace or remembering). In time, revelation will emerge.
In Winter, Nature shows us these very cycles of concealment through days of rain or snow followed by the revelation in the sprouting crocus in Spring.
Personally, I have found that these cycles of Divine Consciousness have helped me to slow down and surrender to the process instead of forcing change or growth.
I am definitely feeling the first stages of the revelation of Spring. I am feeling some wind beneath my wings and some momentum. I am learning to pace myself so that I have the energy for full-on creation when the time is right, taking time for stillness, celebration, and Nature in between a busy schedule helps me to steady myself and also be inspired in this liminal space.
I hope this message brings you hope and comfort as we navigate the in-between.
for my friend on her birthday
Mother Earth whispers secrets to her.
No matter how bitter or how sweet the medicine,
she swallows savoring her dharma
like it ain’t no thing
like it’s everything.
Shadow walker, magic talker
Reality bender, soul tender
Dream weaver, vision keeper
Fire maker, body shaker.
STOP! she says.
Hands to the sky!
Cry “Thank you”
Cry “Empty me”
Cry “I am willing”
Cry “Fill me”
Cry “I am willing”
Cry “Empty me”
Cry “Thank you”
Cry “Thank you”
Cry “Thank you”
mending
When you are challenged in your connection,
When suffering is present,
When freedom is distant,
When the tension pulls and there isn’t enough room to breathe,
Remember.
Knotted and frayed is the thread that binds all life - today and beyond.
Its truth snagged by the splinters of our intimate and universal history.
Dare to find the places tied taut and rigid and say their names:
Death. Grief. Loss. Distrust. Injustice. Silence. Prison. Rage. Fire. Tempest. Bite.
The wrenching within and between bodies is unyielding.
Burrs and nicks in the thread path, each knot distorting the integrity of connection.
Like listening to sound underwater, barely making out the words:
Love. Legacy. Roots. Beauty. Dove. Water. Salt. Tides. Sun. Sky.
Breathe deep and undo the knots one by one
Create some space to loosen the bind that numbs and disassociates
Respectfully untie the stories living within you that keep you bound.
Remember: Desert. Ocean. Mountain. Grandmother. Grandfather. Hands. Silver hair. Moon.
Let us untangle ourselves from this estrangement!
Combing through the anatomy of what it means to be whole in this world.
Tend to the burrs and nicks. Weave supporting fibers of redemption along the way.
Trust. Freedom. Hope. Brother. Sister. Dream. Rose. Seed. Soil. Falcon. Star. Return.
move your body
This is your reminder to move your body. The sitting, scrolling and numbing out isn’t going to serve you long term. You, connecting with your body, in whatever capacity moves you: Yoga, dance, swimming, just move your bones. Shake, wriggle, stretch, spiral, jump, land, stomp, touch, sway, sweep, reach and retract.
Move your body. Connect with the stories held in your tissues, find wisdom as you release - the stress from your shoulders, the clenching in your jaw, the tightness in your hips. Spread your toes and fingers. Circle your hands. Push. Pull. Coil.
Move your body. Breathe. Feel your feelings as they flick and flitter then fly through and pass on to something else - something deeper and more authentic, something that helps you feel more grounded and whole.
Move your body. Create some space inside - between thought - to honor your struggle and pain, to honor your grief and anger, celebrate your resilience, your joy, and reclaim victory over any thing/person/place/belief that hinders your flight, your brilliance, your shining light.
Move your body… to see yourself a little more clearly so that you might better understand who you are.
Move your body… because you will never regret it.
Move your body outdoors, indoors and in unusual ways. Don’t be ashamed to take up space and inhabit the skin you’re in. Move your body. Then find stillness and listen. Embrace what comes.
Move your body and remember your medicine.
theft of magic
The theft of magic
Told us our plight was loneliness,
That the land was a thing
And not a mother to hold us
To feed us and shelter us.
Our connection to spirit and nature
Villainized, sterilized,
Or worse,
Made imaginal.
A unquenchable thirst
And the world so dry
The nectar of spirit and intrinsic connection
To flora and fauna
Cast to the realm
Of untouchable and forbidden.
This grief and yearning for what is mostly unknown
Other than the glorious flitting moment
When the hawk
Lands on our fence
And looks us in the eyes
To speak to us without words.
Yogi: This is a Call to Action
Throughout history, the Yogi has always been a revolutionary. Departing from mainstream culture to seek mastery of self as a pathway to liberation. Sovereignty from colonization in both it’s external systematic design as well as it’s internalized domestication. This kind of freedom comes from wielding a truly regulated nervous system, a flexible and focused mind, and an empowered embodiment of divinity in flesh. This freedom knows no bounds as we can meet all obstacles with a fearless heart and noble action. The Yogi has trained for years, decades, and, for some of us, lifetimes. Yoga is a practice of self-determination.
In many ways, our practice has given us the tools we need to move through late-stage capitalism seemingly unquestioned. At first, Yogis were seen as on the fringe of society, but now we are on trend. Telling someone you are going to Yoga is more likely to get you a look of envy than it is suspicion. The modern Yogi has not only infiltrated the mainstream consciousness, but it also seems as though the mainstream consciousness has infiltrated us. We stop short at the physical practice, the OM, and the self care. Do not misunderstand me, these things are critical to our practice. I am simply asking if we can move to a deeper understanding of the practice and truly embody the revolutionary spirit that Yoga requires — to throw off the chains that keep us bound.
During the British Colonization of India, Yoga was banned. Not just because the British found the practice of the Fakirs to be grotesque but also because the Yogis were sabotaging trade routes in an attempt to prevent colonial rule. When physical culture, fitness, and body development became a trend adopted by many cultures in the 1920s, the some community leaders saw the opportunity to building strong Indian bodies to improve the chances of success in the event of a violent struggle against the colonizers. Some teachers, such as Tiruka (a.k.a. K. Raghavendra Rao), traveled the country disguised as yoga gurus, teaching strengthening and combat techniques to potential revolutionaries. Tiruka's aim was to prepare the people for an uprising against the British, and, by disguising himself as a religious ascetic, he avoided the watchful eye of the authorities. Other teachers, like the nationalist physical culture reformist Manick Rao, blended European gymnastics and weight-resistance exercises with revived Indian techniques for combat and strength. (Singleton, 2018). The Grandfathers of Yoga who brought Yoga to the west through lineage are these Yogi rebels. This practice is for the noble warrior.
Today, the battle is still the same. New faces, new team names, new landscapes. The path towards freedom is timeless. Right now, this fight may feels very alive for us because as we consider government control of our movement, the mandate to wear face masks, the call for testing and vaccinations. For some folks, this is a new experience. They have not felt the systemic, cultural and governmental domination over their bodies. Yet, for others, this is all too familiar. Feeling unsafe in our communities and social settings where we are othered, looked upon suspiciously, and socially distanced from has been a slow burn eating away at our sovereignty and dignity from the moment of birth. Even before the time of corona, the privilege of moving, speaking, and acting freely were only accessible to some.
In Buddhism, the experience of suffering is unavoidable but necessary for creating compassion, love and joy in one’s heart. “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” (Leonard Cohen, musician, Buddhist). When one can transmute suffering into compassion, one finds transcendence and liberation. When one dedicates this experience to the liberation of all beings, one anchors kindness and beauty in the world. Because, we are inextricably linked to all things, we can (and must continue to) find new opportunities for this alchemical process of transforming suffering into compassion. No matter what capitalism, personal beliefs, values and ideology, Yogis must remember that our liberation is bound. Our happiness is interdependent. When one is sick, we all are sick. When one is at risk, we are all at risk. When one is cast aside and disregarded, we all suffer because we are forever in union with our world, even when it’s inconvenient and messy.
Perhaps here, we can take this discomfort, heart break, grief, and anger and use it as fodder for the fire. When a Yogi finds challenge in their asana practice, we pause, breathe, reflect and act with intention. Now is the time to use all of our training. This an opportunity to lean in. This means to go inside ourselves, check our privileges, and care enough to look beyond our own experience at how others have been suffering in a similar and more pronounced way for much, much longer than we have during this stay-at-home order. We must look at the ways we have been ignorant and even complicit in perpetuating this suffering. Read that again. We must look at the ways we have been ignorant and even complicit in perpetuating this suffering. Take an honest look here. Explore the abyss, anchored with intention, guided by breath, and find those seeds of suffering. Hold them, turn them over in your hand, and get curious. Ask yourself, “does this seed create separation? From what? From whom? Who benefits from this separation? How can I transmute the energy of this seed and replant compassion and wisdom?” Spend time here. This isn’t a quick fix. There are life-times of oppression, domination, colonization, internal biases, external systems to work through. We can’t do it all in one sit, but we can begin to make this our practice. When we feel pain, we know what to do. Sit, anchor, breathe, tap into our own suffering and the suffering of others, look at our contributions to this suffering, transmute and transcend on a personal and global level. (See below for a link to the Tonglen meditation - which is an amazing practice of transmutation).
Right now, many Yogis are anxious to get back to work, to take off our masks, and return to normal. We hate wearing the masks. We hate being told to stand 6 feet back. We hate not being able to freely go and see whatever we wanted. While I too enjoy and love this freedom, we must remind ourselves of those who do not experience these freedoms regularly.
Yogis, our work is to awaken, liberate and embody. We practice union - yoke - we honor the divine connection between all things. We say “Namaste” but do we really mean it? Or are we just here for the handstands? If so, let’s sit in the fire of transformation together. All though the initial process of awakening is deeply internal, we are not alone in it. There are millions others who in this moment are doing their own awakening. This is a call to action. This is a call to put away our attachment to comfort and dig in! Let us not squander this moment ripe with opportunity to feel in to suffering so that way make awaken to compassion.
Further, let us take that compassion into action, a dedication to the liberation of all. I urge us all to remember that our actions (no matter how small) effect everyone. If we are truly mean, “We are better together.” Let’s be together better. Let us move with the most vulnerable, most oppressed, most isolated in mind.
Links to Tonglen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLvrOuaagL1XP502BIKLeOwXaxDamp1n0N&v=75wZzLqT3sI
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lasarafirefoxallen/2017/01/magic-of-tonglen/
https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-tonglen/
Corona as a Woman
If Corona was speaking what would she say? I drop my attention to my roots and feel into my connection to the ground beneath me. The ground that speaks of the feminine mystery. She says, “Enough! Stop with the taking. I have fed you, clothed you, housed you. I cannot do this alone. I need your help. I need reciprocity.” Have you bent your ear to the ground and listened to what is needed? She has been showing us for decades, centuries.. have you listened? She has asked you a million times through the language of fires, floods, tornados, brown skies, oil spills. She is the voice of your mother, your wife, your sister.
How many women around the world feel this same disrespect, taken for granted, unseen, unsupported, stepped over, forgotten? Ignored, replaced, laughed at, blocked, silenced, undermined? In our communities, in public, at work, in our homes - ESPECIALLY in our homes. Some of us feel this as a deep anger, an underlying current of rage that at anytime, given the right conditions might erupt like and earthquake, a volcano, a hurricane. Some may feel it as grief, tears like monsoon, tsunami of sadness, rivers of emotion flooding the banks. And still others may not feel this at all - untouched, suspended between mind-body-spirit without ever touching any of them - safely fossilized and unmoved.
Mother. Mother. Mother. Although we truly love her gifts, we ignore her need, only demanding more. She becomes immune to our toxicity. Protects the children and begins to call names. We continue to spit and sputter our disease, our entitlement, over everything we touch. Every thing we pass. Every surface we share. This invisible killer shared unconsciously. As we say, “more, more, more.”
We are all guilty. We can’t continue to ask and not give. We can’t continue to give and not ask. How do we strike a balance?
Uplift the ones who are ignored. Meet their needs. If you are a giver, tell us what you need. If you are a receiver, give without hesitation. We must balance the scales and right our misdirections before we emerge from this quarantime. The place where work needs to begin is in our hearts, in our homes, in our families both born and chosen, in our circles. Then, we take this work into our communities, our cities, states, country, world.
We are being asked to stay at home right now to tend to our most essential. Our deepest root and center. May we get our own house in integrity right now so we can emerge full supported and empowered when the time comes to emerge. The world we want to build begins with the relationships closest to us. Let them reflect equal exchange, listening, responsibility, accountability, cleaning up, reconciliation, forgiveness, and love.