Invoke

This month at Yogawood we're considering the first Sutra, "Now begins the practice of Yoga," or the Jivamukti translation, "Now this is yoga as I have perceived it in the natural world."  I kept drawing back to "now" in my classes.  I'm thankful for this attention to mindfulness, but it's also the quality of invocation.  It reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend, Monserrate awhile back.  We were sharing stories-- the stories that inform yoga asanas or poses, as well as stories that have become salient for us within our bodies.

Monserrate recently moved outside of Cusco, Peru.  He mentioned that he'd developed a Surya Namaskar sequence narrated to the story of Pacha Mama, the holy mother world.  This sparked my curiousity.  Earlier this week I began reading creation stories from a variety of traditions-- Judeo-Christian, because this was the first story I was told, Yoruba, Vedic, Norse, Hopi, & others.  In all of the listed (except the Norse) the first being was sculpted from earth.  The inert form lay dormant until the Divine breathed life & animation into the clay, creating human.  The Norse story isn't far off-- instead of sculpting man he is carved from wood.  Breath is the same animating force.

This feels like yoga to me.  As I begin my practice I often cling to the mat, feeling dormant, but possible.  Slowly breath gathers within me, heat, & I begin to take shape.  That breath is the invocation-- "now."

About a year ago another friend told me a story from the Upanishads where a young man asked his father how to know the Self, the Divine, that sense of connectedness to all things.  His father first said, "Eat food."  He ate, and over time he saw that food rebuilt him, recreated him.  Food came from earth & in this way he continued to be built by earth.  He asked his father again, how could he know the Self.  Now his father said, "Meditate."  His meditation took him to his breath & he began to see how he was also composed of energy, the same energy in all things.  Still unsatisfied, he asked again.  As he continued asking, his father continued responding, "Meditate."  The story illustrates the boy's journey through the kosas, these layers of our being. I love that first it reminds us that we are of earth, earth is of us.  Breath, the next layer, animates.

Now I am created.  Now I create.