At the close of another year the idea of transformation through loss is brought to my mind. The theme at Revolution Yoga for December 2019 is death, dissolution and rebirth.
When we chant AUM in classes we are meant to contemplate the cycle of the material life. There is always a beginning (A from silence into sound), a sustaining (U), and a death, dissolution or ending (M back into silence), present in all of the material world.
Raf sent me a really interesting podcast last week where Sahara Rose was discussing the cycles of the Ayurvedic Doshas and how they manifest to help us birth new ideas, life, projects etc. into the world.
We start with Vata (Air and Ether) there is a buzzing, a stirring, a movement of the mind that comes forth from nothing and bursts into its dazzling, vibrating array of infinite manifestations. Only when we draw it down from the hopefulness and excited passion of the heart into the solar plexus are we able to give it the Pitta (fire and water) to digest the ideas, transform them and have the willpower/drive to disperse them into the world. From there Kapha (Earth and Ether) grounds us down into our root to let the idea grow into what it’s meant to become. Like birthing a child into the world we don’t expect them to be ours forever. They grow on their own, and fly off to whatever corner of the world they are meant to be in, doing the dharma (life’s work) they are meant to do.
We are conduits facilitating the birth, and manifestation of a thing before we let it loose into the world. And then comes the silence again. Once we let it loose we are once more an empty vessel, a blank slate buzzing with the potentiality of something brand new. There is something about loss in any capacity that is hard to grasp as a human but the yogic philosophy hands us a new way of seeing and holding our experiences. There is no room for new things to come together unless other things fall away. As my friend Jessica Yip says it’s really hard to decorate a room when it’s already filled with furniture. It’s tough to pick up a new hobby when your time is already spoken for.
It’s really hard to create new direction: emotional, energetic, spiritual when our world view is set. So the nature of the material is a constant refresh. Control, alt, delete. A loss is something we often see as happening to us but the yogis through the teachings of the vedas encourage us over and over that this is all happening not to us but for us. So as we move towards the end of a decade as a community, I encourage you all to hold your external experiences (even the grief, sadness, loss, gain, renewal, endings, deep realizations, new beginnings, joys, ALL OF IT) with the kind of tenderness that only comes from a deep surrendering to the will of the universe. And a deep surrendering to the driving will of the luminous inner self that is always intimately connected to that great big universe.
I wish you so much peace, contentedness and many blessings in 2020.
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In love,
Amanda and the good folks at Revolution Yoga
Originally shared in our December 2019 newsletter.