earthy moon messages

there is not an aspect of my life that practice hasn’t touched. i can feel cellular rewiring, scrubbing, renewing all the time. stepping out of old selves almost as fast as i can process the shedding.

it feels correct, it feels natural (yet i know it to be radical, counter-cultural) to just do my practices. to share openly and honestly when the moment aligns, but without the need to >>sell<< any aspect of the practice.

and yet, whenever i try to take steps back from teaching, i receive so many messages that i absolutely must keep teaching.

and so i’m writing again. it, too, feels like a return to the origins of practice for me.

a moment from cassis, france, in august of 2018:

in a completely white room, not unlike a box–it’s even subterranean– i lay with baby nima as he softens toward sleep. the bed is also white: a crisp, clean cloud that fully supports the zero-ing out of myself every night. a full renewal. we’ve been on the road for about two weeks now, my brood and me. this is the point of most month-long journeys where i really begin to feel the pull of work. the rajasic requirement to return to the hub of making-offering-releasing. but in this moment, i know it’s unnecessary.

perhaps it’s the impetus of capitalism to couple one’s dignity to production and earning power, perhaps it’s my very own karma, but i’ve been driven to be out there scrapping, to be proving myself for as long as i can remember. an externalization of dharma, if you will. and this is fully supported by >>the industry<<. the message is “do your dharma of teaching yoga and you’ll have full classes of adoring ‘followers’ and a full bank account and your parents will approve of you and, and, and…” and none of that actually has anything to do with one’s actual dharma, and i know this, but i didn’t know this in my blood and bones until this particular baby landed in my lap and i fully understood that love is my dharma. (love is your dharma, too, by the way. i’m not any more or less special than anyone else.) every single day i’m doing my dharma just by opening my eyelashes and eating toast and tending my gardens and making dinner for my people.

and in this particular moment, i get a very clear message that my dharma requires me to stop (at least for now) reaching outside of myself for anything. to tend to my home. to keep the altars lighted. to do what needs to be done to keep the lights on, but to no longer confuse that with my essence.

back to the moment: the sound of a baby’s breathing is the most sacred sound current i know. learning its layers is deep work. living in these layers is radical.

i hear the slosh of pool water, the laughter of my daughter, husband and mother in law. the moon in her newness, realigns my inner circuitry.

a few weeks later, i am home. feet bare against the pine floors swept and mopped sparkling. praying to my home and its unique frequency in every step. following the prana of my home, i feel new things in my body. hard to describe things: spaciousness, clarity, rasa, bhumi, bhav. there have been times when i’m clear in the past, and there have been times when i’ve been grounded; in these moments, i am both. 

chopping onions for the week, then coating them in olive oil and offering them a dusting of Maldon salt flakes. i hold nima back as the oven opens and i quickly slide the well-seasoned pan into the heat. soon, the smell of sweet, pungent earth fills the warm kitchen. i glance at the kitchen altar and know this, too, is a prayer.

waxing moon in taurus:

daily asana and meditation change you. the words i would use to describe it scarcely align with the experience or the perception, but i have to try. (especially since i am returning to a daily writing practice. i have to try. it will be clumsy for awhile. i’m noticing a few things as i re-embark on this practice of communicating the experiences that are beyond words: one is that i’m prone to explaining rather than describing. like i’m trying to draw every conclusion for the reader. like i’m literally trying to “control the narrative” by telling you every motivation, every aspect of the process in the hopes of heading off potential mis-understanding. this realization helped me beyond measure with a teaching conundrum this fall-winter– I CAN ONLY DO MY OWN PRACTICE. and now i’m trying to follow my teaching example in my writing: show, don’t tell. do the thing, and let the chips fall where they may.)

moon in taurus and i’m renewing my vows to this planet. i feel her beneath my feet and she wants to dance. slowly, reverently. when i try to go too fast, she pulls me back. my skin, my hair, they breathe.

daily practices i am leaning into lately:

• pranayama, especially kapalabhati
• the kundalini kriya for the 10 bodies
• savasana (mega-ultra)
• lovingkindness meditation
• cooking
• laughing
• full presence with my babies
• writing
• painting
• bathing practices

(i shared a movement practice over in the wildcat yoga club today that is a really good one for the kind of exhaustion that can come with deep winter. please join us over there if you are interested. xo)