Other days everything feels effortless... I realize I am hurtling through time and space and that I'm as ever-changing as everyone else. I feel clear, fully experience everything, there are breakthroughs in my awareness and I know exactly who I am and what my purpose is. Those are the really "good" days. Some days, I have great sessions with people. Like this one:
I have a private client who is recovering from major surgery and cannot practice asana so for right now all we do is meditate; I help her get into it and provide some insightful readings for her and then sort of let it all go (yesterday we meditated for about 30 minutes in silence after about 25 minutes of cueing and guided imagery). Afterwards we talk for a few minutes. Yesterday I cued the image of floating in a canoe in one of my readings, and that image was meaningful for her, so she stayed with it for awhile. The river flows along as all rivers do; sometimes it narrows and becomes rough and fast and sometimes it widens, deepens and becomes very calm and slow. I asked her to visualize who she had in her canoe, if anyone. Later on, in our discussion, she said she kept coming back to an old boyfriend and that he represented strength, warmth, intelligence, ruggedness, entrepreneurism, and kindness. She said she couldn't picture anyone else in the canoe with her, even though she kept trying to bring in family members and friends and people currently in her life. I think it's really interesting that her mind picked out someone who represents those traits. I think in some way she either once possessed all those traits or would like to possess them. It does not appear that there are lingering romantic feelings but there definitely is a connection for her. I think it is a really interesting subject... the things that are brought up in meditation. I'd venture that we all would have very different images that would come up. I recently read an old interview in Yoga Journal with Sting, who is now a long time yoga practitioner, during which he talked about seeing music in his mind when he meditated. When I meditate, I often have to cut through layers of conversation with myself about how I'd describe the experience to someone who was sitting there-- I still think like a teacher.
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Onto another subject, strictly teaching asana is really starting to feel limiting for me. I still enjoy sharing it, and love teaching it to new people or return students, but I feel that pull to communicate on a different level, always, to bring in as many elements of the eight limbs as possible. I'm glad to have the freedom to be able to work on this.
My dream is to be able to transmit those tools that will help people come to a more enlightened state. I have such a long way to go personally, but I think I'd be missing the point if I were to wait until I reached some defined point or destination (would I even know it if I got there?) to share what I've gained.
The more I read and read about this practice, the practice of Yoga in the broader sense, the more I realize that we do already have what we need to "do" yoga, we just need reminders. I choose to receive my reminders from everyone I meet and learn from... that's a new student's blog, or an injured person, or a frustrating interview with a politician on tv, or a conversation over dinner with an acquaintance... all of these people are helping me more than any guru ever could. I feel the more I learn the less I know, really! And I feel that knowing less is paradoxically somehow the key.
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