Play… that’s the word that came to mind the other day during my yoga asana practice. In the midst of savasana, my wandering mind suddenly started pondering how yoga invites us to play with contraction and extension, tension and relaxation, strength and flexibility, comfort and discomfort. Life also is constantly knocking at our door asking us to come out and play. It asks us to engage ourselves in each moment presented and seeks to draw us more deeply into itself. Like a lover, life pursues us asking us to give ourselves fully over to it’s embrace. It asks that we open ourselves in trust and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable with it.
For life to be all it’s meant to, we must commit to it. Similarly, in yoga, we must invest fully into each posture so that we may feel its full expression within our being. We must faithfully show up for our practice to see the transformation within our spirits. Life begs us to devote ourselves to the experience of it… to give it our attention and presence. Life asks us to appreciate it for the magic and love that it provides us with during our time here.
Life, like Frank Sinatra sings to us,
All or nothing at all
Half a love, never appealed to me
If your heart, never could yield to me
Then I’d rather, rather have nothing at all
Why are we so scared to allow life in and turn ourselves over to its will? What causes us to defend our hearts with such ferocity? Like battered dogs, we’re so intent on cowering back under the nearest object so that we won’t be hit again all because at one point life tried us in the fire and tested us with intensity. Instead of allowing the heat to melt us down so that we might be resurrected anew, we hid ourselves and blocked the natural flow of life. Like children, we decided to whine and cry inside on a rainy day instead of putting our rain gear on and learning how to dance in it. Life asks us to dance in the rain, to be satisfied and have faith even when things look bleak, even when it seems to the untrained eye that “the sky is falling.”
Life, much like yoga, (if we’re doing it “right”) likes to excite us and then soothe us. It stretches us and then allows us to settle into the effect of having been pulled to our maximum capacity. It often takes us into areas of discomfort, so that we may learn to be comforted or sometimes to strengthen us so that we aren’t as easily discomforted. Like the undertow of the ocean, it pulls us out only to bring us safely back to shore time and time again. For me, savasana, at the close of practice is that feeling of being brought safely back to shore… lying on my back, allowing my breath to settle from the excitement that just occurred. It is the reminder that I’m always being safely carried… supported by the Earth beneath me, feeling my heart beating, watching the automatic inhale and exhale happen without my effort. It reminds me that I am simply a small shell moving with the tides of something much larger than myself.