“The biggest embrace you’ll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you’ll realize you’ve just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it.” ~ Adyashanti
What extraordinary times! Each one of us must sit with the reality of a radically shifted world.
Any sense of control we thought we had has fallen away. Our patterns of placing our value on our achievements, on what we have or own, or onto our future plans no longer serves us; as we live in a space more grounded in the current moment.
The human tendency to place our gaze on future points often assuages the internal discomfort we all have living in an ever-changing life, body, and world with endless unknowns.
We now face this great unknown without the ability to fix our external circumstances or plan our way to comfort.
Held in place, we have the opportunity to choose whether we slide into fear, judgment, and conspiracies; or whether we sit in the fierce fire of the unknown and burn away what is not real, what is no longer, what is holding us back from our true never-changing nature.
Those of us in Northern California are in the center of the fire. As it burns, the smoke clouds the air and it almost feels as if we can’t see a moment beyond this burning.
However, when pause to drop into my breath and my body, I find a place to land within all that has been burned away. I can recall the clear skies.
Sadhana (daily spiritual practice) stokes the fire that supports the burning through old belief structures, habits, patterns and addictions and creates the container for living the practices of yoga.
It sounds small, but establishing a foundation of sadhana is an incremental process, and simplicity and humility are the keys to making it work.
Committing to consistent sadhana can be—no, will be—a transformative experience (those who know me, know that I do not use that word lightly).
Sadhana is about practicing when you want to practice and still showing up when you don’t. It is about establishing a practice wherever you are where you can play with, struggle against, and deeply immerse yourself.
In doing so, you will find your foundations as a student of each breath, of your life, and allow the wisdom of yoga to penetrate and then permeate every corner of your life.
