How is yoga helping us live more intimately? Are we connected? Are we living as love?
I have been listening to one of my favorite folk artists, Wil Marring. She has this great song where she says if she had life to live over again she would choose the aisle seat instead of the window. In the song she implies, at least in my perception, that living from the window seat means you might not be following your heart, or listening to fate, or taking chances. What’s funny, strange funny, not ha ha funny, is that I prefer the window seat. Hmmm.
I have been reading a book called Yoga of Heart the Healing Power of Intimate Connection. I should probably acknowledge that I have had at least one other yoga teacher give me an icky reaction about this book. I like lots in this book. Radical of me to be so open about my opinion. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water, we can just drain the water.
So, I have had bubbles floating around in my head about yoga and intimate connection. At first, it seems like this might be a taboo subject. Is he talking about sex when he uses the word intimacy? Isn’t that what most people’s minds conjure up when they talk about or think about intimacy? He does talk about sex in his book. However, the book is about way more than sex. Isn’t this where yogis are suppose to turn their nose up and begin talking about brahmacharya, the fourth yama in Patanjali’s yoga sutra.
So, of course, let’s go there, without turning our nose up!
There are probably a zillion interpretations of brahmacharya (okay, not a zillion). Mukanda Stiles notes the literal translation:
Brahma +carya = living; living in the world.
brahma-cary (brahma=supreme Being) search for, respect for the Divine, continence.”
In his translation of the sutras, he translates this yama as “by abiding in behavior that respects the Divine as omnipresent, one acquires an inspired passion for life.”
Ganga White in Yoga Beyond Belief notes it is “usually translated as celibacy and abstinence….re-interpretated by some teachers in modern times to mean responsible sexuality or spiritual sexuality aimed toward God.”
The lovely mac computer I am attached to defines continence for us:
continence, noun.
1. control of one's actions and feelings; self-restraint; moderation.
Ex. The ancient Greeks advised continence in all things.
(SYN) self-control.
2. self-restraint or complete abstinence in sexual matters; chastity.
Maybe we should take a look at the word intimacy. Macintosh says:
intimacy, noun, pl. -cies.
1. the fact or condition of being intimate; close acquaintance; closeness.
Ex. The intimacy with which the two friends talked showed how fond they were of one another.
2. a familiar or intimate act.
(SYN) familiarity.
3. a euphemism for illicit sexual relations.
Maybe practice of some type can help us as individuals understand how we are using our sexual energy. Maybe that will lead to more intimacy, more closeness. Maybe the sutra about brahmacharya can help us be more aware of how we are living and interacting. Maybe it can allow us the opportunity to see if we are harming ourselves or someone else. Maybe we can look and see how we interact with people and why we interact that way. Maybe just talking about this taboo stuff can be of some help in leading to living more intimately?
Maybe getting on our mat and practicing allows us to be more intimate with life? What does it mean to be more intimate with your life? How can you be a close acquaintance of your own life? (I mean really, after a while this all starts to sound a little “bliss bunny-ish.”)
How can practicing down dog and triangle lead us to live more intimately? Is it leading you to live more intimately?
This is where it begins to stick for me. Am I distant and disconnected? Am I so busy that I have forgotten about intimacy? Am I present for what is happening in my life? Am I present for eating the vegetarian meatloaf that just came out of the microwave or am I typing while taking a few bites in between words? Am I able to be intimate and distracted? Hmm. I know the answer. Are we present for pain in the body? Does our language express intimacy or negativity? Are we present for all emotions or are we running from them, trying to figure them out, analyze them and make sense of everything? Can we be present and intimate with our moment-to-moment experience? Are we running away from what we know to be true in our gut? Are we running away from our own wisdom? Can we experience intimacy with the conflict we feel over what we feel? Can we experience embarrassment over something and just be with the embarrassment? Do we have to assign meaning to everything or can things just be? Can we be with anger just as easily as we can exhilaration?
Happiness and internal upset? Can we engage with people we don’t like, intimately? Can we live intimately with cancer? Can we engage intimately with someone we know sees the world in a completely different way than us? Can we can we can we?
Can getting on our mat actually help us with this? Are we even open to this? Isn’t living intimately a bit, just a bit, scary? I mean really, won’t it all just be a wild love fest? Wont’ every one be so nice that they don’t seem real? Will anything actually get done? How will we pay the mortgage and pick up the prescription from Walgreens? How will we set boundaries and stay committed to commitments? Hmmm….Or, will everyone be able to express themselves authentically and from their heart. Able to freely express anger, embarrassment and upset safely, without judgement, without fall-out. Now I am really sounding crazy.
Maybe if we are living more intimately with this life, maybe we begin to see everyone as our teacher. I don’t mean the put-them-up-on-a pedestal-bow-down-take-every-word-they say-as gold-type of teacher. I mean, maybe we see that every one is just like us, trying to live in the world, the best they can. Maybe we recognize in our bones that we are all the same. Maybe we recognize in our bones that there is no separation between anything and anyone. Maybe we see that everyone teaches us something. Maybe we see beauty in surprising places and surprising faces.
I was recently at a conference with people I have known for a year. Although I don’t see these people every day, or every week or every month, there is a connection, oh, I guess we could say an intimacy with them, that knocks my socks off. They are such smart, kind and welcoming people. I don’t mean that they aren’t human, because they are. Sometimes the words they say to me about living life is more meaningful and pertinent than the sutras have ever been. They surprise me. Why would I be surprised that people who are living their life, living intimately with their life, would have gems of wisdom? Maybe the surprise comes when I am not living intimately with life, when I am caught up in my crazy monkey mind about deadlines and cleaning the house and preparing for class and impressing the boss lady.
These people teach me, remind me, that people are kind, people can be respectful of themselves and of me, that people can stand up and refuse to participate in jokes that are offensive to them, people can hold a space that is both intimate and not over the line, people can know what they know and not cower from their own wisdom, and a group of dedicated, strong and bright people can get along with each other, intimately. They can’t possibly know this, but every time this occurs, it seems to put balm on old wounds. It’s as if every time we encounter someone living intimately with their own life, they unknowingly erase an encounter we had with someone who wasn’t. Who wouldn’t want to do that for themselves and for someone else?
I believe we can live intimately with one another from both the aisle seat and the window seat. In fact, I don’t think it matters where we sit, or stand or practice yoga. In fact, I don’t believe we even need to practice yoga to live life intimately. I think our yoga practice can be a tool, a tool that can lead us to have this conversation, with others and with ourselves. I believe it can be one more way to help open our hearts and our minds.
If we embrace our own wisdom and the wisdom of everyone else on the planet, live as many moments as we can with integrity and intimacy, then all there is love.
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