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The path of service.
Aug. 1st, 2005 04:21 pmYesterday was a good day. Although it was the last event, the best was surely Sir coming home from his week in Las Vegas. Since he wasn't due home until late evening, I went to the studio for the two-hour vinyasa/restorative class.
Several things have stayed with me - the first was thanks to the music. Beth, the Sunday teacher, focuses a lot of energy on using music as a tool to guide the class, an approach I really love, considering how much I use music to express my own emotional states/truths. One song in particular captured me - it's Krishna Das, on the album Pilgrim Heart. It's a Hare Krishna chant, a very long, hypnotic one, and then, nearly without the listener realizing it, it flows into Amazing Grace, sung in the rhythms of the chant. It's extraordinary. We were coming to the end of the vinyasa practice, starting to slow down and move into gentler poses, and as I was listening, I felt near tears, bent over, my head resting on my shins, struggling to keep my breath from coming out in a sob. It wasn't pain, or maybe it was, the way the bright sunlight shining off the pavement sometimes brings tears to my eyes if I've been indoors for too long. My breathing steadied, and every movement moved just 'what I'm doing right now' to a blessing, a benediction, me speaking with my body, saying "Thank you. Thank you."
Finally, the end of class. On my mat in Corpse Pose, my eyes closed, my arms stretched out above my head, the sweat drying on my skin. Beth came and knelt beside me, and I could smell scented oil on her hands. She spread her fingers across my forehead, massaged my temples, and with firm strokes moved her hands onto the nape of my neck, and into my sweat-soaked hair. It hit me then, karma yoga, yoga as a path of service. That's it. That's why I want to teach, what I want to be as a teacher. A servant of the Divine, a servant of my students, and thereby the world, finding ways to give them joy and peace so they might bring that to benefit their own lives, and the lives around them, as such things can't help but do.
There's such peace in that understanding.
Several things have stayed with me - the first was thanks to the music. Beth, the Sunday teacher, focuses a lot of energy on using music as a tool to guide the class, an approach I really love, considering how much I use music to express my own emotional states/truths. One song in particular captured me - it's Krishna Das, on the album Pilgrim Heart. It's a Hare Krishna chant, a very long, hypnotic one, and then, nearly without the listener realizing it, it flows into Amazing Grace, sung in the rhythms of the chant. It's extraordinary. We were coming to the end of the vinyasa practice, starting to slow down and move into gentler poses, and as I was listening, I felt near tears, bent over, my head resting on my shins, struggling to keep my breath from coming out in a sob. It wasn't pain, or maybe it was, the way the bright sunlight shining off the pavement sometimes brings tears to my eyes if I've been indoors for too long. My breathing steadied, and every movement moved just 'what I'm doing right now' to a blessing, a benediction, me speaking with my body, saying "Thank you. Thank you."
Finally, the end of class. On my mat in Corpse Pose, my eyes closed, my arms stretched out above my head, the sweat drying on my skin. Beth came and knelt beside me, and I could smell scented oil on her hands. She spread her fingers across my forehead, massaged my temples, and with firm strokes moved her hands onto the nape of my neck, and into my sweat-soaked hair. It hit me then, karma yoga, yoga as a path of service. That's it. That's why I want to teach, what I want to be as a teacher. A servant of the Divine, a servant of my students, and thereby the world, finding ways to give them joy and peace so they might bring that to benefit their own lives, and the lives around them, as such things can't help but do.
There's such peace in that understanding.
