All the Hemispheres

All the Hemispheres

By #Hafiz

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of You.

I often berate myself for being “scattered” or ungrounded. I frequently start a project, then read or hear something else that interests me and immediately absorb myself in a new task or endeavor.  I have a wide range of interests in both my personal and professional life, and I find myself drawn in different directions frequently, and just as often I beat myself up about it.  This aspect of my personality has led me to become more of a jack of many trades rather than a master of any one.  I am often envious of people who commit themselves unequivocally to one career or religion or even hobby and have really immersed themselves wholeheartedly in it.  Their lives seem simpler to me and I think there is a beautiful ease that comes with following a specific path with dedication and focus.  But that is not my life!

Recently I was reading Danny Arguetty’s fabulous book Nourishing the Teacher where he talks about doing the same thing, and points out that this “ungrounded-ness” actually works in his favor.  When I read his thoughts about this I realized that it works for me as well.  All of my interests and abilities, when combined, have the ability to create something unique, creative and interesting when I allow them to do that.  So the time I take beating myself up about getting “distracted”, and trying to force my awareness back to something that isn’t serving me right now detracts from who I have to potential to be if I just let all these facets of my life coalesce with less resistance.  It’s like 

“Greet(ing) Yourself
In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.”

Yoga means union, but another translation is “integration”.  In our lives, when we can bring together all the pieces (hemispheres!) of ourselves with acceptance and grace we live a more authentic life.  When we foster integration on our mat of the physical with the spiritual, our  individual spirit with universal spirit, or even body part with body part we create a whole more beautiful and brilliant than simply the sum of its parts.  And when we can do that on our mats, when we move out into the rest of our lives we can integrate more seamlessly all the “hemispheres” of our existence, whether it be diverse interests, or career and family, or light and dark forces forever omnipresent, or any other seemingly opposing force.  We become more authentically who we are meant to be and our lives flow more easily.

I often think of the universe as a giant tapestry, each of us representing a unique and necessary thread.  And anyone who sews, or has even mended a loose button (which is about the extent of my sewing skills), knows that most thread is made up of smaller threads woven together.  When we live more authentically we weave our own thread tighter so its color becomes more brilliant and adds more to the universal tapestry.  Or another way to say it is:

“All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of You.”

Off the mat:

What are the opposing forces working in your life right now?  In what ways are you resisting them?  In what ways can one of those forces inform the other to create a stronger, more vibrant whole?

On the mat:

On a physical level, healthy integration is one of the ultimate goals of our practice.  I was thinking about those charm necklaces that were popular when I was younger: a circle reading “Best Friends” was cut in half, creating a charm for each friend to wear.   The halves made up a pretty charm on their own, but only really made sense when they were put together and the words were completed.  (Sweet side note – when I graduated high school my dad had a giant one made for my whole family, cut into 6 pieces and each of us has a charm to wear – so our charms made up an even bigger more beautiful whole!)  But I digress – the point is, our bodies work in the same way – every part serves a function, whether it be life-sustaining or simply adding beauty to the world.   On their own they are unique and necessary, yet integrated together they form the distinctive and irreplaceable you.  So in my classes this week we worked on the physical principle of “hugging the midline”, drawing all the “hemispheres” of the body into integration with acceptance and grace, and in the process, creating stronger, more cohesive poses and bodies.

 

For the Anusara junkies:

Open to Grace:

Breathe in and fill up with all the hemispheres of yourself.

Let your inner body be bright and full with the myriad aspects of all of your being.

Muscular Energy:

Hug the midline and feel your “thousand forms stitching themselves together as you”.

Hug all the parts of your body to the midline to feel all the parts of your being integrate themselves into a beautiful, cohesive whole.

Pull all the hemispheres of your being to the equator of your heart.

Draw to the midline to ”stitch together the great circle inside of you”.

Inner Spiral:

Widen your inner thighs to make space for all the rich characteristics of your life.

Widen sit bones back and apart like a blooming night flower.

Outer Spiral:

Sink your tailbone into your “thousand other forms” and stitch them together inside your low belly.

Organic Energy:

Shine in your pose like a “blooming night flower, bestowing your vital fragrance of happiness and giving.”

Cosmic Bunny Ears

I just came back from week of teaching and studying with one of my beloved teachers and I am always so grateful to have the opportunity to study with those who have become masters in their chosen path.  More than what they say, I find that when I am with spiritual teachers, whether it be yoga or other paths, what I am most inspired by and what I learn the most from is simply watching them navigate the world.  There is a level of attunement that I aspire to have, and from many conversations and interactions with my teachers, I know that this attunement comes from being open and receptive, backed up by years of dedicated study and practice, practice, practice.

Years ago I remember taking a class where the teacher compared yoga practice to television.  Remember those “bunny ear” antennae?  Someone would have to stand up and adjust as the people watching directed them – you had to know just the right way to turn them, just the right amount of tin foil to put around the end to get the best reception.  Sometimes you had to just stand and hold them in the right place to get any picture at all.  I remember standing in my grandmother’s living room in Brooklyn arguing with my sisters about who would have to hold them so we could watch the Smurfs.  My teacher pointed out that the broadcast didn’t start simply because we figured out how to position the antennae – the broadcast was out there all along, we just needed to figure out how to allow it to come through. 

 

Yoga practice helps us tune our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual antennae so we are in the optimal place to receive the broadcast.  This is why practicing with good alignment is key - when our bodies are aligned, the channels of receptivity and transmit become more open and the pathways clearer.  Bhakti Sutra #53 says: “It reveals itself wherever there is an able vessel.”  The “it” is love, knowledge, joy, truth – what is infinitely being sent out by the universe to us at all times.  And when we attune all our awareness to this “broadcast”, we become the able vessel and we reveal it. 

It is also important to align the inner, energetic body with the outer physical form.  In our energetic body we have a main energy channel called the sushumna nadi that runs down the length of the torso, beginning at the sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head, passing through all the chakras below it, and ending at muladhara or root chakra at the pelvic floor. During times when I feel really “tuned in”, I feel as if there is a direct and open channel between me and my source.  It feels to me as if the sahasrara chakra is wide open and that knowledge, wisdom and love can just pour down into me.  During times when I am not feeling as connected, one of my practices is to awaken this chakra through poses like sirsasana (headstand), and other poses, including restoratives, in which we rest the head on the floor or a block (like Prasarita Padottanasana).  I think it’s interesting to note that babies are always innately in touch with the divine, having spent less time in apparent “separation” from their source as we adults have.  On a spiritual level, this is why the fontanel at the crown of the head is open at birth and stays open for up to a year and a half afterwards.  It is one of the reasons babies are so innately loving and trusting and wise. 

 

On a physical level, when we align our spine we “attune” our whole body, as the spine is the seat of the nervous system.  When we work in each pose to keep the natural curves of the spine the whole body moves towards a state of homeostasis. And when we practice poses where we cannot keep the curves (like deep forward or back bends), if we start those poses from the neutral position and work with lengthening before curving, we bring greater flexibility to the spine and the nervous system.

 

How can you better attune your antennae to pick up the cosmic broadcast?  What thoughts or ideas need to be let go of to be a more open channel for divine grace to flow into?  Through yoga or whatever other practices enable you to, shape yourself into the “able vessel”.

Off the Mat:

One of the easiest ways to keep the channel for grace open is to keep a sense of wonder about the world.  As you go through your day, be aware of nature’s beauty, the kindness of people around you, guidance that comes in obvious and subtle ways. 

On the Mat:

Practice poses that awaken the sahasrara or crown chakra.  The image of the sahasrara chakra is a thousand-petaled lotus, and as you practice you might hold the vision of this energy center becoming more and more open as each petal unfolds itself, until at the end of practice when we lay down in savasana for deep relaxation we are able to surrender completely, to move out of the thinking, processing, doing mind, and become an open channel for grace to flow down into.