Parinama

        It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear.  Kalil Gibran   "A life without inner contradiction is only half a life." Carl Jung     Those places inside where we come up against contradictions are ripe areas for growth.   We may want to be kind but find ourselves lashing out in anger towards those we love, want to go on a pilgrimage but are afraid of being alone, we desire intimacy but fear relationships.   We all embody contradictions but their particularity, what specifically pulls and tugs in us, is unique and only something we can know for ourselves.   What is a contradiction for you may not be a contradiction for me.   Going into the center of the tugging brings us closer to the soul. It is where we find out about the different parts of ourselves and how to use the energy of opposing actions to grow.     We ...

    A long while ago, before I started practicing yoga, I was in an art therapy group where we were asked to draw ourselves.   I drew a big head at the top of the page and a small body at the bottom.   I couldn’t get them to come together on the page and upon reflection saw how this was true in my life as well.   Outside of some physical activities like running, hiking, or swimming I lived most of the time in my head without any awareness of my body.   It was as if I owned a huge mansion but lived only in the attic closet.     Asana began to change this.   Before asana, I held an objective view of my body as if seen from outside from the head across the room.   By cultivating attention and awareness in the body, a sana moved me from this outside view to an inner subjective experience where I felt my embodiment from the inside out. BKS Iyengar calls this “intelligizing” the body when the discerning mind begins to ...