“If you decide, just for now, that there is nothing to fix but only life to savor, you can transform your reality. What if you simply stopped right now, right here, right in the moment and chose to let go of everything that needs fixing (your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, your finances, your health, your shadow, your inner child, your past, your future) and just savored this precise moment—and this one —and this one? Why not stop reading for a few minutes and simply cherish. Cherish what? Cherish all there is, whatever comes up.”
Sedona Journal of Emergence, June 2004
The Buddhists say the one thing that is constant is change. There is one thing that is constantly with us, the breath. I attended an evening with a Swami from India a few nights ago, a man they called a living Saint. He had gone in to the Himalayas as a young boy and emerged a yogi. His assistant was a woman from California with a PhD from Stanford in Psychology, a spiritual seeker who had followed the Swami since 1996. She spoke before him. One thing she said struck a deep chord in me. I have written, and teach often about the breath and its importance. How we become more aware of it in our yoga practice, and then learn to use it as a tool for health and healing. She suggested that we remember that in any given second, people are dying all over our earth. The one thing they would give anything for is our breath. The breath leaves, it does not return. You cannot get it back. This may seem like a solemn thought. But it is actually an inspiring thought to remind us of just how precious the breath is, how precious each moment is, how precious is the gift of time. In those moments that we are just being, just breathing we can allow things within us to emerge. They might be thoughts, feelings, sensations or ideas.
We are living in a time of change and, for many, chaos and confusion. We ask ourselves questions that we want answers to, but don’t have in the moment, and wish we did. The image of the butterfly has always been one of my favorites. People who know me often give me gifts and cards with butterflies because they know I love them. When I started to have an affinity to them in my early 20’s I had no idea that they represented transformation, emerging from one phase of our life to another. A birthday card a dear friend gave me this year says, “If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” Another birthday card that a student gave me last year says, “What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly,” Lao Tzu. Recently a student told me that if you touch a butterfly to try to help it from its cocoon, it will die. The metaphor is- we have to live our life in our own time, emerging as only our timetable can. No one else can enjoy the moment for us. No one else can ruin the moment for us. At any moment the choice is ours because the moment is ours.
Today I went to lunch with a friend. I went to the salad bar where you ask the person behind the counter to add the ingredients you choose. The man was rude to me several times. I told my friend that I preferred to eat at a place where the people were kind. I believe that energy is reflected in the food they serve. I thought about how unhappy that man must be, in his life, his job. I don’t know what. I did tell him in a neutral tone that he did not have to be rude. Then we left, found another place with the same food where everyone was pleasant. Every moment we can decide, but until we are conscious we may not know that. I thought of myself when I was younger, still emerging as we are always, and that I too am sure I had been, perhaps, rude to someone when I was unconscious of it. As my life has evolved, I believe we have a choice to emerge into the person we want to be. Perhaps this man had not yet awakened, emerged, into his own awareness. I wish that for him. Perhaps he was not aware that even when we are “ having a bad day,” we don’t have to make it a bad day for someone else.
Yoga is a way to help us discover awareness. The woman with the Swami said that yoga is not what you do on the mat, it not about doing the best headstand or holding a pose the longest; it is how you are off the mat and in the real world. Our yoga practice can help us emerge. The synonyms for emerge are arise, arrive, originate, dawn, be present, come to light, loom and show. The antonym is hide. In emerging we may have to face our fears, not hide from our true selves and others. Can we let the world see who we are on the inside? Can we look there ourselves with honesty? Today in class a woman said, while she was in plow pose, “I feel like I am going to break.” She is not a young woman and has to be careful and mindful in her yoga practice (as we all should!) so I applauded her for listening to how she felt, letting the fear be there so that it could protect her from going too far in her emergence. In the word emergence there is the root for emergency. In those moments we cannot hide. We must act. We must decide. We must be present. And we must emerge at our own pace, like the butterfly leaving its cocoon to become a thing of beauty, strength and fragility. Because, after all, we are all that. One harsh word can make us wish to go back into the cocoon, to hide. Yet we all do get hurt. No one is immune from that. It is the courage of our commitment to dawn again, to a new day, a new moment, which is the gift we have been given in breathing another breath—to go on to the next moment, to learn from the hurts.
The yogi and his assistant spoke about happiness. The butterfly seems so joyous as it flits from flower to flower. He said that happiness is really quite simple. All it requires is discipline. Ah, discipline! Yoga is a discipline, a practice. Discipline to greet each day with a salutation to the mighty sun, to eat the right foods for the temple of the body, to be with the people who are best for us, to meet the challenges as they come with a spirit that can be present, even as the challenges loom, to still not hide from the life and the world that is offered to us in this fleeting moment called life. We can never give up on our emergence into something more and the same is true for all of us. Life these days has thrown many in to emergency moments in their lives, their careers, their relationships, and their finances. In these times Yoga Bhajan predicted were coming, he said it was a necessary process for consciousness to shift.
The Swami from India left us with a prescription for happiness:
Diet ~ Quiet ~ Sunshine ~ Laughter
Our lives are complicated these days; things can change suddenly for the worse or better. One purpose of yoga and meditation is to help us emerge as individuals who can weather and better handle the storms of life. The Swami’s assistant made the analogy of a boat on water. No matter if the water were churning with turbulence or calm, we could use our practice to stay steady in the boat regardless. Yes, many are not doing yoga for spiritual enrichment these days, though it can give you that. Maybe they find it another way. The ways that work – all work. If we can use these tools and experiences to keep emerging we may indeed feel the grace and beauty of the butterfly settling in to our being, if only for a fleeting moment of bliss.
BREATH to help your inner being be strong:
The breath of fire is a beautiful yoga breath to lift your mood and awareness. It strengthens the nerves, is good for digestion and helps balance your energy. The length of time you do breath of fire is equivalent to taking one long deep breath. Sit as tall as possible, on a chair or the floor cross-legged chin tucked in so the head lines up with the spine.
Breathe through the nose with quick sniffing breaths in to the belly, so that the inhale and exhale are equal in length. The belly should move in as you breathe out and fill as you breathe in. If you feel like you are running out of breath or breathing shallowly (hyperventilation is not breath of fire!) then stick your tongue out and pant like a dog until you can do it deeply and evenly through the nose.
As Yogi Bhajan said “ the breath of life has a lot of power in it.” Use it to help yourself emerge.
Final thought: When’s the last time you felt the flutter of your butterfly wings?
Donna Amrita Davidge owns and operates Sewall House Yoga Retreat since 1997 in Island Falls, Maine (with her husband Kent Bonham) in her great grandparents home, where Theodore Roosevelt stayed three times and regained his health from life threatening asthma. www.sewallhouse.com has appeared in various publications, chosen top ten worldwide by Gayot online 2009-2010, offers ongoing small retreats April through October. Ask about special workshops- essential oils, belly dancing, teacher trainings coming up in their 2011 season. (See the calendar of events for class information.) 888-235-2395 Donna would like to devote this article to the memory of Samuel Sewall, her cousin, who, at 94 years old, said before passing “ the one thing we cannot challenge is time.”