Cultivating courage

So I did it!
I shared today in class what I've been reading about in Ram Dass's book, his thoughts on death and dying.
I was a bit nervous, cause I didn't want to be Debbie Downer, but I think it went well. 
I told my dear students that I've been reading this wonderful book (Paths to God) and how it was inspiring me with Ram Dass's thoughts about death and dying. I shared what Ram Dass wrote about Gandhi's last words. I spoke about how studies have shown that meditators are increasingly less anxious about dying that other folks. All that. 

There's a story my aunt once told me about my Grandfather, Aio. When Aio was dying of cancer -this was 20 years ago- he lived his last days with my aunt. Whenever it was the late afternoon, and it started to get dark outside, he would start to get really scared of the darkness and freak out. So my aunt and uncle would turn on all the lamps and tell him that it was still light out, convincing him that it was not nighttime, until he fell asleep. They did this for months until he died. 

My heart just broke thinking how that was probably his fear of the unknown. We as yogis learn to turn to the light inside which help us move into the mysteries of life. And we also learn to befriend the void. Our practice allows us to touch that darkness inside, allowing our relationship to that seemingly nothingness change into something auspicious and life enhancing. 

So, I made class about how our practice is a way to cultivate courage, courage to go into the unknown. We did a number of backbends to cultivate courage from within.

The students seemed into it. In fact, one of them, Ana, came afterwards and thanked me for class and told me that she was thinking all class about her grandmother in Italy who is 101 years old! And another, my dear friend Robbin, emailed me this lovely T.S. Elliot poem just now:

"What we call the beginning
is often the end
and to make an end
is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from."

Theme: Cultivating courage, so that we can face the unknown

Highlights:
My dear friend Felix reminded me that after death comes rebirth, how intimately connected destruction and creation are. I remembered Picasso's quote about how every act of creation is an act of destruction and voila, it all came together. I thought of Siva, the God of destruction and how when something ends it allows for something new to begin. So we did variations on Nataraja, which is another name for Siva. We ended with his mudra, Shambavi mudra right before Savasana, corpse pose.

Life is so precious! 
We had Leah in class, who is about to give birth, any moment now, to a baby girl. 
We had Natasha who is getting married this Saturday. 
And today is my boyfriend's birthday! 

Something to work on:
I have found consistently that the students will go with you, they want to go with you, in the journey of class. So trust what you've prepared, don't be nervous and make it auspicious, whatever it is that you are sharing. 
Find the yes in it, the light in it, and you can pretty much talk about anything.

Posted by Moving Through My Vinyasa at 10/27/2009 2:00 PM
Categories: uncategorized
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

Submitted comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

 Enter the above security code (required)

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.