A Very Tiny Boat

Sitting in my home studio, surrounded by students and friends who practice here week after week, off to the side again in the semi circle around my teacher.  How did all of these people come to be in the same room at the same time? 

He plays harmonium and we sing together a song to the five elements: 

“Namah Shivaya, Namah Shivaya, Namah Shivaya, Namo Namah”

Call and response, over and over, and around and up and down with the tune.  

I feel the energy catching a little bit, this group isn’t really used to kirtan, but they are heartfelt singers

He invites us to clap.  Energy catches more and it begins to happen again.

No audible pop this time.  It isn’t needed.  There. A softening. An Opening. A melting and dissolving.  Like sugar into water I expand into the healing loving energy that is filling the room.  

We stay low and hold the note while his voice plays above ours.  

An invitation to open even more. To love even more. To let my heart start to truly soar. Almost too far for me.

Chanting closes slowly and quietly.  Bowing heads to his words.

I have seen my teacher caught in this wave before and watched him break down, weeping.  He doesn’t do that this time.   But smiles and bids us to our mats after a break.

I have heard him teach on breaking down and letting emotions flow.  I have listened to him this weekend teach how we don’t let go often enough, and because of it we miss out on the cleansing it provides and the healing that comes afterwards.  

I am on the edge.  Tears already gently flowing. 

It is like being a very small boat out on a wide deep ocean.  Like I am this tiny thing trying to navigate the vastness of the ocean of love and healing that I do know is available and is real and is just beneath me, waiting, waiting.  It keeps trying to pierce the shell around my heart.

He is like a massive ocean going vessel. He knows the way.  And I am learning to navigate in his wake.  I am catching the drift that he is creating and I am using it until I am big and strong enough to do it on my own.   maybe that ON MY OWN piece is part of the problem.  It’s maybe what I should be learning is to do it alongside everyone else.  

This morning the Goddess filled me in about the error in my metaphor:  I am not a tiny boat on a vast ocean.  I am the vast ocean itself.  I only think of myself as the smallest of the small waves.   And he, with his years of practice and life is more like a mega wave... with the power now to push others (kindly).  

If I let her, she will grow me into a mega wave like my teacher.

Gratitude, of course.  And humility.  Can I possibly hold that much?

I hug him and hover very close to that breaking down.  To the crashing in and release to waves of love, joy, pain, grief... everything that is pulled on when we all sing like this.  

I don't quite go there in this moment.  Can't yet, possibly.  

But now am curious.  What if? What would happen IF I did?  If I actually let myself fall apart in that way?  And let myself be held by the community that so beautifully resonates with all I bring to them week after week.  Looking back with human eyes I regret not letting myself topple over, fall in, and be caught.  

Maybe I would’ve dropped out of my boat and been caught by the ocean

Reflection after The Art of Masterful Living weekend workshop with Ashaya Yoga® founder, Todd Norian at Yoga Source in Richmond, VA - June 17-19 2016