The 108 Sequence for the Perigee Purnama of 2012

The 108 Sequence for the

Perigee Purnama of 2012

Today was an auspicious day.  There was a "perigee Purnama"  at 11:55 EST last night - a full moon that was especially close to our planet.  That moon, well, she affects me tremendously.  What a fantastic and wondrous thing!  AND . . . it just so happened that the perigee purnama occurred on the night before our Advanced Practice at Yogalicious.  The class was full, and everyone's spirits were high.  Given the strength and proximity of the moon, it seemed appropriate to design the class around 108 distinct asanas (the poses we do on our sticky mats).  This number has a complicated history in Indian religion and philosophy going back thousands of years, and is related to Earth, moon, sun, and each of us individually.   

You might be asking yourself, or me (rhetorically), why practice yoga? There is a little book about yoga called the Yoga Sutra by Patanjali.  It's marvelous.  The first sutra tells us to practice yoga, and to practice it now.  Why wait?  There is no reason.  Indeed, it is worth noting that the very first word in this text of two or three hundred pages is "now."  Not tomorrow, not next year, but now.  The second sutra tells us that yoga is the means to the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.  Whose mind doesn't wander?  Our task is to control it, focus it, harness that energy.  Once we've calmed the fluctuations of the mind, then, as my friend Bill Mahoney translates it, "the seer dwells in his own true splendor.”  In this way, asana can be seen as a “living prayer.”  Wow.  Asana as a living prayer.  Once our individual consciousness is calmed, one is free to see what is, to be present but not ensnared, to have an undistorted view of that-which-is.  This condition leads to a  kind of liberation.  Kaivalia (inner freedom), Samadhi (integrity of existence).  The ability to celebrate living and not get trapped by it, to participate in it 100% but not be at its mercy, to live and love ferociously and fully – THIS is yoga. And it matters most when we take our yoga off of the mat, into the the world around us.

Here is one way to break it down: 1) deep within each of us is a luminous, beautiful, splendid, inherently free presence; 2) this bright presence within each of us becomes cloaked or trapped by patterns (samskara), desires, lethargy, and these pull us away from our inherent splendor; 3) just as our thoughts and actions can pull us away, so too can our thoughts, practices, and emotions can help us return to our inherent splendor; 4) we can return to this luminosity of being through the practice of yoga, both on and off the mat; hence, the importance of spiritual practice (sadhana) – this is where philosophy and practice become one; 5) the result of this practice is freedom, inner integrity, inner goodness, inner light, and splendor.  

This is why we practice yoga.  Now is the time for you, too.  As Patanjali says, NOW is the time.  See you on the mat, and off.

Cheers,

kdhl