I am having the most remarkable re-awakening in my body.Or maybe it's more of a first awakening.Two days ago, while talking with my friend, the absolutely beautiful Tanya Geisler, I felt an effervescence begin to bubble up inside of me.This wasn't imagery - this was a physical thing - a kind of fizzy friendship joy which rose like an internal spring from just below the belly button (second chakra) and fountained upward, where it filled the inner bowl of my third chakra.An 'inner bowl' which I'd heard of but never experienced before.This arrived after three months of yoga teacher training - and working deeply in each chakra, through asana and study and meditation.Three months of building awareness at each level, as we make our way upward, feeling and experiencing the vibratory qualities of each energy center in our own bodies:... the grounded rootedness and deep presence of Muladhara, the first.... the sweetness and flowing feeling of Svadhistana, the second.... the clarity and willingness of Manipura, the third.Of experiencing, theoretically and physically, how each chakra rests upon the one below it, how they weave together, supporting and feeding each other and how that supports and feeds and weaves me together.
This Saturday, we began our work in the fourth chakra, the realm of
Anahata, the radiant heart.We practiced back bending, arching our hearts upward. We practiced three-part breathing, feeling the breath flow in through the nostrils, passing across the heart as it filled the lungs; passing back across the heart on the exhale.We lay on our yoga mats and explored the spaciousness between the back of the breastbone and the front of the heart.I looked around in there and, as if sitting on a red velvet pillow, I experienced love as energy - not as emotion, not as sentimentality.This was a completely different love - love as a field, pure and clear - love without conditions or expectations.Love like a still lake, inside of which I floated. Held. Safe. Present.As this love hummed around me - it also filled me. It WAS me.Suddenly, I had the vision of myself as a ten-year-old child. I was inside of this space of love, which was like a big cozy room where I was setting up a circle for people to come and sit with me.I invited them in. All of the people I have ever loved. My son and my daughter, my husband and my sisters, my mother and my father, and Esther, my adopted... whatever she is.I invited my nieces and nephews, my friends and my colleagues - and all of my beautiful students.I invited my teachers and the authors of books I have ever loved.Everyone came and sat in a circle with me - and there, in the warm room of my heart, behind the protection and defensiveness, behind the hard bone that separates my heart, sometimes, from theirs - we just loved one another.