Summer in the city.
Is the title of the blogpost I invited Suki Dalury to write. This is the first of a series of monthly guest posts from Suki and Genevieve Oswald, the Shree Goddesses, both of whom are excellent writers. I changed the title as I thought two song titles in a row might be a little redundant, but summer in the city, it is, even though our little town could hardly be termed a city. Not yet thankfully, anyhow! But as the Lovin’Spoonful lyric goes, “hot town, summer in the city”, is dead on and so is Suki!
Waiting for rain in the desert, and biding our time and waters wisely is putting some serious pressure on our sweet, high mountain community. I find myself wincing at water usage in ways I never knew I had in me, and each brilliant and beautiful sunny day feels also like an assault on all the surfaces – earth, leaves, skin. But oh, what beauty a smoky sunset is, and what a bizarre feeling it is to admit such a dangerous, macabre thing. I am thankful to have a yoga practice that reminds me that all is in process, ever-shifting, and always new. These would be easy times to slip into despair and worry that is deeper than helpful.
I am reminded that my thoughts, which are temporal, emotional, and only borne from what I know, are tools to guide my mind and heart in this world. That all the imagining I can muster is limited by my own personality, experience, and openness to truly feel what is up for me. If this is true, then each day and all that it brings trailing along, are opening the gates for my capacity to dream bigger, solve better, and be more fully alive. Each flashing fear of the river drying up, fires ripping through our neighborhoods, and all the bigger issues in the world at large are expanding our capacity for response-ability. Our hearts are made bigger by breaking open.
This is one of the big cheeses of the yoga program: find a boundary, examine it, taste it, swallow it whole as you supercede it, and lovingly move forward. The asana is the same as the prayer, which is the same as a hard day, a delicious meal with friends, and the same as big kind of fear that everything is falling apart. And it’s all the same to us because it’s only through our perspective that we can know these things. We approach them with the same tools and same curiosities. And we learn the same lessons until they become the fiber of our being, and we’re off on another exploration, beginning fresh.
praying for rain to water the earth and our minds
to keep it life flowing
to sink in
to the heart-land
and well up
from there
with love
For more about Suki Dalury and Shree Yoga Taos, please visit their site linked below this post.
Suki is wearing yoga pants (and top) by roxierudolph available for purchase at Shree Yoga Taos.
All photographs by Bill Curry
