the risk to remain tight in a bud

Fullest Summer Round 2 - Lotus Buds in MYOGA SEASONS for Subscribers, Southern Hemisphere 2024

Big apologies to anyone who is actually doing these practices and noticed that I haven’t posted in the past few weeks. I’ll be sending a few practices in fast succession to make up time. I’ve been adjusting to my 2nd term (of 4) of my masters in environmental studies and have also been teaching a few more live yoga classes!

I was surprised to realize that, with all my recent shifts, it’s been nearly 2 years since I’ve taught in-person adult classes. It’s been such a pleasure to return to that realm, as I really do love teaching. Online has been a blessing for staying connected across the globe but direct transmission is tricky there. And teaching kids is great but most of my energy and time is spent learning how to wrangle them so we can actually focus on the yoga.

Following on from Round 1 in Fullest Summer, most adults at a yoga class have already done some level of re-parenting and are keen to evolve. Or, as Anaïs Nin so beautifully writes below, they’re ready to risk the blossom.

Supported backbend, photo at Breaker Bay, Wellington, NZ by Mark Tantrum

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.

This is a kind of death.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

Perfection is static, and I am in full progress.

~ Anaïs Nin

In this Round 2 of MYOGA Seasons Fullest Summer we are not yet at blossom stage. We are coming-to-know the latent potency of the bud, the as-yet-to-blossom.

You’ll notice that I have titled these Fullest Summer/Anahata chakra practices with words that operate as both nouns and verbs. Roots, Buds, and Blossoms are all both (seemingly) finite states as well as processes of becoming.

Can we? Can we operate as both a being and a becoming?

The mudras we play with at the start are an example of being both in a state and in a process as we breathe them into a flow. In this short MYOGA Sounds video, of our lotus mudras isolated from the rest of Round 2, I’ve added in the Hopi mantra song that Deva Premal popularized, Shima, which means Love.

One of Deva’s albums, Love is Space, gives us a motto for this heart-centred Season. Where are you shutting down or contracting inwards? Encourage spaciousness in your joints, in your breathing, and in your approach to yourSelf and your practice.

Especially as we repeat our initial heart-opening/back-bending posture Camel or Ustrasana, stay connected to your steady, spacious ocean-sounding breath. If you haven’t already, become familiar with the excitement and self-care of opening into the space behind you with this foundational module of MYOGA Basics.

After we breathe into our mudras and mantras, we move the undulation of breathing the spine alive from tail to head in Cat/Cow and then into squeezing out the shoulders in Blossom Roll. Then we keep our attention on the inner support of the breath as we open into the space behind us in Camel. As I say in the video, do as camels do and trust the longer journey!

And now on with the Fullest Summer (Round 2) Seasons show…