Where the Lotus Blossoms

Fullest Summer Round 3 - Lotus Blossoms in MYOGA SEASONS for Subscribers, Southern Hemisphere 2024

Easter for me as a child always involved flowers and fruit baskets. My mom worked for a florist named Jay (whom she later married), so I grew up aware of the work it takes - in the shop, in the gardens, in the delivery truck - to make the beauty that graces the table, the church altar, the prom dress, even the casket.

I used to gather up the petals from the shop floor and put them on a plate, as artfully as any 5 year old could, and try to sell them to the customers who were admiring the cut flowers in the cooler, scanning the greeting cards for an appropriate one, or ordering an arrangement for someone they cared about. Through Jay, I learned line, design, balance, and the discipline needed to deliver beauty.

Liss and lychees in Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico, hosted and photographed by Rebecca Zilenziger

Later, when I had Powa Centre, my yoga studio in Wellington, and was putting together intensives for each MYOGA Season, I titled the Fullest Summer/Anahata (Heart) chakra Season, Trust the Longer Journey - Blossom Now! It sounds contradictory, at least from the individual blossom’s point of view. We tend to see the loss of petals as the end of the flower and its beauty, so how can welcoming that dissolution align with trusting the longer journey?

Instinctively, I have felt the fear of endings within myself. It’s meant that I have held back from fully blossoming, for fear it would be the end of me. By naming it and gathering folks around the idea, I have been able to befriend it in myself and stretch that edge.

Another way of saying this is, “Live as though you’ll live to 100 and also as though you’ll die tomorrow.” Fully, fully live without holding back, yet also plan for the long term and the wider repercussions your single life will have on others. Hopefully by now we’re all familiar with the 7th generation thinking of many First Nations. It’s a shorthand way of saying the same thing. Yes, I am one flower with its own blessing of being-ness. AND I am flower-ness itself.

The poem for this round perhaps says it beautifully:

I will not die an unlived life

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance;

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

~ by Dawna Markova

I love the idea that something so beautiful and seemingly superfluous as a blossom actually indicates an enormous underlying strength, courage and victory.

The victory comes in staying open, light and beautiful through the throes of intensity.

Here's what Others have to say about this practice:

"Love the poetry readings in this class. Savasana is always a welcome release, but in this class I love the treat at the end of Savasana and being read Mary Oliver's rose poem. Perfection." ~Tina

Discover what your experience is…

Assuming you’ve built your Warrior 2 foundations in Round 2 (not to mention the warming and attuning set in Round 1), you are now ready to test the mettle of your foundations. And having built your awareness and strength over the previous weeks, I trust you’ll appreciate the longer (40 minutes), and more expressive, Round 3 where the Lotus Blossoms!

Exalted Warrior photographed by Mark Tantrum at Breaker Bay, Wellington, NZ

It’s in the end of this final Round that we get to the mantra work I so love. This Season’s mantra is super simple, sound-wise, yet challenging in terms of mental strength. It’s a practice of moving from Me to We that comes from Kundalini Yoga, which is renowned for cultivating nerve strength and stick-to-it-iveness. Here’s it is on its own for free subscribers to try out: