2011 is no longer officially "new" and yet with 11 full months left, it still holds infinite promise. It's funny how quickly we can let go of that feeling of potential and opportunity once the champagne bottles have been recycled. What on January 1st seems full of POWER & PROMISE, by February 1st is old news, old patterns, and the idea that we'll get our next shot at potential and promise in the Spring, or in 2012.
Each year, I create an overall theme for my classes. This highest intention or remembrance holds the entirety not only of my teaching, but of my own practice. To have a single-point of focus as a community for the duration of a year has been very powerful bond between me and my students since I began the yearly theme in 2006. Some years the theme is articulated in nearly every class, and in other year's I hold the space for it and it's presence is felt more than spoken. The yearly theme is like a great river, from which many tributaries flow, but it is the source--the wellspring or, tirtha--of every sequence, every public class, every event.This year's theme, "POWER & PROMISE: it's all about the practice" solidified for me in late October when I was in Santa Fe studying with John Friend. Together with friends and my dear teacher in this msytical city, I felt a deep truth arise from me and wash over and through me. This practice of yoga works. It works at cracking my heart wide open. It works at making me better at being who I am--authentically. It works by bringing me into deeper connection with others and with the world all around. Really, all I have to do is SHOW UP with my heart and mind open to this promise, and I will awaken to my own divine nature more fully. It can't not happen, which isn't to say it will happen in the way I want or think I want. To me, yoga's promise is that it helps me remember that I am empowered, and that I too, am full of promise and potential.
POWER & PROMISE is manifesting itself in a teaching year that is about what it means to have a regular practice and to become refined in the practice as well as to allow ourselves to be moved by the practice. The residing Devi for this year , Saraswati, reminds us to take our raw power and potential (our Kali side) and to organize it into the highest offering of expression. I’m teaching and offering with clear purpose. In the one short month since 2011 began, I have already seen an incredible shift in my weekly students—not only in their asana practice, but in their commitment and the meaning they are bringing to the mat.
I invite you to join into the remembrance of Power & Promise in your practice this year. Get on your mat and watch yourself shift in 2011!
