Smoke From A Distant Fire with Monica: Yoga Loka, Reno, Nevada: July 31, 2018
Huge summer fires burning around Reno with little containment make it impossible to see clearly or breathe freely.
There are fires burning all around Reno. The haze and the smoke are relentless and such conditions provide ground for practices in search of relief. Monica's class was excellent, we stayed low to the ground and when we did move it was in a restorative and nurturing way. Yoga makes me feel better because, as it says in the sutras (PYS 2.2) 'the purpose of yoga is to release the tight spots'. In the west, a lot of yoga markets to the tight spots in the body, but connected to these are the sticky wickets of the mind. The thought patterns that keep us small, disconnected, agitated, and hopeless are the source of our suffering. Anything on the outside is a smokescreen.
In some schools of yoga, the world is only 'maya', or illusion. Yet other sages say that everyday life is the practice, so play close attention to what's going on. While it is true I didn't start the fires and can't control that situation, what is important is how I am dealing with it. I'm feeling my options and tolerance of these fires growing weary and great consideration is being made to cut bait and leave. The practice of yoga is a study in relationship. I've found over the years it to be so useful for many reasons, one of which is it is a safe vantage point to study my relationship to pain.
The fight or flight response to pain is widely known; the freeze or fold response less so. As my eyes burn in this toxic air and my breath shortens and shallows, its difficult to say whether my body is creating the drama or is my mental drama creating the effects of crying and anxiety, but either way you slice it, that is what is occurring for me today. My fingers tiptoe towards an online booking to the closest beach, Santa Cruz. The beach, almost any beach, soothes my soul. So I wonder, why oh why am I living in Nevada? The spice of unease is greater than any wildfire, and just as deadly.
I have a little beach bungalow in Maui just sitting there but I have too much baggage, in the form of two small dogs, one of which is very ill. It takes a month to get them permitted to enter. Its not the most convenient beach to get to, nor the most conducive to a traveling music executive yogini, but in my estimation, one of the most beautiful and soothing. Honestly part of me hesitates to pick up and go because I'm afraid I'd never come back. Such musings call into question my relationship with just about everything, which brings me back to the subject of pain and fire, tears and smoke.
Agni, the sanscrit word for fire, is the first word in the Rig Veda (well, after OM). Since the earliest teachings of yoga, fire is associated with desire and our will. The ego gets a lot of bad press in yoga, but these early texts remind us nothing happens without desire. Madame de Salzmann said, 'the ego is an excellent servant, but a bad master". The yoga sutras as well as the US Forest Service make a big deal about the word 'containment'. In sanscrit, the translation is bramacharya. Out of control desire is not helpful in life. A contained desire is powerful beyond measure.
My desire to live by a beach has me burning bridges all over the place, in particular with David, who does not. It all becomes very confusing because living in an attitude of love is a higher yoga than residing oceanside. Is my mind overheated in my single pointed dream to live at the beach? Am I being shallow and surface, like the smoke and haze that temporarily hovers over our house in Reno? Because it will pass. Everything passes eventually.
Even us.
Such big huge questions in the face of massive cosmic forces like fire, wind, sun, and karma are obstructing my view of these beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains I've grown so fond of, and caused great stirrings in my heart as I try to catch some fresh air amidst smoke of a distant fire.
Health, Love, and Rock N Roll