Crossing the Threshold

"Take a comfortable seat, soften your eyes, put your attention on your breath, and bring your hands together in front of your heart in anjali mudra."  Did you even realize that this was a sequence?  It seems every single yoga class in the world begins like this.  This process had been so deeply embedded in this manner and in this order that I almost didn’t even notice it as a thing I did any more.  And, in a way, that’s kind of the point.  It gets us ‘in’ efficiently.  No muss, no fuss.

But once we get to the point that we have a sequence so deeply ingrained that we do and accept it without thinking about or questioning it, there we have an opportunity to pull on some of the threads and open them up.  Not for the sake of dismantling the traditional way, because if it works, it works.  But for the sake of a more meaningful and evocative experience. 

Sit.  You’re in the exact place that you belong.  And also, there’s this little thing we do when you know something or someone good is coming.  Even if it’s ‘just’ your sweetie or your child, you do a sort of energetic equivalent of re-arranging the furniture.  It’s not about making yourself uncomfortable or less comfortable than you already were.  Just place your chair so that you can make eye contact with the person you’ve been waiting all day to see. 

Eyes.  Soften them, so that everything gets a little blurry around the edges.  (Contrast this feeling with ‘piercing’ eyes.)  Here’s a funny story: one of my best girls wears really cute glasses.  She always needed to wear them, but she didn’t always wear them.  In this way, she saw her friends (and herself) without blemish, dream-like, and wondrous.  I was around her quite a bit when she started to wear her new glasses regularly.  She was shocked at what everything ‘really’ looked like.  But her brain had already memorized another version of me, in which so much of who I was to her was informed by her other senses.  She heard me.  She felt my energy.  And when she could see me ‘correctly’, she still had the benefit of all that other experience.  Then she adjusted my side bodies in the sweetest way.

Breath.  Honor the gift of your life in a ritualized way to re-commit yourself daily to your highest calling.  Do what makes you heave and sigh, and you’ll be a long way toward doing yourself and others a great service. 

Hands.  Then, as you bring the hands together, palms softly pressing in front of the heart, the threshold is both created and crossed over.  The gesture brings the inner world outside and the outer world inside. 

And so we enter in to the process of doing what we’ve been doing all along, just in a way that invites us to reveal more of ourselves to ourselves.