Night Yoga

I’ve been immersed in a training since March that I find shifting me at every level of being, integrating past expressions and future intentions with the ability to hold those loosely in present moment , as well as healing beliefs that are ultimately blocks in true self embodiment.

As we wind down into the final modules, invitation to illuminating the shadows of self to better inhabit a consistent vibration of joy led me to a night practice of asana (yoga postures) outside over the last month or so. I practice outside during daytime hours when possible but have not extended that to night before. The intention to welcome the shadow hits a little differently under a blanket of darkness with considerably less human activity occurring.

Ultimately, after dedicated practice I began to feel myself as the point of illumination. Miraculously, the shadows shrink when you hold yourself as the light. It’s a powerful experience.

I’d invite you to try this should you find yourself in an environment that can offer you darkness safely.

Darkness and Light

If taking a moment to ponder a poem looks like bliss, this post is for you. If it looks like torture, this post is also for you as a possible mindfulness exercise.

Approach the words from a point of present moment awareness, let this be an invitation to read them and let them go without attempting to process or understand them, and be present with only the word held in your mind at that moment. If you could hover a light over only one word at the time, pausing with each one as a momentary discovery, what would your take away be?

Would there be any coherence? Would that matter?

Darkness and Light

By Stephen Spender

To break out of the chaos of my darkness

Into a lucid day is all my will.

My words like eyes in night, stare to reach

A centre for their light: and my acts thrown

To distant places by impatient violence

Yet lock together to mould a path of stone

Out of my darkness into a lucid day.

Yet, equally, to avoid that lucid day

And to preserve my darkness, is all my will.

My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse

And shut upon obscurity; my acts

Cast to their opposites by impatient violence

Break up the sequent path; they fly

On a circumference to avoid the centre.

To break out of my darkness towards the centre

Illumines my own weakness, when I fail;

The iron arc of the avoiding journey

Curves back upon my weakness at the end;

Whether the faint light spark against my face

Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight,

Centre and circumference are both my weakness.

O strange identity of my will and weakness!

Terrible wave white with the seething word!

Terrible flight through the revolving darkness!

Dreaded light that hunts my profile!

Dreaded night covering me in fears!

My will behind my weakness silhouettes

My territories of fear, with a great sun.

I grow towards the acceptance of that sun

Which hews the day from night. The light

Runs from the dark, the dark from light

Towards a black or white of total emptiness.

The world, my body, binds the dark and light

Together, reconciles and separates

In lucid day the chaos of my darkness.