Marya Mann : Blog : How Yoga Turns The World | Shraddha

How Yoga Turns the World | Shraddha

LOVE AND REVERENCE TURN THE WORLD

I am so inspired by the wellness we are celebrating. Visions of love, health and happiness came in the form of more than 150 students who attended classes at the Kona Beach Yoga Studio in the last two weeks. Some hadn’t done any yoga at all. Some had perfect handstands. Some had never danced hula. Others dance with the revered hula halau, Na Wai Iwi Ola — The Ancient Waters of Life — in choreographed meditations, dances that inspire people from all walks of life.

It was pretty amazing to see the diversity among the groups, the care given to each student and to see how even one class can have a life-long positive impact on someone. To have the opportunity to introduce so many people to sustaining and transforming practices is exhilarating. Students are excited, fun and open, not only because they’re finding strength, alignment and heightened rhythms and tone, but because of what’s happening off the mat and after the hula music has stopped, when the body is still and the mind is clear, when ones’ life wish comes alive.

With so much for the world to accomplish in so short a time, it can seem overwhelming, but since our natural state is health, the universe is supporting us and our true life wish. Yoga, like hula, is about becoming our true selves. Yoga teaches us that one mindful breath can change our attitude and many mindful breaths will change the attitude of the world, one step, one helpful project, one dance, one conversation at a time. In Sanskrit there is a word, ‘Shraddha’, which means “faith with love and reverence.” But I’ve also heard it defined as “conviction at the core.” I feel conviction that our planet and our species will thrive, despite the dire news that reaches us through mass media, and one of the best ways to assure that is to practice yoga in our work, play, worship singing and dancing — at every opportunity!

Yoga means union, for it reconnects us with our core intelligence and joy, and through that connection with nature, others and the rest of the universe. But yoga also deconstructs the modern mind with its focus on domination and battle. We are in reality more successful as partners and collaborators, sharing our luminosity and intelligence to illuminate the totality of life. War, at yoga’s level of thinking, won’t solve anything, except reminding us the real battle is relinquishing the inner poisons of greed, ignorance and anger. We receive the power and grace of happiness because we do what we love, replace greed with sharing, ignorance with wisdom and anger with generosity. Yoga is not a state we receive because we’re entitled: serving a wise ideal while actively removing poisons in the body and mind will do it, and our individual process of cleansing, renewal and celebration completes the world. The soul of the world would not feel complete without us, our contribution, our breath that lightens us up and spreads peace to others.

Each of us is a resonance, a battery for sustaining the group’s music. We are like instruments setting the waves of potential patterns and positive energies. In our homes, workplaces and out in nature, we can generate what is good unto seven generations from this day. In the ways we greet each other, we determine the flow of sweetness or pain that will spread energy across the lands.

Those who work with many people in an organization can sense, in the moment they align consciously and with clarity, how intuition and energy begin to flow with more harmony. Their individual lives begin to flow with more wellness because of the conscious conviction that all will flow toward wellness.

People are much more in tune with the miracle of life in this time of renewal. Money, drugs, cars don’t make us happy. That was the old “death wish” culture. “Now what?” they are saying. Everyone wants a “life wish” culture. Connected with our bodies and using our consciousness in a positive pro-active way, we ARE changing the world, one breath, one thought at a time.

It’s not just ideas though. Yoga is the physical practice of moving the known – the body — so that the unknown – consciousness — becomes more known. In that renewal of knowing is the conscious evolution of the world. What’s happening in yoga rooms around the world is the most important spiritual movement I know, if you don’t count hula. The two together are pure pleasure for the body, salve for the heart and power for the higher creative mind. Spirit is here. Life lived to the fullest is here. When can you be here? Hawaii is calling, yes?

Even though we’re creating a new kind of harmony, there are people who don’t believe what we’re doing is possible: bringing ancient yoga and traditional Hawaiian cultural classes together at a yoga school in a Mariott Hotel which has an extensive Herb Kane art exhibit in the lobby and an authentic Temple to Lono on the sacred grounds. But here we are, embarked on a mission to share peace and aloha through fitness and the arts on this sacred land. We are confident. We have faith with love and reverence. We have shraddha.

Many Big Blessings, Marya

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