Towards a Healing Yoga

by Jane House

Leader of our Portugal Yoga + Writing Retreat

I remember a time when the coolest yogis in San Francisco would return from India with stories about how some famous yogi or another had manipulated their bodies so well and with such force that they were now transformed. Their energy was now moving in enlightened ways! Fear had been released! Maybe they were limping, but they were healed! They hit the pavement and started saving up for their next ticket to India.

As a bodily seeker, I was lucky to avoid some of the madness of yoga in the west. I have my yoga teacher, Angela Farmer, who resides in Lesbos, Greece, to thank for that. Angela found the courage to break from rigid alignment doctrines. A little voice inside of her (underneath all those grand backbends) said, "Wait, wait... what I really want is to trust my own self." She helped me get quiet enough to listen to my own body, hear my own voice, and find my own grief. Gentleness, nature, and non-manipulated sensation are the guides and master-teachers of this practice I have learned to love.

When we submit to "power-over" dynamics in our bodily practices, we inevitably feed that hungry control monster that lurks in us all. We pass those patterns on in a thousand directions, hard to see. In this modern age, we are being asked to take responsibility for our "power-over" way of relating to our own bodies, our own families, and to the whole of humanity.

Can you sit on the ground with everyone else?

Can you drop your armor and your roots?

Relax your jaw… What are the images that want to arise from your body’s deepest intelligence?

Will you let them?

Let, let, let….

Let yourself.

Let yourself learn yourself.

Can't wait to be on the ground with you.

Love,

Jane