Asana Surfing

It's Seattle winter now, dark by 4 pm, and rainy.  It seems a funny time to be teaching about riding surfboards, but that's what I did last week.

Wednesday night I taught about getting so soft that the great wave of life can move through you without restriction.  Our exploration for the evening was whether getting softer could actually allow us to become more powerful.  By releasing habitual tautness and rigidity, maybe the fluid power of creation could change us for the better.  I suggested that my students surrender to their own innate spaciousness.  It's like being on a surfboard, being lulled to relaxation by the rhythm of your breath, the waves, the sun. 

As a surfer, if you get still enough, you can sense big waves before you can see them.  Just like in a yoga practice: if you listen with your inner ears, you're going to sense aspects of your own life force that you have been unaware of until now.  Then you sense the movement of the ocean underneath you, and you know that a big wave is near.  You soften to ride it, you turn to face it.

I grew up on the East Coast and we spent summers in the Atlantic Ocean.  Two things you learn quickly: never turn your back on the ocean (pay attention!), and, if a big wave is coming at you, go toward it.  Dive into it.  Meet it. 

As yoga practitioners, we are navigating dynamic and transformative forces.  We are constantly surfing in waves of effort, release, trust, action, patience, fire, physical sensation, thoughts that elevate us or diminish us, images that strengthen us or weaken us.  From the outside, it just looks like another Triangle Pose, but there is a lot going on inside!

There's nothing in the world like catching the wave just right, and flying.  This is why we return to the practice again and again.  The feeling of being in an asana and finding oneself shimmering in the equipoise of softness and power is the alchemical magic of yoga.  We are changed by that, every time.  We glimpse our finest selves.