“Fall like a flower from a tree”

I got swept in the whirlwind of life, school exams and concert rehearsals for my little one, increased work, family and social commitments etc. In the midst of the fullness of life, I had another small miracle moment. During practice one morning, there was a cracking sound in my neck and I gingerly moved it. There was increased range of motion in the stiffer side. I had a similar experience with my shoulders a few months ago and that allowed me freedom to rotate my shoulders. 

I don’t have the achy neck and debilitating days after now. It is scary to mention it out loud, what if I jinx myself. But that’s my truth. For a few years, I lived with pain and the rounds of tractions, medication, heat therapy and a screeching stop to my activities. It was not just my body but my mind that would despair.

Another gift of yoga. It happened on the day of Guruji’s punyathithi (death anniversary) and I like to think of this as a blessing from beyond.

Until yoga happened to me, I never felt the sense of bhakti or shraddha. My mother-in-law has always been blessed with devotional faith and is a Krishna bhakt. She always finds solace in her faith and I used to wish I could have that unquestioning faith and emotional connect. I thought it was the way of knowledge or work that suited my inclination.

The invocation I chant in class or at home was perhaps my first glimpse into the possibility of shraddha and bhakti. As I bow my head at the end of the prayer, I mentally put my practice as my offering, the results not mine but that of my teachers. It has helped me to keep my perspective and focus on the effort and not the result. I have a lot to learn just sitting in a simple cross legged pose for the invocation. The instructions are simple enough but I am not alert and relaxed. There is too much “I” ness in my head. Something my teacher reminisced during the memorial program (that’s a separate post) about Guruji is my ideal now. She mentioned how Guruji told her to stop giving so many instructions for Uttanasana and just say, “fall like a flower from a tree”. Just like that. The flower doesn’t think, neither does the tree. It happens in the naturalness of time when the time is ripe.