Om Namah Shivaya

1/1/11

Happy New Year!  Doesn't the date have a magical ring to it?  It is filled with ones, and nothing is more fresh and new than starting at the number one.  Every year the calendar encourages us to make a new beginning. For me, this usually means picking a few goals and doggedly writing them down, knowing that within three weeks even my most well-intentioned plans will have derailed and I will be disappointed in myself.  However, this year promises to be different.  This January 1st is the first day of what I am going to call My Year of Yoga.  I am going to spend the year working on a daily yoga practice and studying to become a registered yoga teacher.  (To begin at the beginning and read more about how I got started on this journey, click the tab above or click here.)

To kick start this year full of challenge and discovery, I attended a yoga class being offered by Corena Hammer at Infusion on New Year's Day.  This was no ordinary stretching and breathing session.  For one thing, we worked for TWO HOURS.  For another, we were accompanied by a live musician, Leraine Horstmanshoff, playing the guitar, drums, flutes and didgeridoo and also singing.  She started us out with a call and answer, repeating this phrase:  

OM NAMAH SHIVAYA

"I humbly bow to that Light within me which I am  becoming."

Lifting my voice with the others in the class was a transcendent experience that brought tears to my eyes.  What a perfect theme for this year, a quest to more fully embrace the divine potential within myself while accepting the idea that the reward is in the becoming.  In fact, I recently read another quote in a book called Hatha Yoga Illustrated that expressed a similar thought: 

"This quest for happiness is not so much a striving to acquire something that exists outside of us as it is an innate desire to remember something that is part of our very nature."

As Corena started making us work, I could hardly believe the woman on my mat-- singing Sanskrit at the top of her lungs, sweat rolling down her face and dripping off her nose, pushing further than she had ever pushed before-- I didn't recognize her, but I liked her.  I want to keep her around.  I want to see what else she can do and where we can go.  Together.