Day 216 – Yoga, Rolf writes, is like learning through movement. Rolf describes specifically: “The inquiry is childlike; it is the movement of consciousness; it is a wisdom in action.” The questions within the poses definitely draw our mind toward our physical state: where am I tense? what do I need to contract? where am I awkward? what is my face doing? my hands? I respect that Rolf comes from a tradition of vinyasa and that moving through and practicing postures specific to his tradition support this idea that asana is playful and spontaneous, as a child learns, although I’m not sure it speaks to me in the same way.
On the flip side is meditation, which seems vastly difficult and austerely untouchable at times. Rolf describes this experience as an expression of an “external moment the way a wave is within and express the ocean.” It is a way we “come to see that stillness and silence form the bacdrop of our lives and that everything in it is just passin
g through.” Through meditation, Rolf writes, he is able to give his full attention “to the weather of his life, to care for what is coming and going with wisdom and compassion, to love what is just passing through.” In these two readings on asana and meditation, I yearn to become the veritable “sky that holds the weather” and the “wave that is within and expresses the entire ocean.”
