“We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, produce the light of the world.  Or we can refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread.”

-Mother Theresa (opening quote), Meditations from the Mat:  Reflections on the Daily Path of Yoga

Day 271 – Commonplace miracles are everywhere.  Just as Rolf sees abundance on a trip to the beach, watching crabs digging 20 foot tunnels in thirty to forty seconds, I witness it in the classroom in the grit, perseverance, and often times irreverent behaviors of my students.  Like the crabs of Rolf’s reading today, these commonplace miracles are possible because they were necessary.  Of this, Rolf writes: “If the crabs are going to get by in this world, they are going to have to possess that much strength, that much life force–and so they have it.”

Indeed, that strength and life force is “ubiquitous and inexhaustible.”  Not only does it infuse the “mouse with the ability to run…the hawk with the ability to fly swiftly,” but it infuses each and all of us with the ability to make the world a better place, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, so to speak, and not just endure a touch classroom experience as a teacher, but to make lemonades out of life’s lemons.  Of this, Rolf admonishes us, writing:  “Most of us have been unconsciously minimizing the amount of prana we channel into our lives because we are afraid of what we might do with all that life force if we had it.”

Each morning I gather myself quietly to breathe, move, and meditate, if only for a few minutes.  I have to admit to myself that I am human.  I can’t always surrender into this process.  Often times it is challenging and stillness and presence escape me; more often, I am able to let go in the morning, but I step off my mat, and enter and contribute to a world of chaos. Yet, I am hopeful and illuminated by today’s reading–that, as Rolf describes, I will be able to learn to open my energy channels through pranayama.  I hope that I will more routinely recognize and accept life’s daily miracles for what they are–“the presences of a little extra prana,” especially when they come from necessity.  Moreover, I hope that I will be able fully to participate in such a way that I, too, light up the world.