Resources
For whatever may come, it is best to have a variety of resources–inner and outer.
Similar Posts
Shiva Nataraja
This murti of Nataraja has been in the window of a store near where I work for at least 20 years. I often walk past is and just as often stop to admire it. I have never really considered taking it home, lovely as it is. The murti is simply too large for any of my rooms. I have mentioned its needing a home to a couple of different friends, who were looking for large murtis of Nataraja, over the past few months, but none have followed through.
Today, when I was walking past it on a lunchtime walk to the bank, I noticed a “commercial property for rent” sign in the window. I will miss having this resplendent image in my work neighborhood, but not enough to buy it and bring it home. I decided, though, to take a photograph. I know the owner only very casually, but well enough to know he is retiring, rather than being driven out by rising rental costs or the recession. The neighborhood has gotten trendier since Nataraja first appeared in the window. Nataraja might be replaced with a delicious restaurant or a fabulous store purveying things that entice me. Or the space could stay vacant or be used for something that holds no interest for me whatsoever.
Nataraja–lord of the dance of concealment and revelation, of dissolution and manifestation–is dancing here. The murti will be sold or transported away when the shop closes and will physically be gone.
I will have my memories of the image, a photograph I took with my BlackBerry, and will have had a sweet opportunity to observe the lord of the dance dancing away his own image.
Jai Chandra
I have been advised this full moon is in Virgo, and that it is a good time for healing practices. I stood absorbed and delighted by the dance between the full moon and the clouds.
Tandava
Included in the asana today at Cyndi Lee’s day of workshops at Willow Street Yoga was one of my very favorites: anantasana–the serpent couch of Vishnu. Nataraja, dancing his wild dance, was watching. People outside went about their ordinary and extraordinary lives.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Dance/Contact Improvisation | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Photos
Yoga Slow Dance (Making It All Improv)
The dance of yoga is about motion in stillness and stillness in motion, and in not letting oneself be frozen. Stillness is the space between vibrations, instead of the shutting down or closing off vibration. To experience the space between the vibrations (spanda) when changing shapes (poses; going from one thing to the next), one must emerge into the shape and disssolve out of it, with the expanding delight of the coming and going more important than achieving some precise, required shape to demonstrate self-control and mastery (not unlike the teaching in the Siva Sutra that knowledge both binds and liberates).
