Coming Home - A Beautiful Evening of Yoga And Music

Coming Home – Kelowna Yoga with Garth Stevenson Last night was a very special evening that lululemon gifted to us. Garth Stevenson, a film composer and double bassist joined our yoga community and all together we created a beautiful evening. We were, mat to-mat, heart-to-heart, and even hand-to-hand, as we practiced.

I don’t have words for how sweet it was to join these amazing teachers; Shauna Nyrose, Bill Eager and Laurie Koss. Or how easy it was to accompany Garth as he filled the Laurel building with the most beautiful music. Everyone having their own experience but all of us being moved.

I led the mediation and was asked if I would share it. Here is what I offered  as we sat wrapped in Garth’s soothing vibrations.

“Tonight I invite you to be still.

This seems so simple yet in my experience is a challenge. I urge you not to give in to the little irritations in the body. Just notice them and let them be.

I didn't know this before, I had read it and studied it but now I KNOW it:

There are somethings you cannot get out of.

The only way is through.

So practice here. Sitting with what is. Acknowledging it, seeing it, noticing your reaction, and giving it space to shift.  

In time it will soften, your body, mind, and soul will loosen its grip and allow you freedom.

A freedom only offered to those willing to really be with what is. Those trying to run from, or escape, or change it, will forever be running.

So tonight, with the strength of our community, let's be with what is.

Our refusal to be with what is, is causing us pain. We are always trying to make it different, to rearrange. This I be believe leaves us unsettled. Fragmented and in indecision. So we practice. To be with what is, and not only accept it but be complete with it.

Dare is say grateful.

This is it.

So it may seem like a bit of a jump from sitting still and being with the fluctuation in the mind and irritations in the body to being complete with what life has I store for us. But in my opinion it's not that different.

A practice to strengthen our minds, connect all parts of ourselves, and allow it all to be OK.

You can't distract yourself from it, it will be there boiling at the surface. We will always be distracting, but there is this other way. It's so simple but it's not easy. Surrender, allow, accept. There is tremendous power in this level of honesty.

Be courageous.

If we are stuck in any other moment we will miss the beauty, the possibility, the joy of this one.

We must again and again draw ourselves to be present. To be where we are.”

I have a very different resolve for this practice now. I also have a very different understanding of community and friendship. I want to extend a big thank you to Garth for creating such a sweet container for us last night. To those of you who attended, it would not have been the same without you. Each and every one of you being essential to creating what we did. Nor would it have been so precious without the special souls leading the class.

We are all in this together and I am grateful that you trusted us to come out and play.

With love

The poem I read as we settled into savasana:

Even in the struggle, you are loved.

You are being loved not in spite of the hardship, but through it.

The thing you see as wrenching, intolerable, life’s attack on you,

is an expression of love.

There is the part of us that fears and protects and defends and expects,

and has a story of the way it’s supposed to turn out.

That part clenches in fear, feels abandoned and cursed.

There is another part, resting at the floor of the well within, that understands:

this is how I am being graced, called, refined, by fire.  

The secret is, it’s all love.

It’s all doorways to truth.

It’s all opportunity to merge with what is.  

Most of us don’t step through the doorframe.

We stay on the known side.

We fight the door, we fight the frame, we scream and hang on.  

On the other side, you are one with the earth, like the mountain.

You hum with life, like the moss.

On the other side, you are more beautiful:

wholeness in your bones, wisdom in your gaze,

the sage-self and the surrendered heart alive.

Tara Sophia Mohr