Recreating a Pose
It’s just a couple of days away and I am feeling the life force that breathes through this process of creation and re-creation, lifting me off the mat, and taking me on journeys that I have not taken before.
As a grounding influence, this blog has used people to describe Freedom Yoga. It has discussed acting techniques, and hinted at a strong need for movement, re-creation, of what the world knows as yoga. Many individuals that walk into the studio surprise me, of all ages, of all lines of life experience and they are the ingredients of Freedom Yoga. Freedom Yoga is the act of bringing together single individuals to form one cohesive force of energy. The explosive release of that energy in as many different forms as individuals is freedom. It’s free. Or… as the first Pure teacher attending the class on Sunday puts it:
Freedom is available all the time but I sometimes forget that I myself have enclosed it in until someone breaks it out of the box, and says -- ‘Here you go, all yours, now run and jump or stay still --- all up to you, you’re free. I’m right here, won’t judge you, will guide you if you need me and just let you be. Play.’ I loved and savoured every second and didn’t want the hour to end. Thank you for your inspiration. Wind, string, strum, ladder, glass box, ball, water, pole, wings, socks, bamboo, poetry --- my kind of symphony! You are a gift.
A gift, each class so far has been a gift. Earlier this morning I climbed the visionary ladder into the upper chambers of my head, exploring what was there that I could demystify to re-create and give as a gift. I had my workshop prepared, knew exactly how I was going to give form and substance to it, but subconsciously I knew something was about to happen, like the lightening that is expected seconds after thunder roars the skies.
It wasn’t until that moment when the Pure events staff called to me asking for my thoughts on directing the workshop into a charity event for Morakot-victims that I realized how interconnected that natural disaster was to my coincidental state of mind. As the typhoon blew its breath over the island of Taiwan, its life force took away that of many, the death toll was moving towards 500 (last time I checked) and here I was, safely harbored in the upper chambers on the left and right side of my brain, watching the re-creation of turbulence.
To be completely honest, up till the point of that call, I didn’t know about typhoon “anything”. I was consumed with the process of creating as I woke up to the realization that it’s the universe of which I form part, a universe that creates and destroys itself only to re-create itself. The universe that is freedom; the freedom is universal. I am blessed with an opportunity to look beyond the The Freedom Yoga Project, to influence it with it and in it. How ironic in a class that toys with the elements of wind and water, that its maturity is guided by the horrid effects of wind and water!
I can see myself now. I would stand up, the way Sean Penn did when he took out a full page in the Washington Post, printing a letter he wrote to President Bush addressing the way he along with millions of Americans disapproved of how the Bush administration was handling the “liberation of Iraq”, the “search” for weapons of mass destruction. Liberation means a release from constraints, yet it is barely anything close to freedom; liberation almost always follows resignation, where freedom embodies something infinite. In the hope of healing ‘the system’, I would stand proudly in my Jewish heritage, the proof is in the two central words of the old testament, known in Hebrew as the Torah, right in the middle. The core of the scriptures is the idea of continual questioning, and I’ve lived to personify its meaning. Like Johnny Depp was shaking his head in dissatisfaction, I see myself shaking my head off dissatisfaction, claiming both I and the details of all surrounding the workshop could reach a new level of reality, vitality, artisticality.
With that, and the “Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior”, we’ll twist the typhoon this weekend, by cycloning the proceeds of the event to The Red Cross. The mat brings us together, yet life is delivered in the moments between mat meetings. Power struggles, boundaries, and sheer ablity to fall at the feet of love will all shaken the inner experiences like typhoons, rallying the earth in full force freedom.
editing - Rani Kamaruddin
special thanks- Kitty Cortes
Copyright © Lawrence-Jacob Milman, 2009. All rights reserved. The reproduction or transmission of all or part of the work, whether by photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means or otherwise, without the written permission of the owner, is prohibited. Any unauthorised use or act in relation to the work appearing on this website will result in both civil and criminal liability.
So there we were doing our own thing towards the end of last Sunday's workshop and one fellow classmate shot past me, arms flapping like a bird. Then she turned round and I saw this huge smile on her face. It was joy. And for that one split second, I felt I was, like, 10 again in a playground without one single worry in the world. The second passed quickly and, boom!, grown up again. It was a fleeting momemnt but one that has stuck in my head since. Thanks, Lawrence, for taking us on that weird and wonderful ride. Kevin Kwong
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