The Freedom Yoga Project Blog-8-You can’t stop destiny

You can’t stop destiny; something that is supposed to happen will occur, it just will.

Now that doesn’t mean that we have no choice in our lives, to the contrary, we have plenty of choices. The choice comes within our destiny, within the shape that our life was meant to take. I believe that what is meant to be, will be, even if our choices are incongruent. Lovers will meet, even if it’s only in the graveyard burial side by side.

It is a practice to continually make choices, and this assortment of directions that we are blessed with is based on our capacity to imagine. The more we can perceive the more we can conceive, and the more we can layer existing perceptions. The mash up creates a brand new cuisine.

smiles all around

When I was growing up my non-artistic dad got creative with what he connected with most, his food. He loves all food, he would get the leftovers, whatever they were that day, and slice up some wieners, glob in some ketchup and mayo, throw in an egg, and voila the Russian heritage allowed for a westernized version of a midday snack – in his Russian accent he’d call it “Meesh –Maaash” - Mish-Mash.

My friend Daphne, here in Bali, loves to use the word “visualize”. This process and our ability to plug into it as a practice is where our creativity lies, completely. Our ability to establish the visibility of an idea provides the possibility for it to manifest into reality. But before reality is bestowed upon any idea, the possibility to mold it, change it, fuse it, test it and taste it, is a freeing process. It is giving it a chance to organically evolve.

That’s where it all originates: an idea. Ideas are rich and so the creation of an idea is the beginning of wealth. Real circumstances (or boundaries) already in existence may be perceived to condition the process of our creation, but in fact they are a way the world collaborates in our creation process. The creation progresses with any choice you consciously make: instead of working under the conditions, work with those conditions, particularly when “idea” meets “reality”.

Whether it’s in finding your way into a yoga pose, writing a song, or making things work in a relationship, the ideas of how it should be like are naturally confronted with the boundaries of reality (e.g. a tight muscles, writers block, different needs or world views). When we feel confrontation, our natural reaction is to withdraw from it, but what if we realize that in fact, we are now presented with the chance to mold the idea? Instead of reacting to a confrontation, how about confronting your reaction itself?

We must test the boundaries, and I promise the boundaries will test you in return; it is a wonderful dance, that is uncomfortable because it’s confrontational, but if avoided, it’s a sad existence.

It's struggle of letting go of the struggle before you find the route into a pose; it’s the frenetic hair pulling that brings the shadows of your inner world to the the surface in the lyrics of the ultimate poem; it’s the dropping of the need to be right at all times which will break down the tension to finally plug in that one missing piece, which makes friends of enemies and torrid lovers of stale companions.

As poet Charles Bukowski puts it best: “if there is a spark that still lives, then a fire can burn again.”

The Mish-Mash: musicians have been doing it. In the 80’s kid’s taped songs from their favorite artists, compiled them and made personalized playlists, it did so well that today the top selling albums are compilations and on top of that, iTunes has made it possible to make your own mix tape by buying one song at a time.

The Mish-Mash: yogi’s are doing it, too. Ashtanga is so popular that schools have meshed with the variations they are teaching. We are in an age today, where things have shifted, we have such a wide array of practices available to us today, that a mish and mesh of all styles with vinyasa has become inevitable; and why not?

the Hip to the Hop set up

We say yoga is life, many comfortably say everything is yoga, I agree, if the intention is yogic, like Chandni said to me washing dishes is her yoga practice. Who I am on the mat is who I am in the world but the equation should work both ways; who I am in the world, is who I am on my mat. If we practice on the mat to make our lives more conscious, then why shouldn’t we practice our life in such a way to make our mat time more conscious? It works both ways. When the worlds collide they become one. The practice deepens to a place where it doesn’t start or end, it just is.

That’s the theory; the practice is to flow in the Mish-Mash of presence, on and off the mat. And the yogi steps into a place, where the only distinction between them and a non-yogi, isn’t the physical movement itself but the way the yogi breathes life into his ideas and his intentions that then becomes the personification the expression of a lifestyle that crosses conditions and predefined boundaries the Freedom Yoga movement.

The challenge of describing the Freedom Yoga Project as a system that has definable elements, has exposed the deep truth, that this is a constantly evolving artistic experimentation, which can only be authentic, if its elements are in a continual flux.

For me this means a constant presence, simply the ability to exist in this very moment. The eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga don’t need to be approached in a climb from one to eight, simply be all eight and any others you can perceive NOW. Mold them into one experience, a Mish Mash. The lifestyle has a name, she’s called Grace. Grace is a state of not thinking, but fully doing.

editor-Rani Kamaruddin

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