Lotus, Light, and You: Teaching Yoga at Maui Yoga Path: Kihei, HI: October 21, 2021

Brighter days on Flemming Beach, Kapalua, HI

Flemming Beach in west Maui is haunted with bad memories of two decades ago when life looked very different. When my feet hit the sand yesterday, I though “how silly to feel these feeling again. That’s not me anymore at all.” But, of course what’s painful is to feel some of the lingering remnants of low self worth, fear, hopelessness. Faint as they are, they are there.

“Bad yogi”, I tell myself, which of course just amplifies the issue.

The yoga practices help us uproot negativity, like weeding a garden. But anyone whose every had a garden, or a bad thought, for that matter, know it takes a while to rid them completely.

Lifetimes, perhaps.

And yet, we keep going. We keep practicing. Sutras 1.2-1.6 can help us to remember practice is “for a long time” to be established, and must be tempered with surrender.

Classically idea of turning from untruth to truth, from dark to light, from death to immortality is represented by the lotus, and the Upanishads teach us this in the Pavana Mantra.

These practices can help us navigate liminal spaces with grace.

Here’s our sequence.

Swastikassana
Paschimotadasna
Parsvaswastikasana

 Easy vasthistasana

 Anjayasana with back bend

 Tadasana
OM
Uttithatadasna with blocks

 Parvotanasana with blocks

 Navasana with strap

 Setu Bandha with strap

 Savasana adjustments
Savasana

 Swastikasana
Om
Namaste