Years ago I participated in a yoga immersion at the Esalen Institute exploring the “nectars” possible through movement and stillness led by the flow yoga teacher Shiva Rea and Meditation teacher Paul Mueller Ortega. Perched on a cliff overlooking a huge kelp forest floating on the Pacific Ocean Shiva Rea led us through the yogic flow dance of her practice, while the Paul Mueller Ortega opened us to the meditative journeying through our layers of consciousness. Guided to explore a “tasting of nectar” through the deep juiciness of a flow yoga asana practice, deepening understanding of a paradigm of yogic knowledge, along with settling into a meditation seat to explore the depths in stillness. Looking back, the weaving of movement and stillness feels similar to what I have come to understand in another way of interpreting the world through the lens of the dance of yin and yang, exploring cool darkness and warming light, integrating feminine and masculine, receptive and expressive. I realise now that not only did I learn ways to ‘sip’ the nectars of daily life more fully, but that I was also moving through a process of redefining of what may be the truer nectars of life that can be gained through mindfulness practices. Their teachings opened me to the way a bee comes to a flower, whether coming to my seat in meditation or moving into a posture on my mat – bringing intention to seek the nectar while serving community, focusing, landing gently, balancing, then entering the innermost layers of the flower of the shape to gather the nectar at many levels. Finally, to softly withdraw to move on within the flow of life. Remembering some of those who have shared their ‘waggle dance’ moving us into a deeper understanding of who we might become as individual, as species.
by brad