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Spring 1994

NAMASTE,

An onslaught of the flu laid me low long enough this winter that I couldn’t write a letter for the spring newsletter in timely fashion. Wondering what to do, I recalled an essay by Bea Briggs that had appeared in the Spring 1993 issue of Heartland Journal. I was reminded upon rereading it of the importance and wisdom of what Bea had to say and how much I wanted to share her thoughts with the readers of this newsletter. When I called to ask her if I could reprint the essay, she was very gracious in allowing me to do so.

What’s Wild About Yoga?

At this stage of the Earth’s evolutionary story, when the human presence is severely compromising the basic life systems of the planet, what we most need to cherish and connect with is the wild. As a student of yoga for over twenty years and a teacher for more than a decade, I have come to treasure this ancient discipline for its capacity to give us what poet Gary Snyder calls “the practice of the wild”. We need daily disciplines which cut through the life-destroying insanity of contemporary Western life and put us back in contact with the life-giving wildness of the natural world, of which we are an integral part.

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The wild is evolutionary fire, primal creativity, cosmic surprise, the sacred. In their powerful, new book, The Universe Story, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry describe the wild as “a great beauty that seethes with intelligence, that is ever surprising and refreshing for the human mind to behold…an untamed and untamable energy at the organic center of life.” Although the wild is always everywhere, our relationship with it has been atrophied by the way we live. We no longer know how to relate reverently to the wild around us or within us. The animals, plants, rocks and winds are strangers or enemies. Our own bodies are neglected temples of wildness, while our minds are filled with the pap and poison of consumerism.

Yoga has the potential to put us back in contact with the wild. By yoga, I mean the classical postures, breathing practices, chanting and seated meditation, all grounded in an ongoing commitment to a truthful compassionate, non-greedy, examined life. Wildness, however, is the last thing most of us expect from yoga. We turn to yoga for stress reduction, not creative interaction with the giveness of life. We want mere relaxation, not fundamental transformation. We want to stretch, or get a workout, improve fitness or relieve back pain, not an encounter with our true nature. We are content to be domesticated, to accept uncritically the cultural rules, even though they are killing the precious wildness of the planet.

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Do not misunderstand. Physical health, quietness of mind, temporary escape from the craziness of daily life are all reasonable expectations. If one is blessed with competent teachers and perseverance, they are almost inevitable by-products of the yogic process. But as descriptions of the true power of yoga, they are much too tame. As developed by spiritual seekers over the millennia, yoga is an initiatory process designed to free practitioners from their cultural conditioning. Its techniques are tools for radical transformation, not mere accommodation to the existing social order.

To accomplish this bold agenda, yoga practice must engage us deeply at the physical level. The body and its home, the earth, are the matrix of any authentic, human spirituality. To ignore, malign or attempt to flee our earthiness in an effort to be more “spiritual” is to completely misunderstand our task. The body is revelatory. The earth is sacred. Wherever we are standing, no matter how urbanized, polluted or otherwise degraded, is holy ground. Our physical form, no matter how depleted or diseased, is an evolutionary gift from our ancestors, dating back to the first, single-celled organisms. The struggle to do yoga postures, many of which are named after plants and animals, recapitulates the story of life on earth and adds another chapter to the narrative. A physically grounded yoga practice puts us in direct contact with the fundamental beauty, vitality and creativity of matter. In other words, it reveals our essential wildness.

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Even a glimpse of the astonishing wildness at the heart of organic matter can be overwhelming. To contemplate the extinction of that wildness is even more unbearable. Yogic disciplines can give us the strength and sensitivity needed to cope with both these challenges. The ancient teachings can show us how to stand reverently before the great mystery and to act effectively to prevent the further destruction of the web of life in which that mystery is enfolded. We must be able to sit silently and work hard. We need to learn how to feel intelligently, think passionately and behave ethically. We need practices which affirm the physical and teach us to perform physical acts in a prayerful manner. We need to be transformed from a species bent on wanton destruction into one which celebrates life.

Yoga, like all human enterprises, has evolved through time. To practice yoga in the waning years of the twentieth century means being joyfully engaged in the twin struggles for ecological sustainability and social justice. It is tempting, of course, to ask less of yoga, to treat it as mere recreation, narcissistic therapy, or heady, theoretical system with no practical or political relevance. To do so, however, not only condemns us to a New Age hell, but also denies yoga the power to be wild.

-Heartland Journal Spring 1993

By:

Beatrice Briggs
Wild Onion Yoga
2858 N. Sheffield
Chicago, IL 60657
(312) 868-0400
(312) 929-5565 (H)

Thanks, Bea, for your thoughts and your generosity. I think this will give us all a little to chew on as the deliciousness of spring draws our attention inescapably towards the glorious juiciness of the natural world around us.

Happy spring, y’all.

       

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