Hatha Yoga on a Solar Eclipse
Image by Chris Reich via Pixabay
We opened on August 12th so, October began the third month of Yoga with Janelle here in Venice. —And Saturday October 14th, we had a partial eclipse of the sun. These occasions inspired me to reflect for a moment on the months behind and ahead.
Someone recently asked me, “What is hatha yoga?” She wanted to know why I called the Wednesday evening class “Hatha Flow.” That title, I explained, offered me flexibility to shape the class and its focus for the people who come to class. For me, all the classes at the studio are part of Hatha Yoga as I practice and teach it.
In Sanskrit ‘ha’ means sun and “tha” means moon. However, together, ‘hatha’ is translated as effort or force. Traditionally, hatha yoga it is a wholistic art, methodology and discipline to end suffering and become enlightened. Yoga means to ‘yoke’ the body, mind and soul; it is both a means and an end realized by of the cessations of fluctuations of the mind and ultimately, enlightenment.
I thought about the meaning of the word hatha (force) and its component words ‘ha’ (the sun) and ‘tha’ (the moon) during the week before and after the eclipse. I explored these as dualities in my yoga practice, light and dark, inhalation and exhalation, right and left sides. I thought about the sun and moon as opposing and relational principles, masculine and feminine, identity and reflection, day and night, action and surrender. —And I thought about them as I looked up at the sun and moon through special glasses during the eclipse. Even with 68% of its area obscured by the shadow of the moon, the force of sun’s light was too bright to gaze at directly. As I watched the moon travel between the earth and the sun, I could see quite clearly (with glasses anyway), these independent bodies simultaneously in their relational paths. The sun and the moon appeared amazingly yet simply as two independent spheres: one dark and one light. I had never seen them from this perspective.
As I looked up at the eclipse, both the moon and the sun seemed much smaller than usual. The sun especially, in the shadow of the moon, seemed smaller. As the sun seemed smaller, somehow my relative size grew. It was like a visual taste of the solar system that I have learned about over and over and seen pictures of since grade school. At that moment, I had a visceral sense of being in orbit with the moon and the sun, like protons or electrons in orbit around a nucleus in a quantum atomic model.
The most powerful energy that I had ever perceived—with is life-giving and burning light—was eclipsed! Looking at it through the glasses, took my breath away. This was a view, from my little perspective on earth, of a very broad universe in which the burning, bright, life-giving sun could itself appear and be imagined as a speck of dust in a sea of other stars and planets… I had imagined it for years but this was the first time I could see it in action. Wow.
Our son Julian looking at the eclipse…
The last three months have been an amazing experience. I am incredibly grateful to everyone for bringing your light, energy, ideas, friends and financial support to the studio. I am excited to move into the “high season” with all of you and I look forward to seeing new faces as well. Click here for November News.