LODO – Lights On Doors Open

“One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination, fantasy? I do not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it forever, is it for eternity? Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force” – Vincent Van Gogh

Sometimes the Universe keeps on speaking to us through others until we answer. This past week I was asked, “Why do you teach yoga?” so often it made me pause and rethink my light hearted standard response…it’s fun, love seeing people light up when they get an asana.

One of the many things I’ve come to appreciate about yoga is that it is always extending yet another invitation to more (and more and more…) questions. Think Russian nesting dolls, or clown car. Sometimes it throws hard balls: What do you truly desire? And the dreaded follow up, is what you do aligned with what you desire? Other times (thankfully) it lobs soft balls: Is she for real when she says moving your thumbs back/down and pinky fingers up in warrior I somehow puffs up your back kidney area?

When we choose to answer (vs blow off) these questions, it’s a game changer—moving our practice from Simon says, monkey see monkey do toward a more playful inquisitive experiment.

And it’s not always about getting the right answer (whew!) It’s also about asking ever better questions, continuously revisiting them, proving to yourself time and again where you stand.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense. – Buddha

So I accepted the invitation to revisit, “Why do you teach yoga?” After some thought, my response was LODO— Lights On Doors Open—an acronym for a financial term we use in Corporate America referring to the baseline cost of keeping operations up and running.

Simply put I teach public classes with the heartfelt intent to keep the Lights On and Doors Open in an unraveling world which I’ve seen all too often dims (turns off) our lights and shuts (slams) our doors.

On our mats this week we practiced asking better questions and creating space in our asanas. To open the walls, we applied inner spiral (moving your butt back) and kidney loop (sides of the waist back) to hip openers and back bends all the while asking why? why? why? E.g. Why move the thighs back, other than I suggested it was a good idea?

We also touched on an esoteric concept introduced by Paul Muller-Ortega, renowned scholar of Hindu Tantra, at a recent workshop. He talked about a shutter or aperture like muscle, inside all of us, that is a gateway to the always present light. Through meditation this internal muscle can open/flip in a way that you experience pure consciousness. Some of us naturally have more control over it's pulsation than others, similar to how some of us can wiggle our ears while others cannot.

Sidebar: an uncanny number of you can wiggle you ears while doing cobra (bhujangasana)!

Regardless of natural talent, all of us can practice conditioning this muscle. The process is not all that different than maintaining our physical bodies through asana. The unconscious routines of life create veils which contract the energy and stop the shutter from working. Meditation, mantra or deep serious affection can dialate the aperature allowing us to connect with our ephemeral double, that subtle body of light and energy which animates us and is pure, perfect, and independent of our physical age. Being disconnected from this subtle aspect of ourselves is so often what makes us feel confined, trapped, dark.

In closing…

My wish for you as we left our mats is that you too accept the invitation to engage the questions allowing your answers to simmer deepen and refine themselves as you change and evolve over time. So again I responded to the question, “Why do you teach yoga?”

I teach to hold space in my heart for

……those whose light was self extinguished or forever occluded by illness

I teach for me

……because your reflections keep my lights on

I teach for you

……knowing first hand that this practice will keep the doors from closing in

I teach with hope

……that something as simple as yoga enables you keep the lights on and doors open for others

To asking ever better questions on and off our mats, and a practice that blows the doors off, and amplifies the light, Namaste!

P.S. Paul's site is www.bluethroatyoga.com