WE ARE still in the throes of unrelenting heat and dryness having survived a country-wide heatwave the last couple of weeks.
Our Yoga classes reflected this situation with a cooling practice, not just for our physical bodies but for our emotional and mental states as well.
On a physical level many of us can escape to air conditioning and just keep going during times of extreme weather, but for much of the country: the animals in the paddocks, the plants and wildlife, they can’t.
On a visceral level, if you still have a working pineal gland and are in touch with your own intuition and sense of truth, your body will register this greater distress.
Many great writers remind us of this deep connection to the earth and to weather.
The Catholic monk Thomas Merton talks of this connection in a passage from; When the Trees Say Nothing: “Our mentioning the weather – are perhaps not idle. Perhaps we have a deep and legitimate need to know in our entire being what the day is like, to see it and feel it… because I myself am part of the weather, and part of the climate and part of the place, and a day in which I have not shared truly in all this, is no day at all.”
So, in yoga class, we honoured our primitive selves, our reptilian brain, and we cooled and sent our cooling prayers to those living creatures less fortunate than us.
