Dear Friends, Yogis and Yoginis,

Morning Music
I awoke for my yoga practice this morning in the pitch black of a no moon sky in the South of India on the backwater alley ways of Allepy, Kerala. I felt I had the world to myself for a short while, the same way I often feel at home at this time of day!

An hour in to my practice I was joined by an entire village across the way: morning devotional music began to play on a loudspeaker that easily crossed the canal.

What great accompaniment, I thought, as the morning birds also began to join in rapturously.

This chorus lasted for about an hour, which easily encompassed my savasana and meditation time. I felt bathed in the larger circle of sounds and had an immense sense of “my place” in the world, but without any sense of the “my.” In other words, the birds were called to sing. I was called to yoga, to listening, to breath and bones. I wasn’t accomplishing anything more than the awakening the birds were doing, so innately, so unselfconsciously.

How sadly complicated we make our practices…My intention (with my practice) is to lessen my sense of “doing something,” to lessen the sense of getting somewhere or attaining something. Which requires me to surrender my habits of strategy, grasping, urgency, manipulation, or dishonesty, in anyway those habits show up. This is, of course, terrific practice for the “off the mat” poses in the world. From the moment I recognized the loneliness which these habits attempted to cover over, I have been ruthless about two things: not covering over, and remembering. Remembering the great companionship of life occurred for me instantly in the blaring, but devotional, music from across the water way. (I wonder if I will feel that way when my Portland neighbor blares his heavy rock music while I am in my garden?)

Backwater Alleys
We toured the backwater alleys today. The alleys, or canals, are home to hundreds upon hundreds of families. As we toured through on our boat, we were basically gliding through people’s homes. The canal waters serve as kitchen sinks, washing machines, bathtubs and sinks. Old men were soaping up, young children were being scrubbed, women were washing their hair, submerged in the water, sari and all. Some people were brushing their teeth, doing the day’s laundry or scrubbing pots for cooking.

Given that the water was incredibly polluted - by the pollution from the land, human excrement, excrement from dogs, goats and cows, gasoline from the boats, bathing soap, shampoo and toothpaste, and whatever the cooking pots contained as debris - I wouldn’t even touch it with my hand to check the temperature.
The homes we floated by ranged from dilapidated sheds with tarps, for some privacy, and debris piles all over the yard to the more “modern” buildings with window decorations and bright paint. Laundry hung from palm trees, goats were tied in the yard, and chickens ran free to peck at what was on the ground. The youngest children were naked except for a string around their waist (traditional).

(Personal note: As people were doing their morning bathing rituals, they offered smiles and waved at us as we floated by. I wonder how I would welcome such an intrusion from tourists in my neighborhood as I step into my hot tub in the mornings!)

Against this backdrop, I was struck by this: everyone bathed with pride. The women, once their bathing was done, dressed in bright, beautiful saris with immaculate attention to their hair and simple jewelry. Many of the young girls had their ears pierced and their hair neatly tended to as well. Children wore school uniforms and bright smiles. If we were coming upon a family’s home (they could easily hear us coming) we might be greeting with a screamingly delighted child being bathed and waving at us uncontrollably, her mother beaming with joy; or a pack of school children running along side our boat asking us to take their photo or give them “one pen please.” Grandmothers and older siblings greeted us openly as well.

In spite of what I would consider incredible poverty and pollution there was obviously tremendous richness in family, in simplicity and delight, in love.

I wonder in what ways we hold to our inner sense of the impoverished (our feelings of less than, the grass is greener, glass is half empty, lack of appreciation, reaching, grasping or striving) or the impure (thoughts of how much “work we have to do on ourselves,” or where we have progressed on our paths spiritually) when we could loosen the grip and rest back in the love that surrounds us in the family of humanity and the simplicity of God. To see another way of life is often refreshing in this regard. But sometimes we can’t travel 9000 miles to understand this; and we don’t need to. In less than 9 seconds, one deep breath, we have the opportunity to return. Admittedly, sometimes we need 9 breaths, or 9 days, but the love we return to doesn’t need anything from us for it to be manifest in us. It is us.

Namaste,
Sarahjoy