a day in the life

things i love about ashtanga


I have noticed that the ashtanga practice is like a day in minature. It is a regular, routine cycle that begins with sunrise and the salutes to the sun and ends, after a 'day' of work, with a moon-like nightcalm as you settle down in Savasana and maybe even sleep.

I love the completeness of this cycle. As a metaphor it is a day in the life and also an entire life, perhaps, from birth to death.

And also I have been struggling with Mari D (again) so if the practice represents a day or even an entire life then it can be just as frustrating and difficult as life. Although it ends, calmly (for me anyway) with inversions, the corpse and a final surrender of the self to deeper currents, to the space inbetween thoughts, perhaps to forces outside and beyond the self.

And also that surrender acknowledges that there are poses I can't achieve and perhaps will never achieve. Every day, every morning I have to face that. Every morning I confront the limits of my ability and have to stop and face the finishing sequence which I imagine represents (or is) death and prayer and sleep.

Is the practice a useful metaphor for life...we work, we struggle, succeed/fail, reach a point where we have to stop (the pose you just cannot achieve) and then surrender, blisfully (we hope) to the finishing sequence.

I am wondering if my life will be like that. Will I work and work and work and then finally, admit defeat or exhausation or completion and surrender, as a real corpse (or just about to be corpse), to a deeper, darker current that dissolves the self.

What a thing to face every morning! Every morning you run through the day and your life in minature...I think that is very beautiful.