Collective Awe

​Last Wednesday I found myself standing in the middle of the street outside  the studio, holding up two white pieces of paper, one at arms length, one with a small hole in it made by the nib of a biro a few minutes previously (thank you Fran!). 
 
8 of us gathered around watching a tiny light and shadow display in awe, a mini changing crescent.

The eclipse
 
The moon crossing in front of the sun in real time, playing out on a simple piece of paper. 
 
It was mesmerising, awe inspiring, humbling, exciting in a way that felt quite primal. Even more so for those experiencing the full eclipse where day became night and life felt suspended for a moment. 
 

Suspending the day-to-day

The suspension of the day-to-day is an important space to inhabit, and ideally more frequently than every few decades. 
 
Taking time to situate yourself in the cosmos, to remind yourself of the scale and possibility that constantly surround us. The reality of the day-to-day world is quite simply incredible when we pause for a moment and realise it.
 
The eclipse, by depriving us of life-giving sunlight for just a moment, gave us pause to collectively, viscerally experience our place in the cosmos and give us a perspective on the reality of our life that is easy to overlook or ignore. 
 

Lost in thought and waking up

Our usual state is to go about our lives, heads down, lost in thought, caught up in the minutia of work, sweating the small stuff in the dreams of our imagined futures or lost in the stories of our haunting pasts. Spinning all the plates that feel important but are often unexamined. 
 

But just for one moment...

We all looked up, took time, collectively observed our awe-inspiring cosmos, the magic of the moon and sun and their importance and place in our lives and of the humble situation we are in and the beauty and magic that is our life. 
 

Yoga offers this
 
Our yoga can be a micro moment of this suspension of the day-to-day. 
 
Yes, you can engage in your yoga as a workout, an exercise program that helps your health and state of mind and does the job of keeping your hamstrings healthier and your state of mind more grounded. It can be just another part of your day-to-day. 
 
To quote BKS Iyengar
 
"The primary aim of yoga is to restore the mind to simplicity, peace, and poise, to free it from confusion and distress"
Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health
 
The postures, movements, breath and focusing help us quieten the day-to-day noise and allow a deeper, simpler, more peaceful and more clear state of body and mind. These can be considered the preliminary practices of yoga, so that we can then recognise and live with this reality and the implications it has for how we choose to live. 
 
It needn't take a lifetime of practice, a perfection of posture or breath, a mastery of life.
 
Every time you step on your mat, just like every time you witness a profound cosmological event like the eclipse or the setting sun, the awe stops being overlooked for a moment.
 
 
But it was and is, always there.