New Year Morning 9 AM Pranayama w/YogaWorks

[Lisa Walford]

Dear friends..

Yes, a time to reflect, to purge, to grieve, to give thanks to so many

and every year it is the same. And yet every year feels like it is special

and this year is really special! 

for the resilience, the courage, the sacrifices, the faith.

While the world reels with change

Where do we find courage, resilience, faith? 

I found myself riffing on a quote of Goethe (German poet) 

"Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world" 

Character is built through the challenges and chaos of the world

Soul emerges through solitude and silence. 

In our pranayama practice, we turn inwards towards the silence that comes with the solitude of deep rest and quiet, or ripening quiet, as David Whyte has said. Silence can emerge out of solitude, when we listen. 

This Friday, join me for an asana practice that primes the body for pranayama, and a pranayama practice that tunes the heart to silence. We will end with a meditation for the New Year.. 

Poem read in class on December 29. 

Corridors of the soul! The soul that is like a young woman!

You clear light

and the brief history

and the joy of a new life..

  Oh turn and be born again, and walk the road

and find once more the lost path!

  And turn and feel in our own hand

the warmth of the good hand

of our mother ... And walk through life in dreams

out of love of the hand that leads us. 

  In our soul everything

moves guided by a mysterious hand:

ununderstandable, not speaking,

we know little of our own souls. 

  The deepest words

of the wise men teach us

the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows,

or the sound of the water when it is flowing. 

Antonio Machado, Spanish Poet, 1875 - 1939