Decisions, Decisions...

So, looming, once again, is Yoga School.

I have been wanting it, salivating over it, dreaming about it, for the last two years, and finally it is within my reach. I've done the math, I've gone over and over it: I can do it. If I really want it, I can make it work.

The thing standing in my way: Me. Well, Actor me is standing in my way. Yoga me says yes yes yes. Yoga me knows what an incredible thing it would be for me, how empowering and crystallizing it would be, and how much it could really only add, not only to my "self" (which is so deeply inseperable from myself as an actor) but to my ability to shape my career as I want it. Actor me has some other things to say. Actor me is horrified that I would think of turning down theatre work from now until January. Actor me has a million "what ifs". Actor me is worried I would be admitting defeat, or asking for it.

Yoga me would like to remind myself that this is something I am desperate to do, something that feeds me, and that, ultimately, will allow me more creative freedom and repose in my life. And also I might be good at it. And also I love it.

But work! Says Actor Me, how can I say no to work? How can I make myself unavailable for WORK?! What will happen? Won't I fall off the face of the planet?

I have the decision sitting in my hand, a little bird. But right now my fingers are cupped around it and I can not let it fly.

The Yoga of Sound...

Many Classes, One Post.

The theme this month at the Lotus: Nada Yoga, the yoga of sound. A beautiful cross-pollination for me, of the work I am doing in my Linklater classes, and my ongoing yoga practice. A deepening of work centering on the body and breath as central to the voice, and the voice as central to the expression of all things, not just verbal.

Stacey gave an incredible talk at the beginning of class on Tuesday, in which she discussed the origins of the famous yoga "Om" and the spiritual lineage of the Sanskrit language (in brief, of course). My distillation: a few enlightened dudes from the ancient times went up in to the mountains, sat as open vessels, and the universe poured into them the sounds that eventually came to make up the Sanskrit language. According to Stacey, the impetus to keep Sanskrit alive, after all these many thousand years, is because it is the only language that survives as a direct connection to what is considered divine sound (as in, sound divined from the universe).

Heavy stuff.

In Nada Yoga, the conceptual theory is that there is a universe of sound in which we are all existing, to which we are either tuned in or tuned out. Meaning, a kind of God-sound is available to us, and is a possible connective tissue between ourselves and larger consciousness, that we do not create (as in, I am producing sound) but we instead connect to. As in all spiritual thought bent in this direction, universal consciousness is water flowing through a faucet which we can either turn on or turn off. (But just because we've closed the spigot, it don't mean there ain't water there and available to us!)

And to get more specific, the sounds we chant at the beginning of class (my favorite part) are chanted, not because they're pretty (oh, but they are!!) but because these sounds are considered little doorways to God. One could, I suppose, ride the Om straight to enlightenment, if they really knew what they were doing...

The chants have always held a lot of power for me...there is something about the way the particular sounds of Sanskrit emerge from and dissolve into silence that just immediately soothes what can often be a tropical storm of thought in my head (thank you, Bryn, for that image!). And though we are often told of the power of mantra, of chanting, to be a focusing tool and a powerful pathway towards change, I have never quite believed it. I just like to sing, and I like how the words sound in my mouth, and if I sit down and try to make something of it, I'm just going to ruin it for myself...that's been my thinking. And also I've just not been able to stomach the thought of sitting down and chanting to Lakshmi or something when I don't even really know who that is or what I'm saying (apart from my handy-dandy Yoga Journal translation) as I would feel myself to be merely aping another culture--one which I do actually have some respect for. It all seems a bit too easy and too perfectly Western.

However, hearing Stacey talk about the Om (aum) has perhaps shifted my thinking a bit...

The Om, considered the root of the all sound...perhaps the root of all everything...the most universal of sounds, is made up of three distinct parts:

Ahhh.

Oooo.

Mmmm.

(Aum).

And in these three sounds lives the birth and death of sound. Ahhh, the creation, the birthing of sound, the possibility. Oooo is perseverance, the sustaining. And the Mmmm is the closing of the circle, the destruction of sound. Stacey likened these to the triumvirate of Hindu deities: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahma representing creation, Vishnu--preservation, and Shiva the destroyer. But I don't know enough about these lovelies to speak intelligently about specific connections. (I will say, however, that there's got to be something to the whole idea of a holy trinity of powers, as it seems to repeat itself in religious literature of all flavors...) And so, contained within this one word, aum, is the whole cycle of life--illustrated through sound moving from the back of the throat, across the soft palette and finally vibrating against closed lips. It's beautiful. Born out of silence and returning to silence.

And, stealing from my Linklater work, if one's body is the conductor for sound, and one's spine is the pathway through which all impulses for sound travel, then what one is expressing when one is expressing, is not just a personal truth, but is a vital and universal one. I.e., we are elucidating at every moment, through sound, the matter of the universe--universal consciousness.

It's big, dude. It's big.