Welcome to Yoga with Sheila!

After spending a great deal of time in my classes this week discussing the value or lack thereof in making New Year's Resolutions, I must confess that my personal list of resolutions is lengthy, and one of them is taking shape right now.  I resolved to (finally) start a yoga blog, and my first order of business is to offer you an enthusiastic and excited WELCOME!

My hope is that this blog will become a venue for all of us, our beautiful Johns Creek Yoga sangha, to supplement and enrich the discussions we so often have on the mat before and after classes. The practice of yoga is rich and layered, and what we do primarily with the body in our 90 minutes together can only touch the edges of it.

In this context, I look forward to sharing some of the lessons, inquiries and explorations that inform my own practice and my teaching, and I sincerely hope that each of you will lend your voices and responses in order to create an ongoing conversation. I will try to post at least once a week, and I will include many of the poems, songs and readings that I so often share in class.

Today I offer you the beautiful words of Oriah Mountain Dreamer, poet, spiritualist and beautiful soul.  If you don't know her work, I highly recommend you start with The Invitation.  The poem below is The Call  from the book of the same name. I write privately, and now publicly, in answer to the call she describes, and I invite each of you, as Oriah does, to discover and lend your word to the great poem we write together.

The Call

I have heard it all my life, A voice calling a name I recognized as my own.

Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper. Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency.

But always it says: Wake up my love. You are walking asleep. There's no safety in that!

Remember what you are and let this knowing take you home to the Beloved with every breath.

Hold tenderly who you are and let a deeper knowing colour the shape of your humanness.

There is no where to go. What you are looking for is right here. 

Open the fist clenched in wanting and see what you already hold in your hand.

There is no waiting for something to happen, no point in the future to get to. 

All you have ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.

You are wearing yourself out with all this searching. Come home and rest.

How much longer can you live like this? Your hungry spirit is gaunt, your heart stumbles. 

All this trying. Give it up!

Let yourself be one of the God-mad, faithful only to the Beauty you are.

Let the Lover pull you to your feet and hold you close, dancing even when fear urges you to sit this one out.

Remember- there is one word you are here to say with your whole being. 

When it finds you, give your life to it. Don't be tight-lipped and stingy.

Spend yourself completely on the saying. 

Be one word in this great love poem we are writing together.

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Call, HarperONE, San Francisco 2003

I will end with the words of one of my favorite teachers..."More to be revealed."  Check back or, better yet, subscribe to receive your weekly update.