Maha ha ha ha ha ha: how yoga rocks my world. A thousand-fold.

Shiva is my homeboy

We've been celebrating Maha Shivaratri the last couple of days, Wednesday night into yesterday.  [For more about what that means, check out Bernadette Birney's delightful post or this one, by Katrina.]  In our practice with Laura, the emphasis has been on being super-clear about our intentions, since on Maha Shivaratri, intentions, like mantras, are magnified one thousand-fold.  On this dark night of Shiva, they are a whole lot more potent than usual.

Really, when you come down to it, a strongly-held intention is a mantra, something we hold to, something that keeps us on the path.  Remembered, it does play like music through the mind, a little melody behind everything else we do.  Just like a mantra that we come back to, and back to, over and over, as we move forward into creating the lives we really want to live.

I love the word Maha.  It means "great" or "biggest."  Since Tuesday, I've been trying to Maha up everything I'm doing. Why not GO BIG?

And I've had a lot of help, mostly from my teacher, who inspires me and blows my mind regularly. Several things that she's said over the past few days are echoing through my thoughts day and night, sinking in, seeding mantras of their own. But mostly I've been struck, again, by how consistently yoga delivers magic on the mat. How I can be working my loops and tucking my tailbone and spiraling my back thigh in -- working all kinds of physical technique, sweating, focused -- and then BAM comes a moment of total delight in which I am so happy I could just burst.

How the practice itself, consistently, opens up opportunities for joy and comfort and a simple reveling in being alive, having this body, being incarnated in this form, if I could be so bold.

Nothing I have ever done in my entire life has been so consistent a source of happiness.  How freaking amazing is that?!  So amazing that I just want to laugh and jump around.

How lucky we are to be here, to have this opportunity to take in the world around us, to dance our lives into being, just like Shiva.  To make magic on our mats, over and over. 

Go Maha!