Your asana will not save this world

unless you lengthen the side of your triangle to the pride parade on the street below, flare your peacock feathers at the gentleman having coffee while he grunts about the same-sex sinners ruining the sanctity of marriage.

You can be a bridge, a plank, a boat to help him cross the choppy rapids of humanity, safely reach the other side. Hold him there with your bandhas, until he dims into the multitudes, can no longer tell where he begins and ends.

Your asana will not save this world

unless each rechaka is the strike of a shovel digging a well for clean water, your agni fusing steel to erect a once-forbidden school for girls, your drishti unveiling the heavy fabric of patriarchy that shrouds the brightness of so many eyes, your oojai a disarming heart, your om vibration enough to shred terror, your Haribol ! a beacon home for those who have forgotten it’s inside.

Your asana will not save this world

unless each time your feet plant firmly, they become soles on shoes of a child without, your mudras become plates spilling with roots glistening from salutations and not the slick rot of pesticides,

and when your crow really flies, let its dark skin soar any street without pause, without fear. Let your pigeon
be a reminder to look up, read the text of butterflies and bees flitting the horizon, your inner child bow to the earthquake ache of their absence.

Your asana will not save this world

unless we surrender the need to fit into shapes, refuse to pay to the gods of thigh-gap leggings, our sweat mixing with the pin-pricked fingers of low-wage factories collapsing. Until we bend around the light, align with the bliss
and pain of what little we have, the fullness and grace of what little we have, tear down the planks of what’s been built and die a little each time, so that we can start again and again, with a quiet mind, waiting to hear the blueprint for a new world in our breath.

 

Relephant:

A Glossary of 34 Frequently Used Yoga Terms.

 

 

Author: Megan Merchant

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Take Back Your Health/Flickr