This picture is a before and after of my experience with yoga as a tool for transformation (medicine) this summer.

I utilized the guidance of an incredibly skillful and astute teacher (Ms. Aimee Jean Williams) as a means to release the past—karmas, stigmas, associations.

To transform:

trans·form
transˈfôrm/

verb: make a thorough or dramatic change in the form, appearance, or character of.

synonyms:
change, alter, convert, metamorphose, transfigure, transmute

So,

Transformation.

I wondered about it.

I asked for it.

I worked toward it.

I see it happening around me with the season.

But moreover, I feel the transposition in the marrow of my very bones.

Storage.

The body as storage space for the cellular, human experience.

Both as a re-storage-ation area for the soul and a mechanism for the escape.

All this inner dynamic alteration so I could get back into my body and float inside the here and now.

To get back to the beginning.

I thought it would be subtle.

I thought it would incorporate.

I thought it would make sense.

Obviously,

It’s not kids.

Just check out my eyes in the before.

I mean, anyone who doubts the power of the body on any level both to support and neglect.

Transformation is no joke.

I don’t know what I was thinking really.

I just know that is all I was doing.

It is a body altering experience to leave the mind behind (even just for a moment, even just to be able to do it).

To relearn how to just do.

True body modification like the renewal in the seasons change.

All this sensation as a cur(glor)ious currency to exchange for more or less sensation. I am in the market for a manifestation of dreams and I want you to come with me.

No pain but sensations though.

A lot of them.

Think of your favorite sweater and the way it feels on your softest skin. The secret places for holding all your subtle broke off bits and pieces. All those parts that you thought you lost are just buried.

Here is the karma though:

They weren’t buried like a body—they were buried like a seed.

And ready to explode with life when that shift occurs.

It is only one degree of movement most of the time. And, with this alignment, life becomes a dance and we return to our natural state of joy.

I am another You and You are another Me.

And, we are royals.

We are divine, motherf*ckers.

I am a seed.

So are you.

In all the wildest reaches of our consciousness, the furthest our imagination carries us, there is nothing as magical and inspiring as right now and its dramatic explosive effect.

There is a real urgency to living.

And, so…

It fits.

That all this shifting would be all up in the now, the constant change is stability in its own right.

I wanted to find the edge and now I surf it.

I asked to be unhinged and now I am hella swung open.

I desired to be tied to nothing and no one and no one place and…

Well,

Now,

Here I am.

All that wishing and all that watching.

Work, exchanged for the observation.

Fearing what we do not understand but meaning to understand what we fear.

Mindfully. Fully. Engaged.

To put your self back into your body is to release the control and take back the power.

This captivates.

This completes all the circles in a chain of action not unlike the order in which life is created.

Starting from an explosion (outside) and ending in an implosion (inside).

Unstoppable.

We unbind the body on a cellular level.

We free from the inside out starting with the outside and going in.

It starts with observation of the mind and finishes at the Psoas.

When you get tired of being bound,

Untie yourself.

When you get weary of being weighted down by burden,

Take flight.

I am broke open but I am not broken, I have cracks so that the light might come in.

And, I gotta say, amid the cray, I’m still stoked.

I can’t help but smile at the fact that I am here and it is now and there you are and now it is.

So, I try not to attach to the “what if” and “whatever” and when in doubt, I leave the mind behind.

I get on the ground and observe the grace by which inhale wakes up exhale and exhale bows in gratitude to inhale.

It’s a moving meditation.

We practice with a purpose.

~

~

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Apprentice Editor: Brandie Smith/Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Author’s Own