Today I want to report on my sitting practice. I haven’t written much about it lately. If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll recall that I finally got serious about following my teacher’s instructions, to practice “whole body awareness”.

Today I crossed a threshold. Rather than being aware of my whole body, body awareness dropped more into the background, and whole awareness moved more into the foreground. And somehow they merged.

Maybe a better description for my experience is that for a few moments, “my body” was not me. There wasn’t really a me, an I, except for experiencing awareness. Sounds, body sensations, thoughts — all aspects of awareness, all one.

Okay, I know some of you may stumble upon this post and think this is crazy talk, that it doesn’t make any sense — unless you yourself have explored these realms of being.

You know what? It doesn’t make sense to me either! Making sense is where the trouble started! I am curious, so I will keep exploring.

I’m doing the best I can to describe in words something that is essentially a nonverbal experience.

Before sitting, I did yoga. We worked on Sun Salutations in yoga teacher training last night, each of us leading and innovating. It was very fun and a real workout! They’re like jazz — infinite variations are possible. Amazingly, I can lead a long improvised series of poses for the right side of the body– and remember the same sequence on the left! It just comes back to me.

So before yoga this morning, I did one l-o-n-g sun salutation, making each movement between the individual poses into a little vinyasa to repeat over and over, then HOLDING down dog, chaturanga, bhujangasana to build strength. I made a lovely stew of Iyengar and vinyasa today.

I’m working on a longer post about something the film Eat, Pray, Love triggered. When I work it through a bit more, I’ll post. It feels big!