March Galaxy Dispatch: Shakti (Get up, Get Out and Live!)
Why are there so many stars and souls
With no end in sight
For them
Because nothing can interrupt God
When he is having fun
Creating!
Hey Galaxy! Getting right to the point: it’s March, and the theme this month is Shakti. I’ll dive into what Shakti is and why I’m all about it in just a second, but I’ve been thinking about this little poem as I’ve been pondering what I’m going to write. It’s marginally by Meister Eckhart, but it’s really by Daniel Ladinsky, who “translated” it. Once I read this in a yoga class, and my friend AJ said the first line was so confrontational (in a good way) that they straight up opened their eyes, like “what the fuck did my yoga teacher just say?” which I think about every time I read it.
When were you last really happy?
Let that experience ferment,
Bring it to mind once
In a while.
Surely, in the genesis of that past moment, when
You danced
You would not have wanted a constable
To have knocked
On your
Door
Or have said, “You just entered a restricted
Ground.”
Why are there so many stars and souls
With no end in sight
For them
Because nothing can interrupt God
When he is having fun
Creating!
I wouldn’t ever dare to really change the wording of this poem, but I sort of will dare a little bit, because Ladinsky takes so many liberties with his own translations of mystic writers. If I could change this poem, I’d change the last line to: “Because nothing can interrupt Shakti, When she is having fun creating!” Because this is how I like to envision the concept of Shakti.
Shakti represents the divine feminine, in opposition or partnership to the concept of Shiva, which is the divine masculine.. It’s a gendered term that isn’t as gendered as you may think it is, because we all contain both divine feminine and masculine qualities. And the words “feminine” and “masculine” could easily be interchanged for words like: dynamic and still, generative and contemplative, a moving circle and a point in the center, fluidity and solidity.
Shakti has always been a magnetic concept for me. At my first real yoga home, Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in NYC, there was a spot to hang your studio mats after class, and there was a sign that said, “Hang your Shakti-soaked mats here!” So the super sweaty practice that soaked our mats was somehow made that much more special, because it wasn’t just sweat; it was the creative power of Shakti.
When I started practicing yoga, I began by learning the Bikram sequence. I learned how to hold the poses for 10 breath counts, twice each, and kind of amazingly, mastered the art of staying pretty still for a youngster (I was about 9 when I began teaching myself yoga). When I found my way to the Ashtanga primary series as a teen, I was drawn to it because of the movement that was present in between the held poses. It seemed a little bit more like a choreographed dance to me, and I dug it.
And the feeling of dance being a transcendent or spiritual pursuit is a feeling that has been present in me for as long as I can remember. It’s actually the source of a bit of sorrow or regret, because I didn’t really receive very much formal dance training until I was in college, studying Musical Theatre. By then, it felt a little too late - and I was really bad at remembering choreography (I realize now that’s probably because I was consumed with anxiety pretty much 24/7 because of the rigors of that program.)
I can remember begging my mom to let me take dance lessons as a child (we didn’t have the money to spend on them), dressing up in dresses that twirled really beautifully and making up dances to music on my record player as a tiny little 3-year-old, staying home as a high schooler on a Friday night to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers glide across my TV screen, and feeling the full-body tug of wanting to move when a song came on that I loved (I still feel that way).
When I happened across the creative, fluid, dance-y Vinyasa that was happening at Laughing Lotus in the early 2000’s, I finally felt like I had a vocabulary to express what I was feeling inside.. I had the benefit of over a decade of asana practice, and I just had to learn how to link these poses in the way that was being taught at Laughing Lotus. I may never be able to ballet dance my feelings, but I sure can yoga my feelings. And I know that purists sometimes resist that melding of dance and asana that is so popular, and such a Westernized incarnation of the practice - but I want to push back against that, because ritual movement is a part of so many contemplative cultural observances, that’s it’s really not that far removed from the lineage of yoga.
One of my favorite movement practices is an Indian martial art called Kalaripayattu. It’s said to be the fighting art that Kung Fu comes from - Buddhist monks may have hired Kalari-trained warriors to convey them from one monastery to another, and in the process, the knowledge of the fighting techniques were shared. This beginner’s form, called the Kalari Vandanam, looks so similar to many of our yoga asanas, I can’t believe they’re all that separate from each other.
It seems to me that we human beings know that the all-encompassing practice of movement does something to us. It often requires discipline and practice, but once we get those practice hours in, it feels beautiful, immersive, expressive, and reverent. Call it dance, call it yoga, call it martial arts - it’s an expression of the inexpressible.
And what Shakti teaches us is that it’s our responsibility to allow that to exist in the world. Martha Graham says “Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.” If we can’t allow ourselves the grace and the confidence to share a creative enthusiasm with the world - be it dance, song, a unique perspective, or anything about us that makes us uniquely us - the world is missing it. The world deserves your creativity, what makes you, YOU.
Strangely enough, the holiday of Shivaratri is approaching, so we’re currently moving into a celebration of the divine masculine, and contemplation, meditation, and introspection are all a part of the observances. So I’m a little out of cosmic timing with my celebration of Shakti this month. But let it be said that Shiva also presides over the dance of the creation and the destruction of the world: a literal dance called the Tandava. So just as within us, we embody aspects of both feminine Shakti and masculine Shiva, there is a creative force of dance associated with the contemplative energies that Shiva embodies. You can’t really separate the two so easily.
And you can’t really separate the fluidity from the stillness in yoga. Even if your body is still, it’s still subtly pulsing as your heart beats, your blood flows, your lymph moves, the electricity flows through your nerves, and your lungs pump air. And even in the faster, more movement-focused moments of practice, each tiny little motion is a still point on an endlessly interconnected line - a million screen shots that animate themselves together to create the dance of yoga.
As the sun returns, and the sap stirs in the trees, and we emerge from underneath a pile of blankets and blink our way back into life this spring, I hope you find a way to embody the generative power of Shakti. One of my favorite dance numbers of all time is “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This” from the movie Sweet Charity (I’m a sucker for Bob Fosse choreography). I love it because of how much space Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, and Shirley MacLaine take up when they move. It feels even more special to share at the end of this dispatch, because Chita Rivera recently passed away. There’s a story about her auditioning for the School of American Ballet, and executing Fouette turn after Fouette turn. She was working so hard, she was bleeding through her toe shoe, which George Balanchine himself noticed, and bandaged for her. I’m not suggesting we dance till we bleed, but I guess I’m not suggesting we NOT do that either. There’s something to be said for embracing the creative force, and not allowing ourselves to be censored. Where would it take us, if we let it? I know that, on Friday nights after I finish teaching my 5:45 class, I turn down the lights, turn up my music, and I spend time all by myself, just moving and letting myself be moved. And no, I do not want a constable to show up and tell me I just entered restricted ground - because nothing can stop me when I am having fun, creating!
Step, step, jete,
Anna
(The dancing gets going at about 3:40, but the whole piece is glorious.)
What I’m Reading…
Inspired by this New York times article, which revisits and praises this book 50 years after its publication, I’m reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. Becker talks about what the Buddhists have known for years - the source of humankind’s suffering often comes from our refusal to reckon with our own mortality. The article called it “suprisingly upbeat,” and so far, I have to agree. I’m also really enjoying Becker’s criticism of our urge to seek and elevate heroism - I’ve been re-evaluating my take on Joseph Campbell quite a bit this year (I like him less and less these days), and Becker is actually helping me to understand why the hero myth might exist, and why it may not be a helpful framing of the human experience.
