Thursday, June 14, 2012

Prana, Freedom, and Dandelion Wine



Between healthy eating, exercise, and solar yoga, which focuses on the power of the sun, energy is coursing through me.  In yoga, it’s called prana (meaning “vital life” in Sanskrit.)  It is the healing energy and life-sustaining force that flows through your breath.  In a yoga class yesterday, I swear to you, I felt electricity in my fingertips and flowing out of the top of my head.  It feels like freedom, light, and power.

I just began reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine as a hello to summer and a tribute to one of my favorite authors, who just passed away last week.

(Maybe not so) coincidentally, the passage I was reading yesterday ties perfectly:

     “I’m alive, he thought…
The grass whispered under his body.  He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes.  The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere.  Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland…  His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire… Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head…The million pores on his body opened.
I’m really alive!  he thought.  I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!”

There is vibrant energy and power inside each of us and if we are busily rushing through life and focusing on material things and worries, we could miss it entirely, except perhaps in the glimpses of greatness of a revelatory moment.  Slow down!  Don’t miss this!

I ask you, as Bradbury’s main character asks, “does everyone in the world…know [s]he’s alive?

2 comments:

  1. some live up to 80 years, but missing life! We like to live in this cosy, unreal, materialistic world, like in a commercial, but what happens when the lights turn off? We end up alone, faced with reality in some point of our life, not prepared for it... That's why it's so important to deal with our souls, not bodies, respect body as a temple of our soul, but not to be obsessed with it! Soul is our everlasting body, core that shouldn't be neglected in favour of body... And soul should live and soak up as many experience in this world, this life, too.

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  2. The rushing through life comment made me think of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, "Life moves pretty fast, . . . if you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

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