We Are All Dancers

As I write my first blog entry, I am sitting at Discovery Yoga Center, in St Augustine, Florida, preparing for the opening night of my program: Let Your Yoga Dance® Teacher Training for Special Populations. I have spent the winter traveling on my 17th annual Tour for Grace through the southlands. This is my last stop before returning back to the north.

I wanted to share with you my favorite Mary Oliver poem, which I committed to memory many years ago. She says beautifully what I feel so deeply:

 The Journey -  by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do

determined to save

the only life you could save.

I, like Mary Oliver, have come to a place in my spiritual journey – my dharma – in which I need to bring this special work of Let Your Yoga Dance further out into the world. I love watching my students with Parkinson’s or Ms, or Alzheimers or chronic fatigue, become dancers before my eyes, as we dance through the chakras. I have always known that We are All Dancers. Now it is time for the rest of the world to know this, so everyone can let their yoga dance.