The practice of walking. The role of walking sticks.

[the picture for this blog is at the heart of this post]

I believe from my life experiences and from those whom I consider to be my spiritual teachers that all phenomena from external reality to our inner feeling are analogous to a walking stick. "TAPAS" is often defined as "practice" or "discipline" and thus, practice our walk through life.

A sturdy walking stick provides a stabilizing, grounding companion across unsteady footing. While helpful, centering too much of your weight upon the stick can be a recipe for falling flat on your face. So, just how much do we lean on something outside of ourselves for support during our practice?

"On the yoga mat" - is another manifestation of walking. It is the combination of simply living which is constant as long as we are inhaling and exhaling  and the conscious choice of how I allocate my time and energy towards a day of living my life. During the disciplined practice of asanas (postures) I rely on objects outside of myself to deepen my practice. A bolster assists in opening my back; a block or belt or yogi partner in class are some walking sticks of yoga. My hand on a block enables me to further steady my body and thus further the degree of balance and flexibility in a pose. Even the yoga mat as an object like a walking stick in that it increases my feeling of security and safety to practice outside the limits of what is otherwise available to my body alone. Yet a yoga mat is much more than just a substance that improves my ability to grip the ground.

A walking stick enables me to sink into the oneness of myself with nature and all that is. Walking with my stick along Linville river I slowly open, creating a space deep within my being- a metaphorical gorge inside of me. Enduring time and the effort that creates the tension needed for change, the glaciers cut through the mountains of Linville Gorge, NC just as my lifelong journey with walking and running have peeled away layers towards revealing my deepest self.

By contract ontologically and at the same time, similarly epistemologically, my yoga mat is a delimiter - a rectangular space that I use as a tool to step onto the banks of the flowing river of my life. Instead of cutting in, my yoga mat draws a line around me. Like a rectangle removed from the fabric of life for the duration of my practice, while my body remains on the mat, my breath, my conscious thoughts and feelings and my soul journey forth.

In another sense I see a stick as a great metaphor for the ends or poles of experience. If equanimity is the middle, then the opposite sides of the stick: the most positive events, happiest thoughts and feelings of love and peace contrast with equal intensity: the most deplorable happenings from which thoughts of sorrow and anger, painful feelings and fear arise. My yoga mat and my walking stick engender the opportunity for extending the dimensions of experience as I search for the center as well.

Thus, with practice and the tools of practice, contradictions arise. Steadying, my practice on the mat and the discipline I have applied to walking & running in my life have brought me closest to a sense of peace centered in my true self and the present moment. In synchrony is the constant potential for walking near the water's edge leaning into joy I did not know existed as well as falling on my yoga mat and metaphysically stumbling farther down into grief than ever before.

This is the path that I chose - one of pain and purification; one that I hope expounds the fullness of life in all of it's manifestations. Is this what Patajali means by "tapas" as my practice has certainly burned away everything I thought I knew.