Opposite & Equal Action
by Jolie Cash
8/8/08

Life has been both full and lazy all at the same time. 
I took quite a bit of time to be responsibly irresponsible 
this summer. I have had more time on my hands than I ever 
have and felt as if I could only get less done each day. 
I spent the entire summer (so far) just lazy and empty but 
full beyond what I usually think my capacity is. Thank goodness 
for my practices that keep me empty.

 My spiritual path has gone in some wild directions showing 
me both chaos and balance at the same time. This is no surprise 
to me as I have spent my life rubbing the carbon together to 
see the shimmer of the diamond appear only when the sweat and 
tears have diminished. I have barely endured these tumultuous 
times and at the same time can only say that I have had nothing 
but excitement, joy and fun. How is it that one can feel on top 
of the world one moment and the next feel like mother earth sat 
on her. I suppose the easy answer would be a chemical imbalance, 
HAH! heard that one before. Thank goodness I do yoga or ya never 
know what your gonna get!

How is it that one knows what to share if one never experiences 
it? I'll tell you, one doesnt! One must feel it, live it and taste 
it before one can even begin to play with the fire of change. 
This is why I sell my teacher training as "LIFE CHANGING". Anyone 
can go anywhere and pay someone who has more experience than them 
to learn a few postures an get a few techniques to teach a good 
yoga class, but that will soon end and the path will fall short 
of going over a cliff. When one enters my training I tell them 
that this is about opening up your heart and the skeletons in 
your closet at the same time and facing them. This is where the 
juice for them as a teacher lies. Who really gives a rats rear 
what postures we do, we have been doing them for 6,000 years. 
Don't get me wrong, the postures work! That is the canvas for 
the opening into the juice of what I am talking about, but it 
is the experience that comes from the postures that allows the 
teacher to share on a deeper level. A local studio owner, friend 
and associate of mine, Janice Gates (author of book: YOGINI) put 
it perfectly in our conversation today. She said "what people want 
is an experience. Anyone can offer great techniques, but we are all 
here for an experience." What I have been meditating on today is 
that she didn't say they all want a GOOD experience, she said they 
all want AN experience. It reminded me of my story and how intense 
it was as I was going through it and how no one in their right mind 
would EVER jump up, raise their hand and say "OH! pick me, I want 
to have a nervous breakdown!" Instead, one wants to heal. I could 
go into the  whole "healing thing" but instead I will take you back 
to where I was going when I started in the first place, my 
responsible irresponsibility of summer 2008........

I have so many students and friends that are always 
questioning my theory of suffering. Perhaps they question 
it because they are trying to live in the fuzy feel good 
fairy world, or perhaps they just haven't hit the 
place of suffering that I have known to understand, it doesn't 
really matter. What matters is that we are all suffering and  
we don't have to, we have practices for that. But one doesn't 
always make a change when life is cozy. One only considers making 
a change when discomfort arises. It is in that discomfort that we 
choose to make a difference in our lives. Take the world for example. 
I know this is a bit bigger than the big picture, but think about 
it. Did we unplug the microwaves and stop using styrofoam in the 
70's because it was convenient. NO! we continued to pollute our 
world and bodies because it was easy. When it was easy, we just 
kept keepin on. It wasn't until our bodies as a society started 
manifesting cancer and our planet suffered (which really translates 
to us suffering because mother earth would swallow us in 50 years 
flat if we stopped stopping her) that we decided to change our ways.

So I allowed myself to be irresponsible in my days of lazy 
introspection. Really looking at my world I have created for myself, 
not always comfortable with it. Wondering why I have chosen the 
hardest path most times. Why didn't I just  do what my mother 
begged me to do, get a job with benefits, start my 401K, blah, 
blah, blah. Not that it is all blah, just for me it was a path 
of ignorance compared to what I was shown of my potential. I was 
broken down by my own ignorance and shown that life was about 
growth and change. It was about using the suffering to become a 
better person and more importantly to use my own experiences of 
suffering to help others understand what it is to become empty 
which translates to being vulnerable. I love the term vulnerable 
because it gets so many peoples panties in a ruffle. We think of 
it as weak when it is an amazing state of openness to change and 
loving ourselves and others in PURE form. 

In order to know balance, one must fall. To feel the cool light 
of the moon, one must sweat from the heat of the sun. To know 
responsible, one must experience being irresponsible.This is 
opposite and equal action. To root down, one must lift up. So 
allow yourself to sink deep into the state you are in and find 
that opposite. Try it for size and see how it fits. Feel opposite 
and equal action in all that you do. It is from this place that 
you will make a change. If it is not where you want to be then move!



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Union as Empowerment
Shiva & Shakti in our bodies 
by Jolie Cash

 
The beginning of my path to yoga began from a state 
other than physical. You see I had lost my mind and 
was in search of finding it again. During a very hard 
time in my life I experienced what the allopathic 
practioners would call a nervous breakdown. I was 
unable to stand by myself, my mother had to feed and 
bathe me like a child and sleep was interrupted by 
anxiety attacks that sent me beyond deep depression.

My mother finally decided to commit me to the hospital. 
As I stood in the center of the warehouse of my failing 
business, I waited for them to arrive in the white van 
with the straight jacket and sedate me. I phoned the woman 
from whom I had bought my business, she later became my 
friend, mentor and teacher, and asked her to help run my 
business while I went away. She encouraged my mom to give 
us 3 hours at which time I would return and go to the 
hospital if it was still necessary. She took me to the 
beach where I stood 6 months earlier to take vows of 
marriage, which was now also failing along with my 3 
businesses, and taught me to put my feet on the ground. 
In this "session" I experienced the returning of half my 
being. I had been functioning with only half the energies 
that a balanced being uses. I had left England to return 
home from my husband and in the process, left my masculine 
power behind. This may sound very woo-woo, but the session 
included a process of returning my energies to self, at 
which point I began to feel my body come together as if I 
was being fully dressed in a cloak of power. I was able to 
stand and walk away from that day in total being and never 
to see the white jacket or mind altering drugs!

Through the last 11 years, with the help of my mentor and my 
asana practice, I have worked with these energies to find a 
balance in my body beyond any that I could have imagined. 
Through my asana practice, I have found the two energies 
shiva and shakti, that are in fact alive and flow through 
the channels that are awakened through the opening of the 
body in asana. 

It is getting well known in the "energy world" that the 
left side of the body is feminine and the right side is 
the masculine. We can go further and connect them to the 
brain but for now we will stay with energy. If you do not 
connect with energy, then allow your mind to wrap around the 
"freeway" of the breath and where it flows in your body keeping 
the possibility of energy open since science has proven we are 
made up of electrical currents.

Ha-tha Yoga means Ha (Sun) Tha (Moon) Yoga (from the word yoke 
meaning Union) The word alone IS balance. The sun rises and the 
day is balanced by the setting of the moon. So is our practice. 
In this celebration of Ha-Tha, we begin our practice as our day 
begins, shining and expanding, heating~tapas, the friction of 
purification and end our practice with the moving inward cooling 
energy of the moon. Drawing  from the energies of both to create 
union of power that resides deep within the memory of every cell 
in our body.

Further than just the left and right, we move our attention to 
the front and back of the body. The back side of the body is 
the feminine, and the front side is the masculine. The female 
has the intuition, the knowing of what needs to happen, that 
is why we are the mothers. The male is the action, the ability 
to make things happen, that is why they have the muscles. 
This is not to say that the masculine has no intuition and 
that the feminine is helpless, but for the sake of union, 
these are the roles that these energies play to come together 
in power. My mentor used to tell me while we were working on 
the union within of the two energies, that "if we (women) 
didn't tell the men to build us a toilet, we would still be 
using the bushes". We had the knowing and the male took action. 
This is also not to say that you can go home and push your men 
around ladies! This is to be used for empowerment remember. 
Although this concept can be used in relationship, we will 
visit that at another time and remain with the energies of 
balance in our bodies.

Experience this in your body: Come into the standing pose 
Virabadrasana 2 (warrior 2). Feel your backside of the body 
ground down. Notice the energy move down from the root. (the 
tailbone for a physical reference). Allow the body to relax, 
there is nowhere to go right now. As you allow the body to 
relax, feel your buttocks let go and soften into the pose. 
LOSE your posture for a moment, let gravity take over so you 
can really feel relaxed and grounded. Let the energy move down 
the backside and follow through the pelvic floor rounding 
through the perineum and up to the pelvic bone. From the 
pelvic bone, while staying relaxed, feel the front side of 
the body lift. This is not a muscling up, this is a LIGHTENING 
up, as though it were strictly the breath or prana lifting you. 
Like a mist hovering in a valley moving up the side of the 
mountain, expanding in the front side of the body! The back 
side of the body knows what to do, allow it to do it. Rooting 
down into the earth, solid and connected, the way a mother is 
to the womb. The front side of the body has the action, a 
lifting up like the glistening dew on the tree that experienced 
a fresh rain. Continue this flow of energy circling the body 
down the back through the root and up the front side. Notice 
the expansion naturally happening out each limb of your 
physical body. Allow it to come from your center at the belly 
and expand outward (vayana vayu) to your whole being.

Repeat on the other side in a relaxed manner. Remember to 
allow the root to soften and the buttocks to follow the 
example as you practice this flow of continued energy down 
the back and up the front of the body

Using this concept in all areas of your life and your body. 
Take those moments between tasks to check in with what really 
"feels" right and move from that place of knowing and allow 
the action to follow. The expansion comes from intuition, 
it is the action taken without the knowing that results in 
disempowerment and  the end result, suffering. Allow the shakti, 
the feminine energy to be present guiding you in all that you 
know as you unite the shiva, the masculine, to carry out the 
vision of union resulting in a place of empowerment from within 
your whole body and life.