Vessel

Our teacher leads us into the three cycles representing the full moon and lunar eclipse. It is a dance, one fluid sequence with seemingly no beginning and no end. And in the middle I am brought to a place where I am 8 years old in a ballet studio. It is my first ballet class. My father is there and stays through the entire class. I walk up to him right after and ask him how I was. He says, "Gusto kaayo ka ug naay mutudlo nimo." "You seem to want the teacher to always guide you,"he says in halting Bisaya and English. At the time I understood it to be that I wasn't a born dancer like the others who could very well flex their bodies on their own. But he said it in a way that was gentle, kind and compassionate, the only way he knew how to be with me. Even as I recall the memory now, I am brought to a kind of sensation of falling on a pillow to cushion from gravity, from the otherwise glaring reality.

As our teacher leads us further into the sequence, I find myself doing the movements with ease surprisingly and knowing at the same time how much I am inherently capable. How I am this vessel of possibilities if I just open my heart. If the cycles of the moon are the songs of the universe, then I am her notes, moving this way and that easily, expansively, confidently. Beads of liquid drop as a waterfall from my scalp to the tips of my hair to my lower back. My insides warmly pulsate. Water on my skin, blood coursing through my veins in a delicate dance of two elements joining as one. My body know how to flex by itself, move by itself.

Our teacher says this lunar eclipse and full moon is a time of letting go of what does not serve us. A purging of some kind. Of beliefs, of emotions, of karma.

The dance continues, my body does its bidding, follows every word and action our teacher says and does. We stop momentarily from time to time to reflect but even this is a fluid pausing. No beginning and no end. I do not want it to end. And I want it to. My desire is turning fluid as well. And in the impermanence, my heart speaks.

I hear again the voice of my father, " You need a teacher."

As the moon comes in full force and shadows part of the earth, I let go of beliefs that no longer serve me.

I may not have been born a dancer but my heart is an open vessel and because it is, the teacher comes to me. And I welcome her. I embrace who I am. Into the vessel that is open. Into who I truly am."

Vinyasa

July 16th 2019

Durga Temple

Lotus Shores Siargao