Fire
Our friends at Good Hope Nursery nearly lost their home and livelihood in a devastating fire at Cape Point on November 8th (here's incredible footage of their tiny oasis miraculously preserved). It was harrowing and reminded me of our near loss two years ago. A year that brought so much tragic loss that it seemed likely we would lose our home too. As my family was evacuated in the wee hours I watched the terrifying red glow from a distance while I guided students on a hike...a trek that had to keep rerouting as our camps burned to the ground. I will never forget standing atop Table Mountain and seeing the entire Cape Peninsula in flames. It was nothing short of apocalyptic. But here we are, post-apocalypse, still standing. Our mountain covered in blooms when two short years ago it was nothing but ash and sand and devastation. For a long time it pained us to even look at it, let alone walk on it's scorched earth. Yet now I sit with rain falling on our parched land and take such delight in the magic of fybos reborn.
This last week of Flow for 2017 is about finding the balance between the Fire within and without.
Music: Rain of course
Bastrika breath -- the bellow breath to raise the fire within
Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
You cannot put a Fire out
by Emily Dickinson
You cannot put a Fire out—
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan—
Upon the slowest Night—
You cannot fold a Flood—
And put it in a Drawer—
Because the Winds would find it out—
And tell your Cedar Floor—
Fire and Ice
Fire and Flood
Both reside within us and around us, both can threaten to
consume us, or rob us of their gifts.
Look at the Cape caught in flames, and in
drought.
There must needs be balance in all things.
Here we have one male and one female poet express the yin and yang qualities
beautifully.
Rain ritual – rub hands together, start clicking, clapping
hands, hitting thighs, stamping feet, reverse
The rain lives in us!
Cooling breath – roll the tongue and inhale through it (or
hissing breath if the tongue can’t roll)
Wrestling with the inner/outer fire – menopausal hot
flushes, Cape of raging summer fires – how much is natural, how much man-made, isn’t
man part of nature?
So isn’t man-made just another manifestation of nature?
Surya Namaskara –
The inner and outer light – 12 asana – the solar
energy of 12.
The 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 months of the year, 12 hours
of the day.
Work with mantra & chakra awareness.
Visualise the full sun glowing in front of your closed eyes.
Lie in shavasana in the glow, transmute to full moonlight.
Meditate upon the year that has been.
The highs and lows.
The in-betweens.
Let your mind move through the passage of almost 12 months we
have traversed.
Allow moments to be revealed to you.
Allow the old stories you have told yourself to be
rewritten.
Set an intention for the last of this year. An early
Christmas gift to yourself.
Write something down on a piece of paper that you want to
let go of – an event, a quality or habit, an attachment – burn it in the
purifying fire.
In your journal write some thoughts around where you would
like the rest of the year to take you.
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