SPRING: CLEANSING, RENEWAL, REBIRTH & AWAKEN 1

As we move from winter into spring, we experience an essence of potential that begins to grow within nature and within ourselves. Our center is growing and exploring that potential through our classes, workshops and services. One such workshop is “Yoga and Self Trust” presented by Victoria Crawford. I have invited Victoria, who has taught at Desert Song for 15 years, to offer her thoughts about the season and to be our teacher focus for the month.
May this season bring newness, vibrancy and healthy opportunities to explore the dynamic essence within each of you.

~Mary Beth Markus

With spring comes thoughts of newness and birth: baby birds and insects of brilliant colors appear, purple petunias, courageous daffodils and other glorious flowers arrive, the weather begins to warm and the sun is still soft and mild. Life is once again reborn! Beautiful and soft in it’s tenderness, spring inspires hope and endless new beginnings.

It is a time of transition and a time of polarities. Winter is ending and releasing it’s claim and yet there are often stops and starts before spring comes in fully. The weather warms up and then with a drop in temperature, the heat inside is needed once again. Or the flowers are planted and a sudden frost comes. In early spring, the beginning is bumpy and unpredictable.

I was born on the first day of spring and my mother often told me the story of the day she went into labor. It was March 20th and it was a beautiful sunny and soft day. She packed spring clothes and headed off with my dad to the hospital. However when she woke the next day with her new baby and looked out, a thick blanket of snow was everywhere. March 21st. One day’s difference. Spring is like that…stops and starts until it finally claims the space.

Bulbs come to mind during the early spring. They rest below the surface, surrounded by the dark earth and wait until they get an inner prompting that it’s time to grow. In the right time, in the darkness they open, extend and push upward unseeing and unseen until they break the surface and find the light. What a journey! It’s easy to remember the visible bud and burst of color while forgetting the other side; the courageous journey through the dark, yet they are both part of the story.
As we shake off winter and move into spring we are awakening to a new self. We may feel the inner prompting, the excitement and invitation to grow or we may sense the darkness, want to hide and feel a bit unsettled. Eventually spring pushes all of that aside and calls to us anyway. It invites us to clear out the old, cleanse and prepare for a new beginning. It reminds us that just around the corner is a burst of color waiting to be fully seen and appreciated.

Our yoga practice is well suited for the polarities of early spring. Rooting down we connect with the earth. Lengthening up we connect with the Sacred. And then as we breathe, the breath comes into the space created by this polarity creating more space and access to the heart. In this place, we can sense our inner knowing and listen to the quiet voice within. Our practice reminds us to let go of old habits and ways of being that no longer serve and allow the birth of the new, fresh and vibrant ways of being to emerge and flower.

~Victoria Crawford