Above, my beautiful mom with my daughter, 3.5 years ago - still squatting in her early 80’s! This post is an excerpt from a Yoga Mama Manual that I’ve been working on for a couple years now. I’m sharing it here in honor of International Women’s Day.
“Just as the Buddhist commitment to bringing awareness to every action is called mindfulness practice, Ishvara pranidhana could be called "heartfulness" practice; it awakens our constant devotion to the Source of life and keeps our hearts open to the Divine in every moment, no matter what arises.”
-Shiva Rea, Ishvara Pranidhana: The Practice of Surrender
Even if you aren’t aiming for enlightenment, self-realization, or a spiritual experience when you start doing yoga, if you keep practicing regularly, you are bound to at least have some experiences where you feel more connected to yourself and to something bigger in yourself that we all share — even if it’s just the stress of motherhood that we fall into (and hopefully the dissipation of that stress).
Yoga is not a religion, even though it does have historical ties to Hinduism. I personally love the symbolism and lessons from the various Hindu deities. But maybe we hesitate to turn to other cultures for spiritual inspiration because we want to be PC or avoid cultural appropriation. Maybe finding images of the Divine Feminine in traditional religions and myths make us feel like imposters; I realize that those deities might not serve every yogi in their practice. That’s totally fine; it’s all about devoting your practice to something that is meaningful to you, even if it’s an abstract concept like peace, love, union.
But, as mothers, I’d like to encourage you to at least reflect on the Divine Feminine, which is not only for women or goddess worshipers. No — the Divine Feminine is a set of qualities that can add depth to your yoga practice and help you reconstruct the traditional, more masculine aspects of yoga so that you can embody both parts of yourself, masculine and feminine. It has very little to do with genitalia. We all have qualities from each.
I tend to think of the moon as a natural expression of the Divine Feminine: continually changing, receptive (of the sun’s light), associated with emotions. We can also think of the Earth as the ultimate representation of the Divine Feminine: creative, nurturing, receptive, continually changing and transforming, and capable of holding everything (literally everything!) in the world. Isn’t that why we call her “Mother Earth” while we refer to the sun as Father?
In light of that, I’d love to propose a set of sequences we can refer to as Earth Salutations. After all, sun salutations and moon salutations are powerful, but they don’t always fill our needs. Earth salutations can be a way to help us get grounded and feel more supported by the Earth, the Mother of mothers.
In the coming weeks, as the moon wanes, I’ll share some ideas for what I call Earth Salutations: ways to use simple yoga sequences to bring ourselves from standing down to the ground. It’s a nice way to get some of the benefits of the more traditional surya namaskar (a.k.a. sun salutation). Dr. Garrett Neill also provides some great alternatives to surya namaskar in his article linked here. Another alternative could be a moon salutation, which tends to be more gentle; check one variation here.
Stay tuned for some Earth Salutations! On this day of International Women’s Day, how can you celebrate your female body? Or someone you know that embodies feminine qualities, physically, emotionally, spiritually? Jai Ma!