Some friends came to visit us last weekend, and they stayed in the yoga, er, I mean, the spare room.
In which there is an altar; a cross with candles.
'Is that,' they teased me, 'where you do the ritual sacrifices?'
Well, yes.
Every day, when I get on my yoga mat, I light those candles.
Then, I sit or lie quietly and start to watch my breath. I start to allow my breath and body to be my guiding force, and in doing so, I ritualistically surrender my mind to them. As my breath lengthens and starts to stimulate a bit of heat, I burn up the toxins from my day.
I bring physical stiffness and pain, mental strain, any sense of disconnection or scatteredness to my mat. Then I move through my yoga poses, guided by my breath, and I sacrifice these to my internal fire.
I've been doing this for more than ten years. Not with the same candles, obviously. (I actually have quite a candle habit, but that's another story.)
It's one of the things that makes my yoga into Yoga: the ritual, and the symbolism. By lighting candles, such a simple thing, I mark the space between my practice and the rest of the day. By keeping symbols of faith in my yoga space, like crosses and buddhas, I make space to commune with my spirituality.
I haven't always had a special room for my yoga, but I have always made an altar. That external symbol of the divine helps me to connect to my internal experience of divinity.
Now, just for clarification, I need to tell you that I believe in Something More because I choose to. I don't care if it does or doesn't exist, frankly. I choose to have faith because it feels congruent for me: it explains that feeling of connectedness I sometimes feel with the world around me, and it chases away the feelings of isolation.
So I choose symbols of faith from all religions, like a South Indian autorickshaw driver would. Just like they use stickers of the Virgin Mary, Ganesha and the Buddha all in one lot as protection against crashes, a sort of symbolic seatbelt, I cheerfully pick and mix my icons. It's all the same God to me, but some representations appeal more than others.
The symbols and the rituals mark the space, make it sacred.
The symbols and the rituals make space for me to remember that I too am sacred.
The divine in me bows to the divine in you: Namaste!
I have a lot of experience with people rejecting the practice of yoga and meditation on the basis that it's incompatible (or even dangerous) to their existing belief system. I nearly peed myself at the irony of Praisemoves for example – http://www.praisemoves.com/
Different doors to the same house.