As yoga editor for Natural Awakenings for the past two years, it has been a deep and profound honor to share what I have learned over a lifetime of study. But at my core, I am first and foremost a yoga teacher, and to me, that has often meant stepping aside and allowing myself to become an instrument for life-force itself to speak to the students before me. I have often marveled at the words that arrive effortlessly and unbidden while I teach, and I know I cannot take credit for them. It is my deepest belief that we all have the ability to give voice to our souls; that our work is often simply to tune the instrument of our bodies, voices and hearts so that what flows through might be more pure and clear. As I relinquish my editor role, my hope is that each reader of this magazine’s yoga section will use the tools presented to attune to that which connects us all. 

                                                                                                    —Sheila Ewers, E-RYT500, YACEP

Teaching Yoga

You know me as a weaver of words

and mistress of metaphors.

I paint pictures in the air

of your body

billowing like a sail, buoyant and free

standing like a mountain ready to burst with volcanic power

or liquifying and dissolving until its boundaries disappear

And I tell you about the breath

How it is life breathing you in widening circles

How it is the pulse of the universe pulsing in you

How if you only remember to breathe, you will meet God in every moment

I show you your fear in quivering muscles, and I show you your childhood
in the stretch of

your arms

I show you the places your heart has grown armor and the ones where it has grown wings

But these words are not mine.

They land in my mouth like tufted feathers shaken from the wings of passing doves

They float free as soon as they arrive

I dare not claim them, so I give them to you

and bow my head to their mysterious source

If you understand them, pass them along.

Another waits to meet herself in their magic.

                                           

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