Poems for Your Yoga Practice
Poetry is around 5000 years old, the same age as yoga, funnily enough. Poetry has reached every corner of the globe, it is an art that is a feeling experience and every possible life experience has been, in some way, transformed into a poem, yet even so all of our experiences, interpretations and feelings will be unique, adding layers of nuance and wonder.
Enjoy this collection of poetry and your unique experience.
May the sun bring you new energy by day, may the moon softly restore you by night, may the rain wash away your worries, may the breeze blow new strength into your being, may you walk gently through the world and know it’s beauty all the days of your life.
Apache Blessing
Every morning, when we wake up, we have 24 brand new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these 24 hours will bring peace, joy and happiness to ourselves and others. Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we see and do. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity. We need only to be awake and alive in the present moment.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we see and do”
Do you not hide your wounds-for even flowers bloom with in concrete fractures and damaged fragments make up the most intricate mosaics. Promise me that you will never conceal your cracks, for I will only ever see them as places in which to fill with love.
Bianca Sparacino, Seeds Planted in Concrete
Forget all of your ideas about the body-
It’s this way or that way. -
Just be with any area of it,
This present body,
As permeated with limitless space,
Drenched in freedom.
The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche
Space is worthy of worship and wonder.
It is the field within which everything exists.
Rest your eyes in the emptiness,
Inside a room, a temple, even a little jar-
Any contain space. -
Throw the one who is seeing into the centre.
And trust your mind to the embrace of space.
In a flash, all boundaries dissolve.
The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche
Enter the space inside your head.
See it as already infinite,
Extending forever in all directions. -
This spaciousness that you are
Is permeated by luminosity.
No, this radiance
Add this soul of the world.
The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche
Breathing is the flow of the divine,
Where the rhythms of life turn into each other-
The eternal exchange.
Poor one breath into the other,
Outbreath into the inbreath
Into the outbreath.
Awaken to equanimity,
A peace in the play of opposites.
The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche
In our hearts there burns a fire
That burns the veils to their root and foundation
When the veils have been burned away
Then the heart will understand completely.
Ancient love will unfold ever-fresh forms
In the heart of the Spirit,
In the core of the heart.
Rumi
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi
And still , after all this time, the sun
Has never said to the Earth , you owe me.
Look what happens with love like that .
It lights up the sky.
Hafiz
I am the taste of water.
I am the light of the Sun and the Moon.
I am the original fragrance of the Earth.
I am the heat in the Fire.
I am the life of all the lives.
I am the radiant Sun.
Among stars, I am the Moon.
Of bodies of water, I am the ocean.
Of flowing Rivers, I am the Ganga.
Of secret things I am silence.
All opulent, beautiful, and glorious creations
Spring from but a
Spark of my splendour.
Bhagavad-Gita
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
This is the first of many sharing’s.
If you have a poem or quote or really anything that inspires you please always feel welcome to share by sending an email .
