River Stone took a deep breath in, inhaling her intentions, awakening her chakras, filling her lungs and her muscles with oxygen, and she held it; she let the oxygen cycle and settle, let it marinate and infuse, let it carry the soul of the planet into her psyche. And then she let it go. Another breath to awaken the serpent sleeping in her pelvis, wrapped around the base of her spine like a hand around the hilt of a sword… Her Yogi, Rathna (nee James), always told her that that was a terrible analogy, but she liked it. It was an empowering visual for her clients.
“It’s a violent visual, just right for Westerners,” he’d say, brushing sweaty hair off her forehead. “Kundalini is not violent, it’s the opposite. You’re misleading them.”
“It’s what they relate to. They need to relate, or they don’t stick around. They don’t understand an awakening that isn’t also a liberation, and they equate liberation with violence. I can’t help that. It’s just a cultural thing.”
“You don’t have to encourage it,” he’d say, pressing a sulky kiss against her lips.
River chided herself for letting her mind wander and brushed away the memory, bringing herself back to the moment. To the present. She needed to prepare for her morning sun salutation class. It was the first of this summer’s retreat and there were more students this time around. She’d talked the director of the Wavelengths Center into letting her try something new and she was excited, but nervous, too. There were always purists in the crowd who hated blending ancient traditions with anything new or different. If they complained she’d give them her speech about the chakras and how in Ayurveda there were three, but in Vaishnavism there were twelve and everyone else was somewhere in the middle, to show them that nothing was set in stone, the path to enlightenment was experiential and experiences varied. So it was ok to try new things and expand their lived experience. The speech mostly worked.
She rose from her meditation pillow and walked to the front room of her little cottage on the Center’s grounds to check on her plants, a wagon full of rattlesnake calatheas. Twenty to be exact. She had fifteen students and five extra plants in case of mishaps. It was still dark out and the plants held their striped green leaves straight up, showing their dark purple undersides. River had practiced the routine with the plants several times to get the timing just right. Sunrise was at 5:02AM and the plants would start to let their leaves down at about 5:15, so she started class at 5:10.
As she walked through the Center’s vibrant and well tended grounds she nodded to a pair of other instructors out for a jog and tried to enjoy the chilly bite the air still held. Later, when she was out in the triple digit heat doing her Bikram class, she’d miss this chill. She personally hated hot yoga, but it was incredibly popular so the Center insisted she teach it. The Center had only been built five years prior and was still trying to gain a foothold in California’s competitive yoga retreat market. She still remembered the uproar in the community when the Center had purchased the gorgeous bit of mountain property, displacing a defunct cemetery whose owner hadn’t been able to pay the land loan. All of the bodies had to be moved, it was a big deal. River kind of hated that part of the Center’s history, but tried to stay in the present and not think about it. It was a thought cloud she needed to let float away.