Yoga is a Full Embrace

As my time at UMass comes to a close for this academic year, I am looking forward to holding space as a yoga teacher this summer (Thursdays 9:15–10:30 am, sign up now!). As I have reflected on what I want to study and offer, I keep returning to Lorin Roche’s poetic translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, which he lovingly calls The Radiance Sutras, but is more directly translated as “the terror and joy of realizing Oneness with the soul.” This text is one of the earliest codifications of tantric meditation practices, likely transmitted orally for a long time before finally written down in 800 AD in Kashmir. 

The text’s premise is an intimate conversation between the lovers Devi (Shakti) and Bhairava (Shiva). Devi asks the questions that compel me to my own yoga practice: Why am I here? Why am I moving, breathing, pulsating? What the heck is going on in this place and how may I better understand it? 

Bhairava responds with what he is not first. He says,

I am not a collection of incantations

Known only to experts

I am not a ladder to be climbed, 

A sequence for piercing energy centers in your body.

I am not to be found at the end of a long road.

I am right here.

Then Bhairava affirms, “I am always here. I am the embrace of your most intimate experience.” The sutras that follow are 112 ways to experience divine connection. 

This text reminds me of what I love about the tantric perspective. It is a turning-toward all that life offers us, a full embrace. It is the improv comedy rule, “Yes, and…” It is connection and co-creation, within ourselves to the divine and with all beings. It is the interplay between karma and lila, structure and spontaneity. It is cultivating spaciousness within for all of the intensity of life, an integration and acceptance of seemingly opposite forces. 

Every experience is a doorway to the divine—the mundane to the extraordinary. 

I am right here. Could it be that simple? What I say to my own children when they are inconsolable—“I am right here”— is also what the divine is always saying to me? A complete and loving presence that holds our experience is available to us at every moment. 

This summer, we will explore the many practices that might lead to a connection to this presence, to what holds us, and everyone. The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra reminds us that this connection is deeply personal, particular to each soul, and evolving. There are as many doorways to connection as there are stars in the sky. Lorin Roche tells a story about a meditation student who found the divine through sniffing cigars and whiskey. So truly, when I say the path is unique to each soul, I mean it. 

Lorin Roche died this past April after a brief period of declining health. This is another reason I wanted to bring his legacy into our classes this summer. In the public announcement of his passing, they wrote that his final prayer was “that we love each other, and that we remember what a miracle it is to be alive.” 

Wherever you are, whatever you are holding, I am right here. Yoga is a full embrace.