Everything in the universe is pure energy, pure light and pure vibration. This is not a radical or esoteric concept: we know via modern physics that everything in the physical world is, at its essence, comprised of electrons and neutrons, or pure energy. So we understand that everything is imperceptibly vibrating at all times at a certain frequency. Whether or not we know this, we feel it. We call it gut instinct. It happens all the time when we meet people, often times we know right away whether or not the other person is a vibrational match. It's a strong sense of knowing that we feel in our core. As I drove into my personal sanctuary Sunday night, in the mountains of Southern Idaho, I was thinking about how powerful vibrational alignment can be with place as well. Just like people, places have their own vibrational frequency, and sometimes our gut instinct or awareness of vibrational alignment, creates an opportunity for connection.
Like many Seattleites, I grew up coming to Sun Valley on vacation, and I always loved it, but I was visiting as a child on someone else's agenda, not as an autonomous adult. In my late high-school/early college years, my parents traded in their skis for their clubs and Sun Valley fell off of the radar. My junior year in college I fell in love with a world-class ski racer and reconnected with Sun Valley. Every relationship, every connection we create has a purpose and a lesson to teach, there are no accidents, and I honestly believe that my ski racer came into my life simply to re-connect me to these mountains.
As I was driving up HWY 20, I remembered my first drive back here as an adult at age 21: I could remember exactly where we pulled off of the road, I could smell the air same as it was 15 years ago and see the same tone of light on the mountains. I could feel the crispness of the cool mountain air and see how the elevation and dry air create a visual acuteness and austerity that we just don't see amidst our Seattle humid marine layer. The reason the memory is so clear is that I was having a moment of awareness: I don't know how to describe these amazingly powerful moments of connection in life that we all have, but I could feel an awesome sense of knowing that in some way I was coming home.
While my relationship with said ski racer crashed and burned, my relationship with Sun Valley has persevered. In so many ways, Sun Valley has created my adult identity: it was here that I discovered my pure love of the mountains and being outside, which lead to years of glacier climbing and avid hiking. It was here that I learned to love mountain biking and that my own skiing advanced from that of recreational skier to competitive ski racer. It was here that I learned that there is nothing I love more than hours alone, outside, up high with my heart pumping and my hair on fire. It was through my connection to the mountains that I learned that when our physical bodies work really hard with a singular purpose, like getting up the hill, we can enter a trance like state of Dharana (singluar focus). We fall into a rhythm with our movements and our breath and the rest of the world falls away. With this clarity of purpose and intensity of effort we pranify (energize) the body and purify the mind. This has influenced the way I teach: in challenging asana classes were looking for those moments when the entire physical body is awake and alive, focused, and working while the mind is clear and present to this effort: moments where we're so engaged in our practice that we achieve Dharana and the world falls away. It is in the challenge that a lot people find this sense of release. And of course this makes obvious the reason for the studio's name--Mountain Flow Yoga.
Ironically many of my major life events have unfolded here as well: while in Sun Valley with the ski racer, my future husband and I connected for the first time on the back deck of Lefty's (a local dive). He told me he loved me here sealing our fate. My first child was conceived here and I discovered my second pregnancy while here. Weird? No, there are no accidents nor coincidences in this universe: the fact that all of these major life events unfolded here was simply a clear indication of my vibrational alignment and synchronicity with this place.
So now here I am 15 years later. Driving in I stopped on 20 and got out of the car simply to smell the desert sage and feel the crispness of the dry mountain air: I've spent the last two days exhausting and challenging my body while exhilarating my mind. After hours alone, on the hiking and mountain biking trails (heart pumping and hair on fire!), I stretch out my sore and aching muscles with a little Yoga--a little pure Mountain Flow.
Namaste
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