Sacred Body part 2: Bubbling

by Theo Wildcroft

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground…” Rumi

You, I and the great mother of the world – as druids we come together a few times a year, if I can make it, in fields and stone circles and woodlands far from our homes. It never feels enough to me. I don’t have any easy answers to this, by the way – Just a lingering sense of historical injustice about land reform, the Enclosures Act and the sense of a birthright sold for a promise daily broken. (And there’s a gold star, by the way, for anyone who gets that reference in the comments!)

I honestly feel that seeking these experiences can be revolutionary on a personal front at least, and perhaps even a social and political one. We live in a constructed, human world that is designed to distract and numb us from reality. Whether you believe that this is a deliberate repression or pathological dysfunction will determine your own personal politics. I only know that the more time I spend on practices where I, my body and the world meet the more sensitive I am to this artificial existence. Until blockbuster films and Ben and Jerry’s icecream and blogs about crocheted Cthulus stop being a guilty pleasure and become an intolerable itch; a sensory overload in my head.

I sat on our back step each breakfast at home last August, and read Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s ‘The Dance’ (http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/). She writes of her revelation that rather than striving to be the people we hope we can be, to be more honourable, compassionate, loving, grounded, and centred. To be the fully realised beings we long to be with every fibre of our being, and live fearlessly from our truest natures: we need only to move closer to those places, people and activities that allow us to already be all we are inside. We just need to spend more time wherever we feel the deep conviction that we are already enough.

She is not alone. In the poem ‘Wild Geese’ (http://www.panhala.net/archive/wild_geese.html), Mary Oliver tells us:

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

She ends the text:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

So then this is how we find a practice of the spirit that feels authentic. We hold to what calls to us, to what works for each of us. A few years ago I had the privilege of taking the Living Druidry course with Emma Restall Orr (http://www.emmarestallorr.org/). It was all about experience, about touching the very heart and spirit of living; about the bones in the soil under our feet and the breath of the gods in the wind. And I realised during that course that what served that connection best for me, what got me into that place inside, where I could feel the world breathing with me; what really worked, time and again, was my yoga practice. That was a bit of a surprise.

In response, for the last few years, I’ve been on a pilgrimage inside the body, and to do that I’ve needed to put aside even further any considerations of label and tradition. I’ve played, crafted, danced, sweated, massaged, run, walked and sung whenever I could, and with many of you out there, on the other side of the screen.

Along the way, I’ve learnt that the yoga I practice in Britain is worlds away from how it was first practiced in India. In classical yoga, you exercise the body in order to still its demands on your mind; so that you can focus on the more sacred task of silent, still communion with the divine within. Whilst in Western yoga, there has been a bubbling up of a practice of sacred movement – a practice that celebrates and cherishes the physical body in a physical world. And by the way, there is hardly any reference to physical practice in ancient yogic texts. My practice and my teachers are all British, and that’s partly why I want to share this with you.

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There is one other Hindu reference point that I also want to share – an image of the divine dancer that has found enormous popularity in the Western yogic world. I have a statue just like the one above, a Nataraj as he is known, on my own altar at home. You’ll have seen this icon pop up all over the place. The Indian government gifted a huge one to CERN (http://www.fritjofcapra.net/shiva.html), (Note from Nimue, this is what you’re seeing, I had trouble getting Theo’s image to upload) and it’s even on the opening credits for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can check your box sets, I’ll wait.

I was taught that the Nataraj dances the universe into being, holds it together, still dancing, and then dissolves it again in the dance. I learnt that his dance flickers between concealing and revealing the inner divinity of all life. I know deep in my blood that this is because the pattern of that dance is in every atom, every fragment of life, and in each and every moment. I’ve been told that the fire of his inspiration is so bright that the Nataraj cannot be looked at directly. But I know I’ve seen him, and for me he doesn’t look much like a holy man.

I’ve seen that dance in crumbling warehouses and free festivals and under flickering strobes and cool UV lights. And in my dreams and journeys, the Dancer’s not Indian, he’s yet another white boy with dreadlocks, raving his heart out, wide open to the universe and all its ecstasies.

Find part one here - Sacred Body

Find Theo here – http://www.wildyoga.co.uk