The purpose of this insight page is for Donna to be able to share her ongoing explorations in teaching and practice with her students on a more casual basis.
Copyright © Donna Farhi 2009 
March 2009
The Courage to Give Birth
You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
long before it happens
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.
~ Rilke
As we hurtle forward into the uncertain climate of 2009, I have been reflecting on what a tumultuous time 2008 has been for so many of my friends and acquaintances and those within my Yoga sangha. That year began with a bang for me, literally, when in late January only a few days after completing the 21-day Yoga teacher training program here in Christchurch a driver ran a red light and completely totaled my trusty Toyota station wagon, leaving me unharmed but shaken and my car a crumbled mass of metal.
Within weeks of my accident I picked up the phone to call my farrier to make an appointment for the horses to be shod to discover that the strange laryngitis he'd had for months had been finally diagnosed as stomach cancer. And so began a long course of debilitating chemotherapy, overwhelming bouts of nausea, and a life-threatening operation which amazingly he survived. As I found time, I visited my friend bringing him copies of my favorite magazine, the Sun, so that in the rare moments when his mind could focus he might enjoy a short article, story or poem. Sometimes I just drove over to his house to give him a hug and to say I was thinking of him.
 Months later I headed away for what is now known in the office as the Northern Hemisphere tour. After years of staying healthy on the road despite all the chops and changes that go with international travel, I found myself felled with the flu while in Austin, Texas which as it happens was experiencing record high temperatures. Between the debilitating heat and staying up all night propped on a stack of Mt Cook pillows swallowing for air like a goldfish out of water, I struggled to make myself well enough to get through the next class. A few weeks after leaving the United States for England I received a series of urgent e-mails notifying me that a dear student of mine had come home to discover her 31-year old fiancée dead in bed. No autopsy could give a conclusive reason for his passing.
I spent many weeks digesting this tragic event and on arriving home in New Zealand arranged to pick up my horses. As I excitedly spoke to the woman who looks after Numen and Liberty over the winter, she paused and then dropped the news that her 32-year old sister had died suddenly while watching a DVD, leaving her two young children. A few weeks later, another student e-mailed to say that her sister-in-law had died of an aneurism also leaving two small children motherless.
Two friends have survived heart attacks, and another is awaiting news of an ovarian biopsy. The world economy has crashed and global warming is turning into global broiling. Life savings have disappeared as investment companies and banks collapse. Once secure jobs have become less so. It has been a time to reflect on the nature of sudden loss and the fragility of life. It has also been a time to meditate on what truly is of value. What is worth doing and what is not worth doing? It is in times like these that we may fall back on the old clichéd, but nonetheless important meditation on the impermanence of life. Yet in my own reflection on this, asking the question "what would I do today if I knew my tomorrows were limited" didn't reach deep enough. I felt something crucial was missing.
For you see, this is also the year that my mare Liberty became pregnant and began the long 11 month gestation period to produce her offspring. During all the doom, gloom and general mayhem of departures and sudden deaths, there has been this little miracle forming and a growing excitement as the birth draws close.
And then it occurred to me that the missing crucial understanding is this: we spend so much of our lives. More... (81KB)
Archives
June 2007 (33KB)
October 2007 (33KB)
March 2008 (51KB)
August 2008 (118KB) |
