LOKAH SAMASTAH SUKHINO BHAVANTU
Dear Community
This June newsletter is dedicated to all of you, our amazing, vibrant, loving, inspiring and passionate students who make up the unique and special community of Sonic Yoga. Coming together to practice and share our love of life is one of the greatest gifts we can ever receive.
Community is a powerful presence. It is the strong bond of community that can lift us up when we are feeling blue, that can hold our hearts when we are down, it can help us celebrate the joys of our lives and heal us when we are ill. With community life is richer and fuller. When we are connected to others, we are not alone, we are held and supported. We feel more grounded, more centered and most of all loved.
I’ve been going through a lot of emotions these past few months with friends, family and community members facing very difficult challenges in their lives. It’s been amazing for me to watch how the coming together of friends to support one another is truly the only medicine to heal the sorrow of these difficult times. I am currently in a meal train for a friend who has just had surgery. It’s so beautiful to prepare healing food and to see your friends and their families nourished with your love.
My teacher Shiva Rea has also been facing challenging health issues, and to witness the coming together of the Prana Flow community has been more than magical. The holding of space and love and prayers is a powerful healer. Also, as I write this post our dear teacher Tracy is facing the challenge of her mom in hospice, again, the community of friends is a mystical blessing for her.
Last night I attended a Viking funeral for an amazing soul in my community who passed of cancer this fall. She requested to go out with a party at the beach at sunset with friends and family celebrating her life. It was an amazing dreamlike evening. We built altars in the sand with offerings from nature, we chanted, shared food, laughed and cried. At sunset we set a wooden raft out into the sea carrying messages of love to her sweet soul.
I’ve also been on the receiving end of these healing circles when I was going through my own breast cancer journey in 2014. My friends, family and community cooked for me, drove me to appts, rubbed my feet, washed my hair and bathed me when I couldn’t. I will never forget each and every gesture that supported me on my healing journey. It was their love that healed me.
Times like these are challenging but there is also so much beauty that comes from the suffering. The coming together of community makes life real and worth living. It answers the questions to the whys’. It teaches us that loving our friends, neighbors and families is the greatest gift of life.
So, enjoy this time of early summer. Open yourselves to new experiences and celebrate the full fruition the beauty & radiance of life. Commune and connect with your beloved family and friends. Enjoy these experiences, party, laugh, dance and celebrate together.
In celebration of community, Jeffrey and I will be guiding a special Summer Solstice celebration at Sonic Yoga. Our dear friend Thomas Wave will accompany us on live sitar. If you’ve never heard the sitar you are in for a magical treat.
I encourage you to come and join your fellow students in this glorious ritual of opening to the light within but of also honoring the outward radiance of your loving connections to family, friends and of course your fellow Yoga students.
Wishing you a beautiful entry to summer, may your days be blessed with an expanding inner light and may you also feel the love and gratitude of the expanding outer light of your community. May you honor the beauty of that connection and cherish all of the joy that it brings.
To cultivate community, try chanting the Lokah Samastah Sukhino Mantra
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.
A more detailed translation:
lokah: location, realm, all universes existing now
samastah: all beings sharing that same location
sukhino: centered in happiness and joy, free from suffering bhav: the divine mood or state of unified existence
antu: may it be so, it must be so (antu used as an ending here transforms this mantra into a powerful pledge)
This translation shares the full depth and breadth of this sacred mantra.\
Lokah Samastah refers to the idea that we are all living in one connected field or plane. That we are not separate. It shows us that we all experience the same challenges independent of time or location. We are all part of a collective effort. It encourages respect and love for the planet, for all living things, and for all beings so we may live together in harmony.
Sukhino honors the sweetness of life and spirituality, it goes beyond the happiness of the mundane plane. It refers to the nectar of divinity that flows from the spiritual heart. The freedom implied in Sukhino recognizes the laws of free will and our equal rights to pursue freedom. It encourages us to respect the freedom of others and to be mindful of our actions to not suppress the freedom of others.
Bhav refers to the feeling state of love. It acknowledges that love is our purest state and it is our inherent nature. It encourages us to move from this divine state of being so that we can shed grace on all those that we encounter.
Antu turns this mantra into a proclamation rather than a request. It adds power and potency to the words and gives the mantra its vibrational strength.
Chant the mantra at any point in your life when you want to feel connected to all beings. The mantra is helpful to heal when you are feeling blue and to lift you up even higher when you are experiencing joy.
You can follow this mantra with Om Shanti Shanti Shanti,
Peace, Peace, Peace
