This evening my husband and I will be attending the opening satsang of the annual 40 day retreat that occurs at the Blue Star. Every year I try, with varying degrees of success, to be present and to attend this retreat. In past years I have had school and then work and family commitments that could not be put aside or on pause and so I have had to come to peace with this stage of life that I am in.

In Hinduism there is a framework that outlines how we can live and fulfil the duties of each stage of our life - the ashrama dharma, which are given as:

• Brahmacharya: the acquiring of knowledge of culture, spirituality, society, history and abstinence: the stage when we are students
• Grihastha: financial, emotional support towards family. Enjoyment of pleasures within the realm of dharma: the stage when we live our life as a householder.
• Vanaprastha: grandparents, retirement: the stage where we are transitioning from being an active member of the workforce to someone with more time to spend in contemplation.
• Sanyasa: a final step towards renunciation, striving for moksha (liberation, freedom).

I am in the householder stage - becoming aware of and comfortable with this has led me to be much more relaxed about how involved I can be in various events.

The Blue Star 40 day retreat is special as it honours the time when my Guru, Sri Vasudeva, went through a period of transformation. Each year from March 26th to May 5th there are workshops, meditations, discourses and conversations. All of that begins with today’s opening satsang. This is how I was introduced to yoga - through meditation and discourse, through satsang and then hatha yoga. This is why my practice is multi-faceted.

While my public classes are mostly asana (posture-based), I weave in management of the breath and subtle energy. Through my workshops and retreats I share about philosophy. I am always eager to observe how the 40 days unfold for me, how I am impacted by the teachings and how my own teaching shifts based on what I continue to learn.

What stage of life are you in? Do you find that your yoga practice shifts according to your personal responsibilities?

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

peace,

Renee Arundhati