At the end of September 2011, beautiful yoga teacher friend, Beth Croft, and myself led a yoga retreat at the wonderful Molino del Rey retreat centre in the mountains of Andalucia in Southern Spain.   'Molino' is Spanish for mill, and Molino del Rey is built around 2 ancient water mills on the side of a valley. The millstreams continue to flow in and around the beautiful building - alongside the steps down the mountainside from the bedrooms down to the yoga studio, behind little niches for meditation, and even under the yoga studio itself. Wherever you are in this beautiful place, there is the sound of rushing water.  Water is the element which is associated with the second chakra, the Swadhisthana chakra, the creative centre, located within our pelvic or sacral area. The colour associated with the Swadhisthana chakra is orange, and its seed sound (the sound which activates the vibration of the chakra) is vam.I recently did a 30-day Swadhisthana sadhana project as part of my ongoing teacher training, to invite the qualities of creativity, fluidity, spontaneity into my life and my practice.  An orange altar with water for a swadhistana practice A sahaja or spontaneous, fluid practice is beautifully liberating, particularly if your experience of yoga asana is from more of a static discipline. Cats show total embodiment of the qualities of Swadhisthana - fluidity, creativity, sensuality - and my cat particularly enjoyed winding and swirling around me on my mat with me during my feline swadhistana sadhana!  The second half of my sadhana project became devoted to my little swadhistana goddess as the Universe presented us with a swadhistana challenge - she dislocated her sacro-iliac joint (the joint between the pelvis and the spine) during her travels. She is well recovered from the surgery she needed now. During these 30 days I was finally inspired to complete my Just Jhoom! (Bollywood-inspired dancercise) assessment and start some choreography of my own.  I drew inspiration from the water at beautiful Molino del Rey to share my first Water Flow class, and am inviting the opportunity for more to arise like a spring when the time is right! 'The river that flows in me also flows in you' ~ Kabir (Hindu poet and saint) Jala mangalam! Auspicious blessings of water to you. Namaste, Donna x |
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