Om Cycles
All Things End….
The other day, sitting in my garden, I was saddened by the dying flowers. I had left my garden just before Labor Day, amazed at the vibrancy of color and life within it. But now, just at the beginning of Fall, some of my favorite flowers have already died. I was struck by how uncomfortable I was with the decaying flowers and thought back to the Spring and Summer, about how much I was invested in the garden's birth and bloom. This of course got me thinking about other areas of my life when I get sad at endings, like a really good book or movie.
As I sat in my garden, I found my way back to Yoga. I contemplated what parts of the practice I like, and which parts I would rather end. As I contemplated, I heard the voice of my teacher talking about OM cycles. OM is the sound of the universe, the ever-present background noise that the universe makes. It signifies the creation, the sustaining, and the destruction of everything.
I imagine you are aware of the big OM cycle you are in: you are born, you live, and you die. But OM Cycles are everywhere, beginning and ending, over and over. For example, your Yoga class has an OM cycle: a start, a middle, and an end.
Pre-pandemic, I enjoyed chanting in a large class. I loved being a large group chant OM 9+ times. At first, everyone breathed in together, then chanted. But over time, as everyone settled into their personal breathing pattern, I started to feel the beginnings and ends of the OMs shift. Sometimes it was a magnificent harmonious sound, occasionally a discordant sound. It occurred to me that everyone chanted OM in their own pattern: they created the beginning, middle, and the end of it.
Life, like practice, has many beginnings, middles, and ends. For example, we experience the joy of meeting a new loved one, we sustain and nourish that relationship, and sadly, in some cases, we must end the relationship. Friendships, careers, co-workers, pets, poses, breathe, all begin, sustain themselves, and end. Ends tend to feel sad for me personally. But I remind myself that the end, the destruction, is actually the energetic possibility of creating something new. When one door closes...you know the rest.
OM cycles are constant. In asana class we begin a class, sustain it, and end it in corpse pose. All through class we begin poses, sustain and end them, connect them to larger threads/sequences that also start, sustain, and end. Sometimes those poses feel harmonious and sometimes they feel discordant. The intermediate students become interested in the emotions, patterns, and intellectual discernment behind why some poses (or sequences) feel harmonious or discordant.
When I sat with OM cycles and my decaying garden, it became clear to me that, even though my garden was at its seasonal end, it was preparing for a rebirth next spring. The dying flowers would decay through the assistance of fungus and fertilize the soil. The perennials would be nourished all winter long with water from snow and nutrients in the ground. The annuals would be converted into energy for future plants. In this way, the decay became beautiful rather than sad, a beautiful OM cycle.
