I recently had new Yogasana tee shirts made (been a while!), and the back image is a tree's root system with the wording "Root Yourself" which just makes me smile. My student Tasha recommended a passage from Rolf Gates' book, Meditations from the Mat, which I actually own. I located the book and the passage #224 and will post it here as follows - thank you Tasha, and thank you Rolf Gates for the words:
'He who is rooted in oneness realizes that I am in every being: Wherever he goes, he remains in me.' ~ Bhagavad Gita
I once read that a great sage said the whole world was his home. It has stayed with me, this idea that we can transcend our fear and our sense of separateness that we would feel at home wherever we went. This is an extremely nourishing vision for me. It is also the direction we are moving in as we learn to be at home in the asana. We enter a posture, and we let go of the need to resist, the assumption that we do not belong. We relax, we breathe, we explore, we make ourselves at home. Off the mat, we encounter another being - a spider, a person we love, a person we do not know - and we let go of the need to react, to feel separate. We relax, breathe, explore what it is to be in relationship. We allow ourselves to be at home. This process must begin in our hearts, for we suffer from loneliness because we believe we are alone. To end this suffering, we embrace a new belief. We become rooted in oneness, in the idea that we are all love, and love is all there is.
