Forward from Angela -- I just read this interesting article. It is what I was trying to say to the Ecofem list however, Mr. Fields says it more eloquently. Would you be kind enough to forward this article to the Ecofem list and give them my regards. OK if you do not want to. Happy New Year! Thanks! Angela ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~````` THE TIME IS NOW By Rick Fields A growing recognition that we need a spiritual response to the ecological devastation of our planet is taking shape under many banners: spiritual ecology, deep ecology, Earth-based spirituality, eco-psychology, feminist ecology, creation spirituality, Gaia consciousness, and Dharma Gaia to name just a few. Thinking about all these variants, it occurred to me that they can all be considered as a kind of yoga of the Earth - Earth yoga. Shortly thereafter, I came across an essay by religious scholar Christopher Chapple on yogic environmentalism. The yoga tradition, he wrote, includes resources that can increase environmental awareness. Practice of the asanas (postures) and prana (breath) bring enhanced awareness of the natural world, and our senses become receptive to the elements of Earth, water, fire, and air, and to the movements of the cosmos of the sun, moon, and stars. The ethical precepts of yoga also fit well with environmental precepts, says Chapple. Nonviolence limits harm to animals and the Earth, nonpossession cuts down consumption, and through the practice of purity we become aware of pollution. And the ultimate philosophical goal of yoga, he concludes, involves the cultivation of higher awareness, which, from an environmental perspective, might be seen as an ability to rise above the sorts of consumptive material concerns that can be harmful to the ecosystem. Dr. Chapple's essay encouraged me to go further and think about the practice of an Earth yoga - a yoga that would cut through our denial, awaken us to our situation, inspire a truly Earthy spirituality, and help us defend and restore the Earth. Just as in yoga we relax and stretch muscles constricted by the stresses of civilized life, so would the practitioner of Earth yoga extend his or her practice to include the body of an Earth attacked by the multiple stresses of civilization. From the viewpoint of Earth yoga, the body of the Earth is, like our own, a complex living organism, and like our own, sacred. Gaia, as the scientist James Lovelock calls her, has rainforest lungs, riverine arteries, soil for skin, rock bones, an oceanic heart that pulses with the slow beat of the tides, themselves pulled by sun and moon, winds that move like prana, a delicate aura of ozone and a mysteriously evolving force and unfathomable wisdom that creates and sustains and destroys and again creates all life, including ours, in a cosmic rhythm we can only contemplate with awe. The practitioner of Earth yoga seeks to know this body upon and within which we live as we seek to know our own bodies. So the practice of Earth yoga might best begin with that portion of Earth closest to you, your bioregion or watershed. How many of us know, for example, where our water comes from and where our water, after we've used it, goes? How many of us know the contours of the body we live on? Yoga teaches us, among other things, to care for our bodies as sacred, inside and out. As we come to know the body of Gaia as intimately as we know our own, we discover places that have been wounded, polluted, poisoned and that need to be restored and healed. This is karma yoga, the yoga of work and action. Thus just as yoga cleanses and purifies our bodies, Earth yoga cleans toxic dump sites and polluted rivers. And just as yoga restores our body, Earth yoga restores the body of the Earth: renewing streams that are no longer safe for spawning salmon, replanting clear-cut hillsides, reintroducing wolves and buffalo.Earth yoga also recognizes the necessity to preserve and defend wild lands. It teaches us to fight as spiritual warriors, without hatred, and without attachment to winning or losing. In accord with the first principle of ahimsa, Earth yoga follows the way of direct nonviolent action introduced to the world by the Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi, developed in America by Martin Luther King, and used more recently in defense of the Earth by Earth First! and others. But while Earth yoga embraces action, it is based on the peace of contemplation and the calm eye of wisdom at the center of the hurricane. There Shiva, cobra coiled around his neck, sits on top of Mount Kailas. Wilderness retreats are an important practice of Earth yoga. People emerge with a tremendous amount of inner insight, wisdom, and energy, almost as if they receive an initiation directly from Mother Earth herself, reports John Milton, who runs a week-long retreat called Sacred Passage. And that empowers them to go on and do things that are often unbelievable in their effects. At the same time Earth yoga also includes the yoga of bhakti, or devotion. Rituals such as the Council of All Beings developed by John Seed and Joanna Macy help us identify with the Earth. Yoga has much to contribute to the development of such rituals. The movements developed by Seed and Macy to reenact our evolutionary journey, for example, could be augmented by the nature-inspired asanas of hatha yoga. Earth yoga teaches us how to stand (and be) like a mountain, or a tree, rooted in the Earth, reaching for the heavens. Poses like fish, cobra, crocodile, lion, and camel help reconnect us through imaginative embodiment with our animal kin. The gods and goddesses and myths of India can also play a part. Hanuman the monkey god is worshiped as the servant of Ram; Ganesh, the son of Shiva has the trunk of an elephant; and Vishnus avatars include a fish and boar. The message is clear: Divinity can often take an animal form and so monkeys live free and unharmed in many Indian temples. The Jataka tales recount the Buddhas previous animal lives, and the sacrifice of his own life to feed a starving tigress and her cubs. At its highest level, this view leads to the radical ahimsa of a Gandhi, who shocked European visitors to his ashram by insisting that they co-exist with snakes, scorpions, and spiders, recognizing, as Arne Naess, the founder of deep ecology, writes, a basic common right to live and blossom, to what is sometimes called biospherical egalitarianism. The root meaning of yoga, we often are reminded, is union, joining, bringing together. And so Earth yoga: the yoga that leads us to realize the unity, the oneness of human and Earth, civilized self and wild Nature: the Great Mystery we have never been, and cannot ever be, apart from. The name Earth yoga may or may not serve us. But as John Seed and many others show, something very like it already exists, in vision and in practice.
