Kula as core

My search for the meaning of ‘core’ in yoga continues.  Amidst the holiday rush, i’m managing to stay pretty grounded.  Asana certainly helps, as does meditation, and I’ll dive more into that in my next blog.

This week I celebrated my birthday, and as usual for a full time yoga teacher living and working in the hustle of NYC, I took a yoga class to celebrate.  How perfect!  Maybe that’s not so typical for some teachers out there, but when I take a yoga class its more than just moving my body, so it feels like a party. Plus, it’s a chance to connect to a community I think of as home.  In sanskrit, the word is ‘kula’.

Kula though is more than just community.  Its a gathering of ideas and hearts, as well as people who center around a common belief, practice or idea.  In some sense, each kula has a bindu (sometimes defined as “the point or center of something that opens again into an expansion”, or “where the unity becomes the many”)  in the form of its values, a core central belief that is a common thread that each great soul has a link to.  Or the teacher or guru is the core.  When I think of the core of my practice, i often think of my kula.  The people that I choose to practice yoga with, share conversation with, my ‘kalyana mitra’, or those I’m engaged in ‘spiritual friendship’ with, matter deeply in the practice.  When I practice on my own without the kula, they are invoked.   The kula as core of yoga is significant if you are like me, and value living fully in the world as a householder rather than a renunciant.

Sorta like my other great experience from my birthday, which happened because of Facebook.  Hundreds of people wrote on my wall sending wishes and love, and it dawned on me, that on that day, I was the core too.