The day before my birthday, Two nations under one groove!! Can any one see a border line?
On the 18th October it seemed that the whole world was descending and converging upon Beit Jala, the little town is only a stone’s throw away from Bethlehem. This was the place in the New Testament where Christ apparently brought a young girl back from the shadow realm of death – and this convergence of so many souls from across the entire West Bank and neighbouring Israel was bringing back to life the fundamental connections that link every culture throughout human kind beyond the differences that fear and aggression have endlessly propagated.
When I read this http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/gaza-youth-breaks-out-with-a-manifesto-for-change.html# I was even more convinced that in order for Yoga to be the radically metaphorical transformational healing tool that it is it has to be as relevant to everything we might be experiencing in our world at this time whilst simultaneously displaying the paradigm that peace can exist in the middle of a war, and that transformation is the way!
What is going on now in Gaza is what yoga must not go away from. If the idea of Yoga is to hold any credibility at all it must be able to cope with the worst and the best of the Human drama!
When I was isolated and blockaded in Serbia, when the entire world community put a unilateral embargo on Serbia, I and others smuggled vital supplies in and out of that country,
and since 2004 I have been going into the West Bank working through situations that I was always advised to avoid and turn my back on. I never stopped because this is my mission,
and similarly I see Yoga in the same way, but if it is not dynamic and radically reflects our world I personally could not go on with Yoga.
Forgive my passion but this is something I am very clear about, that our world now does not need any more niche yoga, it is crying out for yoga to grow up and become the radically reflective and transformational tool it always had the potential to become!
And if this all seems a tad too emotional consider this then. If Yoga has the potential to change and transform people’s lives, (and there are endless examples and testimonies of this) what do we as Yogis do – stand by with this momentous gift for humanity (like Ostriches with their heads in the sand) and leave our world to the likes of Netanyahu ?!?!?!? Maybe it’s time that the Yoga community sees themselves in a new light!?
David Sye
