Learn Walking Meditation!

Another video is up! This is a short “how-to” for walking meditation, another amazing thing that can be done right at home. I’m excited to be posting more yoga videos soon, with more active sequences, but this is a great “slow down, get mindful” exercise – I hope it is of benefit! 💛

The Eye of Love

The eye of Love

sees from all places

across all spans of Time,

takes us everywhere

we have always

needed to go,

helps us with the task

of remembering who

we have always been.

The eye of Love

does not ask or demand

or make judgments,

but sees us

in all of our potential,

and knows we are

striving for me.

The eye of Love

belongs to all of us,

and comes from

the space where

all that is without

and all that is within meet,

our sacred source

of all that is.

Let us meet at

the eye of Love,

and begin again,

and then begin again.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Taking the Day

Without knowing it, I have been sleeping

with tiny branch ends and leaves in my hair,

a tumble of the best of me, and of world

working together to spin life from the dark.

 

Without knowing it, I have fused with the trees,

and we have both marked our passage in time,

though they gave me eternity, wisdom and patience,

and I, what I could of my fragile, fledgling heart.

 

Without knowing it, I have passed the seasons

watching momentous stillness, then rebirth

following with eyes wide open the cyclical rhythms

to their soft sweet end, the finest of beginnings.

 

Without knowing it, I have been taking the day

for the profound lessons each of them extends

and some seep into me like the sun through skin,

and most lay buried, seeds that too, will blossom.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Heart Garden

And sometimes, in the fleeting breath

between thoughts, in the moon

that peeks through restless clouds,

in that perfect moment between

lost, shivering memories and lifeless

future projections, we truly arrive,

to where we are, and maybe the gates

don’t swing open and invite you

into your life, but maybe you approach,

cautiously, with feet more assured

the farther you go, and maybe

you stop to gather the beautiful seeds

you can plant and nourish as long

as it takes to grow them into

the wild, stunning garden of your heart.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

The Art We Are

There is nothing at all

in the brilliance of an artwork

that captivates you the moment

you rest your tired eyes on it,

not a single hue or design,

or configuration so harmonic

that you are sure you can hear

its song vibrating under your skin,

there is no wonder

contained in the sacred moment

when self meets art

and no awe

in the human capacity

to imagine a better world

and better selves in it,

there is none of this magic

that we move through,

stumble upon, are ready to meet

that we do not already

possess inside of us.

We are not only the art we make,

but the art we knew to find,

the art we let in when weary,

the art that want to lift us higher,

the art we draw to us,

the art we co-create

by letting it live through us.

There is no manner in which

we can say we are not creative,

our very bodies an intricate tapestry

of blood, stardust and bone,

our emotions an expressive dance

of all the world’s forces pivoting

around the sun, moon and earth

that always know to protect and hold

the art of our evolution.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

I Bow to You

I gather false strength

and stand upright,

me versus the world.

I throw my shoulders back,

throw my gaze long,

discerning and proud,

as though surveying

something that belongs to me,

and not to you,

or to you, and not to me,

and this is where desire dwells,

and a terrible need grows,

and I am in my perch,

and you are in yours,

and no proximity

can bring us together.

 

I bend down,

close my eyes, and bow,

and immediately,

the separation has disappeared.

We are not yet one,

this might be the work

of a lifetime.

But we are so much closer,

I feel so much closer here,

where I can smell

the earth below, that tethers us

to the same source,

where I can kiss your feet

in acknowledgement

of my devotion to you,

who have so much to teach me.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

The Pathway of Life

There is a road

That winds all the way

from lands before your birth,

along the pathways of your life,

until times as yet unseen.

It is beautiful on all sides,

and dark, and terrible too,

where we stand, forgetting,

on the other side of the light.

From the earth’s vital force

coursing up your limbs

from the soles of your feet,

the road travels up

to your sacred center of gravity,

into the sinewy trails of muscle

holding stories of your life

along the solid, stoic spine

that, as you walk, will not bend,

stoop or fall, despite the ache,

knowing how far there is to go,

and how much there is to carry.

The road travels up, lies ahead,

but we must not get caught

in the game of directions.

It is enough to see that the map

we have set for ourselves to follow

has its mirror in our selves,

and that hold love for one

while forsaking the other

is to remove the dimensions,

and forego our possible destinations.

May we aim to infuse all the pathways

with the love that will ignite them.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Light of our Evolution

I look at something so close,

amazed by what is impenetrable,

what seems to lie, perfect,

just on the other side of my grasp,

this desire for understanding

that threatens to overtake me.

There are all the ways in which

we cannot see, so that the world

can seem construed of the hidden,

what is invisible, our blindness.

And then, slowly, as if emerging

from the depths of the ocean

to gleam into the new day’s sky,

the world bathed in chimera,

a beauty no longer impossible.

For a brief moment, only this:

the veils lifted, throes of rapture.

Rest here, before questions arise.

Pause here, before running

to chase what cannot remain.

Close your eyes, and trust

that what you need does not seek

to be anywhere but with you.

Even one moment of rupture

in the ways of the thinking mind

can, like a lone ray of sun,

light the way of our evolution.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Love Waits

We are all learning to love.

We come into the world

under love’s warm embrace,

and unlearn what we know,

but what we know is strong,

patient, sincere and wise,

and it could not disappear

with our grieved forgetting.

Love waits for us to wake up

one morning, acutely aware

of a loss so great it hurts.

The play of our heart extensions,

the limbs of our sacred bodies,

moving, reaching, grasping,

a restlessness and yearning

that defies love’s true nature,

and so we finally come to see:

it is not working for me anymore.

All that we beg for with our love,

and demand from love in turn,

so sure of what we are owed.

Love waits. Will always wait.

When our pushing and grabbing,

our fears and our doubts

fly into orbits, only to expand

the sphere of our suffering,

when we lie in a heap, exhausted,

love comes. A whisper in the ear.

A warmth filling the body whole,

just enough for us to accept it,

to feel the umbrella of protection,

and through the primal shock,

love infusing every part of us,

so that we can fill the world,

with the entirety of who we are.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

 

Dance of Love

What if it is all you?

The uncanny beauty

of this world it seems impossible

to imagine we have the fortune of visiting

and making a home, and a life

of days and years, here.

It gives you all of your impressions,

and you give it everything you have,

the breath flows naturally between you,

as the sacred art and being of nature.

What if nature’s way is your way,

her tumults and great gentility, yours?

Her angry sputtering, great waves heaving,

tiniest buds sprouting, old rocks waiting,

what if you can find yourself here?

And then, when you don’t know

what to do, how to again begin

the motions of starting over,

what if you allow yourself to pause

in Time, which goes nowhere without you,

and bring your feet to the earth,

which is here to hold you,

and enter the rhythms that have never

stopped calling out to meet you,

until you know that there is nothing,

at all, that you need to do,

because it is life’s way to keep living,

and nature’s way to keep creating,

and our way to keep allowing,

freely, wildly, until the struggle against,

becomes a flow with our dance of great love.

 

– Tammy Takahashi