Mythic Yoga: Two Birds: A Story from the Rig Veda

Mythic Yoga: Two Birds: A Story from the Rig Veda.

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Nazis stole the Swastika: Now We're Taking it Back for Luck, Peace and Well-Being

Swastikas on lanterns at a Buddhist Shrine
 in the Dontonburi district, Osaka, Japan

“The soul speaks in an image,” Aristotle said. The voiceless language of symbols speak to our psyches and awaken powers, like good luck, good health and well being.

That’s the meaning of the swastika, which for thousands of years before Nazis and Eurocentric World War II history stole the symbol from Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Native American tribes, like the Navajo, used the swastika in healing rituals. In European history, the symbol was associated with Norse gods like Thor and Odin. The swastika is also the pattern made from the revolution of the stars of Ursa Major around Polaris.

In Japan the swastika is called the manji (卍) and it was on maps in Japan to denote Shinto and Buddhist shrines and temples. I remember seeing it on Google maps the first time I visited Japan in November, 2016, and marveled at the impression this symbol made on my psyche. And it had nothing to do with Nazis, but the power of activating the powerful seeds of healing and auspiciousness within me.

Swastika at a Shinto shrine near Nishikujo Station,
Osaka, Japan

Japan, however, decided to change the swastika to pagodas or torii gates in preparation for the for the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The changes will not apply to Japanese-language maps, and there is no suggestion that the temples themselves should remove manji from their premises. But it just doesn’t have the same effect, and we are all losing something within ourselves as a result, such as access to our inner lives via the mythic dimension that our psyches (psyche means soul in Greek) need and crave in these troubled times.

Around Japan I have seen dozens of temples and shrines with the swastika. Nazi versions face right and usually sit in a diamond shape at a slant, while the manji version is a square. Japanese Buddhism has both a right-facing and left-facing manji. So think left swastika L for luck and love and R for Reich on its side for Nazi differentiation.

But the Nazi symbolism of the West has usurped the power of the symbol in the East in the last 70 plus years, especially in the United States, making this symbol inaccessible to many. It’s time to take it back and educate people about this symbol’s origins and true meaning, because humanity depends on it. As human beings, our psyches need something beyond just shopping and working. It needs ritual, myth and participation in the cosmos, otherwise, as Mythologist Joseph Campbell says, society disintegrates. And it is! Just read the headlines!

Swastika on a chozubachi, water-filled basin,
used for purification at a Shinto Shrine near Nishikujo Station,
Osaka, Japan.

“Mircea Eliade was motivated at all times by a deep concern for the future of Western civilization, which he saw as threatened by possible extinction,” writes Robert Temple.

“He believed it essential that we recognize and acknowledge the archaic and the Eastern contributions to man's spiritual history while there is still time to do so with good grace. Otherwise, by maintaining an attitude of contempt or superiority towards the rest of the world — past and present — we would bring disaster on ourselves and the world as a whole.”

So contemplate the swastika. Notice the tension of opposites from the Nazi symbolism that has embedded itself today and with the rise of hatred and chaos in the United States and Charlottesville, Virginia as the West declines and the East rises with its ancient connotations of health, well-being and peace in the East.  See where those two meet. One thing passes away, the other arises. What has been suppressed, comes into consciousness once again.

Experience the symbol in your body, your art, your meditation, your dreams and see what happens.

And may peace, luck and good health be with you!

More pictures of Swastikas in Japan on my blog, Sydney in Osaka! Subscribe!

Mythic Yoga - Two Birds - A Story from the Rig Veda by Sydney Solis

Two birds at Kasuga-taisha Shinto Shrine, Nara, Japan

I have been making videos on YouTube. My second for Mythic Yoga.

This story from the Rig Veda, from my E-book Mythic Yoga: Vishnu's Dream - Ancient Hindu Myth and Personal Story.

Telling stories is an art. Let the story and images wash over you as you practice yoga and begin your own Mythic Yoga Journey™ and listen to the Story in the Body.

OM SHANTI 

Poetry in Motion - Yoga, Myth and the Body

o

Wisdom, digital photograph of original silver gelatin print

photo collage by Sydney Solis. Part of the Personal

 Mythology Series. 

Purchase this and see more of Sydney's art at her shop
Estudio Sol on Society6 

“I am the poet of the body. And I am the poet of the soul.” - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Our bodies are poetry in motion. Poet Sandra Cisneros writes that a dream is a poem of the body. Mythologist Joseph Campbell says that the organs of the body are what emit energies in conflict with each other as images arise to the surface in our dreams and visions. 

What happens when we listen deeply to what songs, sounds, images and invisible words our body is saying to us?

That's part of the Mythic Yoga journey undertaken at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver this January 14, 2017 as part of a new beginning series that I will be teaching there. I'm excited to bring yoga and movement to literature workshops and share the intuitive, sensing and feeling functions that have been overlooked in favor of the intellect - true yoga.

Using spoken word, yoga, dance and other movement, we will explore embodied storytelling in a disembodied age of internet, social media and virtual reality to bring us down to earth, reality and listen deeply enough to tell our Myth Poem of the Body.

More information on my Story Poetica website! Join me! 

OM SHANTI

M

Joseph Campbell Foundation Roundtable Meetings in DeLand, Florida Third Monday of Each Month

Durga and Kali have been guiding me with myth for decades,
helping me cut through tragedy, trauma and ego
and leading me to divine truth
Live your Myth! It's magic!

For years I hosted Joseph Campbell Foundation Roundtable meetings in my homes in Colorado. I had attended the Mythic Journey's Conference in Atlanta in 2004 and connected with the amazing people out there working in myth and was invited to attend the second conference in 2005 with JCF. I also attended the Esalen Mythological Toolbox in 2005. I missed the plane to Monterey, California the following year as it was excessively crazy airport traffic that following year as I had to put my little kids on a plane to San Antonio first to stay with grandparents for my ability to travel. SO........

I decided that needed to take time off for my kids and personal mythic journey, so I took a risk and followed my bliss. I left Colorado, my home state of 38 years, in 2010 to travel and live abroad with my kids, homeschooling them with yoga and story. I landed in DeLand, Florida and the wonderful storytellers there were excited to hear about myth and Joseph Campbell, which is really all yoga!

 I pointed them in the direction to start a Mythological Roundtable here. We have been meeting steadily at the home of a psychotherapist and includes my neighbors, Tony Foresta and Kaye Armstrong, who were the audio and video team that worked on Bill Moyer's PBS Series with Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

The next meeting is this Monday April 18 at 7 pm in DeLand, Florida. Contact Bill at wbrennan8(at)cfl.rr.com.

As my kids are now older teens and the Storytime Yoga for Kids work coming to its fullness and all my creative projects completed, the Mythic Yoga realm I put off (took town my website in 2006, will be back soon!) just bubbles up even more powerful, as the body, yoga and stories link me more and more powerful to the inner world and the divine truth within everything connected.

Join us! Start a Joseph Campbell Foundation Roundtable in your area! Follow your myth! Connect with others, especially youth, and let's bring myth, peace and wellbeing back to the world via body and word! I will be presenting more Mythic Yoga programs in the future. Stay tuned! In the meantime, Read my E-book Mythic Yoga: Vishnu's Dream: Ancient Hindu Myth and Personal Story to get inspired by the myths and activate within you realization of your life's unique personal story and destiny.

Join me at Yoga Circle and Dance in Ormond Beach, Florida on May 14 for Mythic Yoga Workshop!
OM SHANTI

Mythic Yoga: Epiphany

Mythic Yoga: Epiphany 2016 mixed media collage on
recycled wood, as part of the
Personal Mythology Series 2003-2016  

The greatest gift of connecting yoga and mythology is that it aligns your body and consciousness with the cosmos. You pay attention to the seasons, their energies and you in relationship with it.

When that is achieved, magic and miracles happen. Or rather, the boons of the Gods. Most definitely, healing ones appear that can affect the entire planet.

Aligning with the cosmos, reconnecting to the depths, healing the planet by healing ourselves. Mythic images take us there, as does meditation, spending time in nature or creating ritual as we participate in the seasons and delight in uniting with the powerful planetary pulls on our bodies, elements and emotions.

The Mythic Yoga process creates amazing, mysterious results. Over the years I have expressed it in art and poetry via my Personal Mythology series of mixed media collage.

I made one of my first photo paper collages in 2003 a few months before my husband died.
Remarkably, nearly 14 years later, after many years of practice and a personal mythic journey abroad, I made another one.  It symbolized an end of an era. Constant renewal. A new era.

Rose Cross 2003. Mixed Media collage
on handmade paper. Part of the Personal Mythology
Series for Mythic Yoga

I made the collage during Epiphany 2016. Three Kings Day. It revealed the gifts from doing the work of spirit, of yoga. Of letting go. Surrendering. It revealed the gifts from surrendering to the process of dying during winter solstice, rather than participating in a cultural commercialism that obscures this powerful event. It makes way for a true participatory rebirth of the light, Christmas, within. And then the subtle time afterward gathers energy and space needed to reflect. That's when the Epiphany, awareness, comes.

So much healing. So much joy. That in all of our story, our personal myth, our history is that it brings the gifts, it renews itself in the cosmos as you. And continues to grow and once again cycle through great time and space before its ready to cast everything off once again. The eternal cycle of birth, death, rebirth. That's why letting to so powerful. Constant renewal requires constant release.

Aligning with the cosmos by celebrating the great planetary events such as solstice, puts you in deep connection with the depths. Now we continue with the year, building psychic energy with the gifts in January's winter depths.  As if it were inseminated inside a womb. A seed buried in the earth. A seed sprouting along a river, in a dream, now awakening to consciousness and bliss at midwinter before it sprouts above ground, in new consciousness, birth, in the spring before yawning toward the fullness of summer, only to repeat the cycle all over again. Eternal life.

A fig, a rose, a dove, a swan, the god Rudra, as us, always transforming our lives in our dreams, our thoughts, as we become aware of them and awaken from the dream and become sat, chit, ananda, being, consciousness and bliss. OM SHANTI and happy new year, eternally.

Mythic Yoga: The Personal Mythology Series at Studio Solis

Mythic Yoga: The Personal Mythology Series
By Sydney Solis at Studio Solis, DeLand, Florida
Copyright 1988 All Rights Reserved

Mythic Yoga cultivates the unknown within oneself to be known. From darkness to light, from untruth to truth. Art, poetry and other expressive creative efforts dig deep into the unconscious and bring forth self-knowledge.

The body holds a lot of this knowledge, so part of Mythic Yoga practice is to express the myths and the symbology that resonate in the body after yoga, dance or other contemplative movement into a physical container, such as art or poetry, to be expressed as personal mythology. Know Thy Self, The Oracle of Delphi implored. So we do.

For decades I have been doing the Mythic Yoga Personal Mythology Series of art and yoga. I will be having an art opening and poetry reading at Studio Solis in DeLand, Florida this fall. If you can't join us live, look for it on The Mythic Yoga Studio on Powhow.



Get inspired to write the Myth Poem of the Body with Mythic Yoga: Story Poetica
And check out some more Mythic Yoga Personal Mythology Series art right here at Studio Solis

I'm so very grateful to get to live the life I have always dreamed.  To live as an artist, mother, teacher. Life is so very beautiful. Thanks to the Great Mother. I was able to follow my bliss.

OM SHANTI

Sydney Solis

Mythic Yoga for Teens: The Hero With Your Own Face at DeBary, Florida Public Library July 9

The Mythic Yoga Studio IS
wherever you ARE

Superheroes are all the rage. They have incredible powers within them that battle evil and restore justice. Movies galore spin dozens of tales of everyone from Spiderman to Wonder Woman. So many I can't even keep track! What we can keep track of is the Hero within ourselves, and recognize that the powers Superheroes emit are really those within our own self.

Join me, Sydney Solis, at the DeBary, Florida Public Library this Thursday July 9 from 3-4 pm for some Mythic Yoga for Teens. We will be exploring Joseph Campbell's pioneering work The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well as looking at modern Superhero mythology as well as classic mythology.  Through yoga, meditation, storytelling  and creative writing, we will discover how we are like them all and how to put those newly discovered powers into action in our own lives.