Reflections on repeat 🔂

The outer shell was that dark dark blue, the one we imagine the night sky to be. Made out of heavyweight cardboard and covered in stars. And when you held it up to a bright window or light and turned the short cylinder at the end, patterns would take shape and then disappear just as quickly as they had appeared.

This was my kaleidoscope as a child.

A kaleidoscope seems so simple: you just peer through a tube and watch as little pieces of plastic and glass tumble around creating shapes and patterns and repetitions.

If I were to throw a handful of those same pieces on the ground, it would be a pile of random things. But when the objects are reflected over and over, what emerges from the repetition is beauty, and delight at what pattern might appear next.

This got me thinking...
we repeat poses over and over and over again, in one practice, one class, and over our lifetime.

Imagine Uttitha Trikonasana: Extended Triangle Pose

This moment's triangle pose is the material piece, the physical object inside the kaleidoscope.

And all the reflections of Triangles
of practices past and
of all the Triangles yet to come

Reflections within my memory
my bones
my cells
my practice

It is quite a wondrous thing, that this practice externally appears to contain much repetition. And internally, fills me with delight and surprise at the experience of the moment, and the beauty that emerges with time.