The story I told came from Deborah Adele's Yamas & Niyamas book, which I'm reading as part of the teaching training I'll be doing this summer in Syracuse. The story goes like this:
A few months after God finished making humans he realized that he was getting a lot of requests from them for help. As a kind & benevolent God, he was inclined to want to help, but doing so would be more than [even] he could ever do. So, he decided he needed to find a way to hide from them. He assembled a group of elders (who is elder to God, I don't know) and asked them to help him find a hiding place. They proposed the top of a mountain, but he knew they'd find him there. They proposed the bottom of the ocean, but he knew they'd find him there. They proposed the moon, but again, he knew they'd eventually find him there too. So, they pondered & pondered until one elder had a bright idea. He proposed that he divide himself up into little pieces and hide a little piece of himself inside each & every human - THEN we'd be sure that humans would never find him!
The story was well-received and class began. We worked through a series of deep hip-opening flow postures and punctuated them with solid ab holds. The goal was to reach a variation of Eka Pada Koundinyanasana II in about 40 minutes...
...then switch gears 180 degrees and relax into a series of 5 long-hold Yin-style postures, including Star, Happy Baby, Snail, Cat Tail, and One-Legged Hero - before ending in Savasanasa.
Finally, after coming back to a seated position I asked the class to remember the story I told at the beginning of class about a little piece of God being hidden inside each one of us...then, I said, "were you better able to find him during the fiery work of Eka Pada Koundinaysana or during the calm, extended holds of the Yin yoga?" That's when I saw some lightbulbs flash above a couple of heads. The truth is that it's much easier to get in touch with your spiritual side when you slow down and listen to your body.
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