My two and half year old daughter has recently taken to announcing when "night" comes.  As soon a the sun's light begins to fade she yells "night!" and with equal fervor at dawn the next morning she yells "night all gone!".  I love her sense of rhythm.  I love that she gets excited the death of day and birth of night, and vice versa, with sensitivity to the continual cycling of our daily life. 

We're coming up to a time that represents to most of us the completion of yet another cycle.  We enter the death of our calendar year, and like with any other death this makes space for the springing forth of new life.  Ever regenerating, moment by moment we live and die, and live again. 

So, as we move toward the New Year I wonder if I can get as excited about the birth and death inherent in life as my daughter does every day.  I wonder if I can yell from the roof tops that  in me which I am willing to let die.  And, with equal zeal can I announce the coming of my renewal?  This happens at every layer of our existence - from the birth and death of jobs and relationships to my thoughts, emotions and cells  Author Gary Zukav says this:

"Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the original particles and the creation of new subatomic particlews.  The subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation, of mass changing into energy and energy changing to mass.  Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence, creating a never-ending, forever newly created reality".

I want to know this dance in my very bones - to experience the annihilation and creation of reality every day, in every moment.  Like everything else in our culture, the New Year celebration is often reduced to a time for dedicating to "fixing" our broken characters and chubby bodies and the meaning of renewal is lost.  This year, instead of yoga just being part of your weight loss or anger management plan, can you also see it as your "get to know the real nature of renewal" plan?  In the depth of your practice, when the mind has slowed and the moment has started to emerge in real time, begin to deeply sense the death and birth of life within and all around you.  Let it sweep you into swirling waters of the cosmos, - sensations, thoughts, emotions arising and dissolving in eternity.  Let go of your idea of permanence, until you can hear your subatomic self bellow out the arrival of it's demise and creation like a two year old announcing the coming of night.   

I’m no stoic.  Despite all my efforts, I have not been able to quell the torrents of my  feeling heart.  In fact in this moment I feel:

 -   Content that I can relax in a sunwarmed chair in my favourite coffee shop.
 -   Relief for having time to write my blog.
 -   Anxiety because I really should be doing something other than writing my blog.   
  - Sad that my gramma is in hospital
 -   Happy that after a 14 month marathon I have finished my Master’s coursework

Moment by moment I feel these emotions whirling and storming through me, each with different intensities and flavours.  Depending on who you ask this may be considered a cardinal sign of a personality disorder or  impending nervous breakdown.  I like to consider it a vital sign that I am alive.  
 
If I were 100% convinced that I needed to fix, change or analyze all of this I’d be in trouble (add panic to the list),  luckily a small but tenacious part of me knows that there’s another way to  relate to my heart.  And it doesn’t require stoic detachment nor does it require daily cathartic frenzies (although either can be helpful when the moment calls for it).  Instead, I think, it is about allowing the tidal force of emotion to rise like the effervescent tingles that burst in the first down dog of your  practice.  We are less likely to recoil from the sensations of a muscles working, blood flowing or oxygen pumping.  And yet the sensation of  emotion seems to be so uncomfortable that we do anything we can to get away from  it.  We tense up, distract  ourselves, dump the emotion all over the next poor sap who crosses our path, we  drink, shop and TV it out of our awareness. We do anything but feel it.   And by virtue of this we lose the life force it is infused with.  

In yoga, we are trying to increase our  mobility.  To increase the range of  motion in our body is to open up a sense of freedom and spaciousness.  Why not do the same with emotion?  The point is not to feel placid all the time, nor to always be caught up in emotional theatrics.  Instead, perhaps, we are meant to feel a full range of e-motion where we are free to respond emotionally to every moment of our lives.  Not so stuck in melancholy that we can’t feel the inspirational glory of a sunrise and not so stuck in “perky”that we can’t feel the despair of a suffering friend.   
 
To feel, however, does not mean to act, or  deliberate.  Feeling means  FEEL.  To this we must slow down and have moments of pause in our lives that allow us experience the forces of  emotion paint an internal masterpiece.   We must cease the endless evasive manoeuvres that keep us from feeling
emotion and sit long enough to watch the emotion rise, live its truth and  die.   Emotions are  intelligent – they tell us about our life and self.   Emotions are energy –they offer us the opportunity to be infused with  life force.   And, emotions  are natural – can you behold them with reverence?