Stewarding Stories: Stacking Wood Samadhi

A part of me feels foolish using the word samadhi to describe the immersive experience that I experienced stacking wood. Samadhi/Bliss is the considered by some to be the goal of all yoga - the blissful state reached once you have gone through all of the other seven states. Some consider there to be a hierarchy (a path) through from Yamas/Virtues, Niyamas/Internal observations, Asanas/Poses, Pranayama/Breath Control, Pratyahara/Withdrawal of senses, Dharana/Concentration, Dhyana/Meditation, all the way to reach Samadhi.

I feel this teleological view of Pantanjali’s discourses on consciousness is not true - rather than a road, it is a circle.

Take stacking wood.

I move wood so we can be warm in the winter. It is the helpful thing to do for our home. We chose to heat our home with wood because wood is a renewable resource. Yamas.

A full of wood cart is heavy to pull. I gulp in air. I feel my thighs burning as I strain against the handle (asana). When I reach the woodpile, I straighten my back feeling muscles unclench. I expand my cheeks deliberately to slow down my breathing (pranayama) as I feel my heart pounding in my ears (niyama).

Every couple of trips I flop onto my back, arms stretched out like a T, and I look up. Sun dappled oak leaves sway and bounce above with the breeze. I feel grateful for the opportunity to serve my family and feel my body sweat. Pratyahara.

It takes concentration (dharana) to throw the logs into the cart accurately, to avoid the groundhog hole in the lawn when pulling the cart to the pile, to maneuver the new log onto the pile to fit well with its neighbors and be in a place to welcome newcomers to the stack.

I tip the cart onto the pile, maneuver myself into a seated position, and start stacking. Each log a gift to our family for the winter of cozy bedtimes with hot stones, stovetop stew, and crackling warmth. The peppermint shoots encroach into the woodpile. I gently move them away from the gravity of new wood and the sweet tang of fresh lemon mint beckons me onward.

Samadhi.

The cycle repeats around and around and around - every stretch of my body, every lifting of my arm, every grasping of my fingers, every thought in my heart, every sound in the air. The fun thing is that if we think of ourselves as revolving around this circle of eight stages we are actually revolving around a central point.

The cyclic ebb and flow touching the limbs of existence, conjoining into some, settling into others, skipping through another.

The cycles of union and connection with Life - capital Life.

Because, yoga - after all means union. And isn’t that the point of all of this. To forget and then remember we are life part of Life.

Via a woodpile.

Amen.