I can't believe it is already October. The days are shorter, the wind is colder and all the celebrations of the season are upon us. Halloween being the first on the list. As with most holidays, Halloween has been modernized over the centuries and taken on many traditions that weren't part of the original celebration. What we think of now as traditional, the trick or treating, scary movies, cobwebs and witchcraft were all additions along the way. If we go back to the essence of the original holiday, it was a celebration of the harvest and a time when it was believed the barrier between the spirit world and the physical world was thin. It gave people a chance to feel connected to their ancestors and celebrate life and death together.
In my search for inspiration, I happened upon many different articles about how it can be "ok" to celebrate Halloween from a biblical perspective. What I came to learn is that many people think of spirituality and religion as one in the same. I believe these concepts to be completely different! Someone who is atheist can be a spiritual person, they just have a different sense of what it means to be spiritual. (and they probably don't call it that) It can manifest simply as a true sense of self, or a sense of morality. Maybe there is a better word out there for what I am describing, but I haven't found one yet.
You might wonder what on earth the celebration of Halloween has to do with yoga. Absolutely nothing haha! But, if you embody this idea of connectedness to all things living and dead, it sounds a lot like a yogic practice to me. Far from a religious practice, this is meant to be a spiritual one. Whether you feel connected to a god or the universe is completely up to you.
In my practice this month, I intend to focus on this spirituality. The connectedness we feel with the universe when everything else quiets down. In yoga, we are the embodiment of the universe, so in connecting with ourselves we are also connecting with a something greater than ourselves. It is this connection that helps us maintain perspective when interacting with the world. Maybe it can even be seen as a source for morality. Whatever your perspective is, you do not need to be religious in any way to experience spiritual connection. I hope you are able to join me in practice this month to foster some of that connection.