The Winds Within by Bill Wofford
Ah, it feels good to be home. After my annual summer pilgrimage to see family and friends in coastal New York and Maine and by Lake Champlain in Vermont, these sultry southern breezes welcomed me home. Soon after returning, I found myself driving my mom to UNC for cochlear implant surgery to (hopefully!) restore a considerable amount of her lost hearing. Though she expressed concern that I was wasting too much precious time accompanying her, she took some comfort in learning that while she was getting her implant, I would be writing this newsletter. What’s it about? I started to share a bit about prana and the prana vayus. She asked something like - are these energetic winds you’re talking about activated by things in nature, like the breezes off the Atlantic and the views in Acadia? Funny you should ask, Mom.
On our first morning in Maine, I got up and started looking around for Lexie. Only to find her perched in meditation on a stone wall, facing a sunny green meadow. I let her be but made a note of what a fine spot she’d found. A few days later, I took my seat there on a cool, cloudy morning, turned on my timer, closed my eyes and turned inward and to my breath. When I’d open my eyes in response to the feel of an insect (real or imagined), an unexpected sound or, let's be honest, to peek at my timer, I’d be captivated by the rippling of the grass in the breeze. Okay, okay, I’ll close my eyes and go back inward.
I’ve developed a little trick to refresh my connection to creation, the universe, God, whatever you choose to call it. All I need to do is look up and watch the leaves of a tree move. Depending on the wind and the tree, the movements may be dramatic or subtle. But very, very rarely are the leaves truly still. And never for long. And while there is a unique sweetness in that fleeting stillness, what moves me most is the motion. Watch closely, carefully and patiently and the motion will reveal itself. A reminder that everything, every leaf, every life, every cell in my body and every molecule within each cell is moving, vibrating and spinning up its unique part in the impossibly complex dance of creation. Another version of this trick is to watch closely as sunlight dances on the surface of your closest ocean, lake, river or stream. Especially when currents are crossing or wind whipped ripples spread.
The Name of the Wind is a remarkable fantasy novel, a book that might just convince you that under the right circumstances and with suitable training, you too could perform magic. Bend the fabric of space-time; blend divergent forces to extraordinary effect; channel energy in unexpected ways. Doesn’t sound so hard. My daughter and I loved this book when we read it years ago and I decided the time had come to read it again. (Yes,I have moved onto the sequel, but don’t get me started on the persistent absence of the final book in this erstwhile trilogy). I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I tell you that one kind of magic involves developing such full and intimate knowledge of the true nature of a thing that you gain the ability to become one with it, to harness and direct it. This is deep knowledge, a true feeling and knowing what it is to be something other than your ordinary self.
In A World Appears (Michael Pollan’s recent exploration of consciousness that I wrote a little about a few months ago [insert link]), Pollan shared the observation that one way to ponder the existence and nature of consciousness within a being is to seek to understand what it's like to be that thing. It’s not that hard to imagine what it is like to be a cat or a dog or a horse. But what is it like to be a stone? Or fire? Or the wind? Come to know that and you might be able to work some advanced magic.
I won’t pretend to know the name of the wind. But yoga offers us a way of getting to know the winds within. In the yogic tradition, prana—vitality or life-force energy—is described as moving through us in five patterns, the vayus, literally “winds” in Sanskrit. Prana vayu receives and draws inward; apana grounds and releases; samana gathers and transforms; udana rises and expresses; vyana circulates and expands. All of this is prana, expressing itself in complementary and interconnected ways.
Once you start paying attention to these flows, the idea becomes less abstract. We are always taking in and letting go, gathering and transforming, rising and expressing, circulating and connecting. Like the leaves on a tree, we may appear still. But something is always moving.
This Sunday, Lexie and I will be diving deep into the winds that flow within. Come join us at Chatham Mills Studio Sunday at 11am.
No promises that you’ll learn the name of the wind—or be working magic by lunchtime. But I like your chances of becoming a little more intimate with the winds already moving within you.
