Darren Austin Hall

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REVISITING INDIA: WHEN BLISS WAS REVEALED AS BIRTHRIGHT

It's been almost two months since Megangi (as I am fond of calling her recently) and I returned from India. I realized that I’d fallen a bit back on my initially bold declarations to document our trip more openly, mainly through the continuation of our popular online Vlog--The Barefoot Yogis. It hasn’t necessarily been for lack of desire: both Megan and I are still a ridiculous constancy of beloved recollections and the subsequent extractions of shining knowings. If anything it’s a convergence of many variables, such as the fact that I think India is still working on us, and we're gestating with ideas. Births have been in other places. Like in our music, merrily making new heights. Our poems and writings, which are relentless and restless with the return to Toronto and Western civilization after teeming in a radical alternative. In that tension, we’ve been warmed to witness the harmonizing of East-West (like the two hemispheres of one mind) in abundant cultural narratives here, as in the burgeoning yoga community (did you see how packed studios were after New Year’s? I mean resolutions aside, a huge chunk of the populace began showing up). Indeed, we’re still a culture asleep in privileges, taking for granted so much. But we’ve begun awakening en masse to our desensitizations and inquiring into the relevance of the textures of our capitalist societies. There's much work to do but I personally feel a palpable enthusiasm and belief among many that this can be done and it's inherent to human creativity to do so; to call and be called on something heroic. 
    Yoga is a powerful way to become powerfully sensual again, in its ardour for embodiment. There’s much to be found there: not merely the strains of muscle and toxic organs, but also the wounds of ancestors, the ghost of past pain and the pulsing light of deep existence. Idle no more, indeed--such is the new, ancient creed. If anything, we’re mirthful to find India here in Canada, alive and well, in yoga, in music, and people; global brethren especially so.
    On the spurning of a friend we met in India, I decided to revisit some of our video logs, realizing I had never posted them to my site and realize my shortcoming in that. Or perhaps not a shortcoming at all but just now is the right time. Megan and I still muse about putting together a lengthier video as we continued filming (even to this day) though we stopped officially posting to our Barefoot Yogi site for many reasons (primary being the slow internet connections at the time).  We've also been diligently and devotedly writing of India and even singing about Her. It's bound at some point to show up as an offering, creation or something else. Perhaps it'll be in the two week yoga and sound healing retreat we're planning to facilitate next Winter :) 
    Many of us have been to India and many wish to go so I encourage sharings around all of this. I find it endearing to nestle in expressions of our experiences of mutual spaces. It adds a lustre of beauty to see the uniqueness of perception and yet the commons that holds us like a sky J As our South African friend, Richard, used to say heartily, It’s totally shanti.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GeGoAPgdWLs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R52UaChwHcA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv-NNewYtfQ