Rebecca Wildbear is an outdoor guide, yoga teacher, and author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth.
In her work, she weaves together two strands that have diverged in our current social and political culture: personal growth and environmental / social justice.
In our conversation, we cover what Wildbear sees as a shrinking of yoga in the West, into asanas (postures) and exercise rather than a deep spiritual practice that can connect us with ourselves and the world around us.
I had never really thought about the significance of so many postured named for elements of the natural world: tree pose, pigeon, dolphin, eagle (now that's a hard one!), and many more. But Wildbear makes it clear that yoga was originally a practice that sought to unite humans with the more-than-human world, through respect and modeling.
And so yoga becomes a portal for the body to remember its own wildness.
In the book, each chapter shares a different pose or posture or movement, and invites us to explore what we can learn from it, and from the aspect of nature it honors.
And in so doing, Wildbear explains, we can regain the knowing that the entire world is sentient, and alive, and full of meaning and purpose. So that we can reconnect with our own spirit and purpose, in the service of all life.
Links
Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth
RebeccaWildbear.com
Animas Institute