Yin, Yang and Yosemite: My Summer with Balanced Rock
Written by Anna DunnPhoto credit Dr. Breezy Jackson
One of the yogic teachings that I consider most important is that darkness, heaviness – yin energy in yogic terms - holds as much value and beauty in life as lightness and positivity – yang energy.Balanced Rock’s genesis was as a vehicle of healing after a tragic event. As I understand it, Wild Women Workshops, as the organization was then named, allowed a space for people to hold and express that yin energy with one another in order to own it as part of life, to turn it into yoga. The Sanksrit word yoga means to yoke – so to harness the energies, the yin and yang that make up the prana of life, in order to turn it into something of value.During a Summer of interning I’ve witnessed plenty of yang light - the positivity that is inherent in spending time in a beautiful place with beautiful, lovely people together contributing to something you deeply believe in. But I have also borne witness to a profound amount of the honesty, purity and beauty of yin energy when it is allowed to be fully expressed and owned – a rare occurrence in our culture.Balanced Rock retreats, in the heart of the awe-inspiring Sierra, provide a unique space for people to connect, to share and to pour their hearts open to complete strangers who become immediately and fleetingly as intimate as family through shared first experiences of dipping in rivers, basking in alpenglow on a granite temple and pooping in the woods. To melt and so to be healed in a way that years of searching could not.To climb a mountain is always a challenge. As we sit halfway up its talus face we can become convinced that we have nothing left. Yet to surmount the slopes and to stand upon the peak is made so much more beautiful when we have broken and realized that after we break we are always still whole.
The breaking is a part of the making and so the two halves of yin and yang meet to become complete.
A fire rips through the Sierra and allows the sequoias to thrive, the bears to feed on the bugs and honey exposed in the heart of burnt tree stumps, and allows the eco-system to regenerate - to progress.And so I guess that’s what is most pertinent to me about my experience interning with Balanced Rock. Life would not make as beautiful poetry, laughter would not be so full-bellied, and a river flowing on and on would not move us so, if they were swaddled in sunshine and bathed in yang energy all the time. That’s the lesson of the Sierras for me – one of the lessons of the true untameable, undying wildness of the world - and for that I owe deep thanks to Balanced Rock. For so artfully facilitating and supporting me in learning and truly understanding the balance of yin and yang over a Summer in the Sierra Nevada.As Dogen Zenji says, “when one thinks like a mountain, one thinks also like the black bear, so that honey dribbles down your fur as you catch the bus to work.”