When I prepare for a yoga concert, it’s always a beautiful challenge to choose a poem that suits the musician performing. For Mola Sylla’s first appearance, I took the safe route: An African Elegy by Ben Okri. The second time, I ended up with something entirely different: the raw darkness of Dylan Thomas, which somehow seemed to rhyme with Mola’s Senegalese blues.
     During the yoga concert, I used one of my favorite meditations to explore that force—one both creative and destructive, moving death and life, youth and age. Among mystics, this force is called consciousness: all our experiences (perceptions, thoughts, bodily sensations) arise in and through consciousness. As we released our attention (the meditation exercise), we placed ourselves in the middle of this flow, that continuously moves to a new place, each moment dissolving into the next—just as days, seasons, and generations follow one another in an unending cycle. On our yoga mats, we grew still, posture by posture, deepening into that flow: dumb to tell that force of life is our own.
     Mola began to play on a small African guitar (the xalam), and as he has such a remarkable voice, I expected him to begin singing during the second posture. But he kept playing the same simple chords, even during the third posture, when I recited the poem by Thomas, and through the ones that followed, so long that it became hypnotic, as if he were inventing an African Canto Ostinato on the spot. Only in the final, the very last posture did he begin to sing—and by then, the tension had built so beautifully that everyone opened up in that reclining butterfly pose, undone by his voice.
     And we were dumb to tell our yoga mats—how from the same source music and poetry spring.

Poem: Dylan Thomas
Picture: Moira van Damme

Wisława Szymborska is one of those rare poets who, in seemingly simple and light language, knows how to touch the depth of life. As in this poem about birds that ‘play birds', and the moment that reigns 'as far as the eye can reach'. Full of wonder is her poetry, always written from a sense of marvel, about the beauty as well as the brutality of life.
     Her poetry was the focus of a remarkable yoga concert with Couple Positive. Ania Brzezinska sang her poetry in Polish and English, while I recited two poems in Dutch, and built my class around them: a yoga concert about wonder.

Poem: Wisława Szymborska
Translation: Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh
Picture: Roberto Gemin
Wisława Szymborska’s literary legacy is attended by the Wisława Szymborska Foundation.

The dove calls to the hush of the morning that a new day, a new year is about to begin. In this blog a modest reflection - appropriate to these Christmas times.
     Last week, I was riding my bike in the Damstraat when suddenly the door of a van opened. I got off lightly: nothing was broken and my head and organs remained intact. I did have bruises on my shoulder, lower back and upper leg: I couldn’t walk for a few days and couldn’t use my right arm. So I started doing yin yoga with my bruises. Bending my arm, my back and especially my leg, I was looking for the ‘sweet spot’ right before the pain becomes sharper, stayed there for a while, and then bending a little deeper. Again, I stayed there for half a minute, feeling the connective tissues relaxing more and more. After a few days, I could slowly sit down on my knees, under soft protest from the hard plate in my upper leg.
      Relaxing is not something you can do, it’s an ‘undoing’. Attention is key. I kept it on the pain in my upper leg, and when I brought it closer, it was no longer pain but rather small tinglings, warm waves or a soft knocking. My attention made the sore spot calming down.
      The same process is available for our emotions. When we feel sad or lonely, it's tempting to get away from it, just as we would rather get away from the pain in our body. We project something in our outside world for our attention to move away to. In traffic, we get angry at others, so we don’t feel our own vulnerability. Yin yoga is an exercise to remain centered while our feelings claim us.
      Could this pattern also be the key to understanding our world politics? We have to prepare for war, the former Dutch prime minister and NATO chairman said last week. We raise our defence budgets and point to the evil in our outside world, whether we call it Russia, Israel or Hamas. Could it bring a shift when we would pay more attention to the collective traumas underneath these conflicts?
      The American poet Maya Angelou wrote the following words, in her poem On the pulse of morning, that I will use for a yoga concert coming spring:

History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift your eyes, now that the day is dawning before you.

Bring the dream back into the world.
take it in the palm of your hands
pour it into the mold of your most personal need
sculpt it in the image of your most public self
lift your hearts
each new hour brings new opportunities
for a new beginning.

On the yoga mat we can learn to attend our most personal need, to sculpt it, smoothly and at ease, in the image of our most public self.

Poem: W.S. Merwin
Picture: Roberto Gemin

As I like using his poems for my yoga concerts, I delved a little more in the work of the legendary Bohemian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Even pieces of letters are being presented as poems, as his lines sound so poetically. ‘Concede the things their development,’ he wrote in a letter to a young poet,

Be patient with what
is unsolved in the heart,
try to cherish the questions
as enclosed spaces,
as books written in a foreign language.

It comes down to living everything.
When you live the questions, you will
perhaps quietly, without noticing,
on a strange day
be living in the answers.

The official poems are more tight and formal (and more difficult to translate). In the above poem, it’s almost as if he describes the intention of the yoga concerts. It comes from his last booklet, 'Sonnets to Orpheus'. Orpheus is a musician, poet, and prophet in Greek mythology, especially known from the love story with Eurydice. Perhaps Rilke meant Orpheus as the 'silent friend' in the first line, addressing the reader. ‘Feel how your breathing makes more spacious,’ reads the following line, that I could use literally during the yoga class. I like using the breath as an entrance, bringing air and space very directly into our experience.
     The postures in yin yoga take long, making it intense. It's where we arrive in ‘the gloom of the bell tower’. Rilke suggests to ‘be the chiming’: bring our innermost depth to the light. What touches us most deeply, has the potential to strengthen us.
     This reminds me of the period during the covid lockdowns in which I was home a lot and rarely saw someone. I felt alone. As Rilke suggests, I decided to investigate this feeling in my body. How does loneliness feel there? In my chest, something got stuck. It felt like grief. I went even closer with my attention, until it felt I was in the midst of it. And then something surprising happened. I suddenly was full of energy. What felt from the outside as loneliness and grief, turned, as I went through the resistance and surrendered to it, into exactly what Rilke said: my power.
     In much the same way, you can learn to relax on the yoga mat in the midst of intense physical sensations. ‘Go into this transformation out and in,’ Rilke wrote. And then, we come across all our patterns to walk away from what we feel. We blame others (the grumbling refrigerator in the Jungle is perfect for it), we suddenly need to go to the bathroom, or find other forms of distraction. We have reinforcements as well: breath for instance, and music, that allows us to go ‘deeper’, as some say after a yoga concert: to get closer and stay with what you feel. And Rilke directs us there as well. ‘What is your deepest pain?’ he asks, and recommends to be wine, ‘when bitterness becomes your drink.’ Had I not experienced it myself, I wouldn’t have understood what he meant by that.
     So the yoga concerts are ‘nights’, in which the magic crosses our senses and we meet ourselves. And then, Rilke arrives at those final monumental lines, that describe the paradox of the mystics so strikingly. On the one hand, we as living creatures move continuously, our awareness is a river flowing. During yoga concerts, we often do an exercise to allow our attention to ‘move freely’ and be curious where it goes. On the other hand, there is something completely still and continuously the same. In all our experiences, we are ‘present’. This ‘conscious being’ is like the bedding of a river. The yoga concerts are a sinking in this ‘silence’ or ‘emptiness’, in which you ‘just be’.
     And when the world forgets your light, Rilke ends:

tell the quiet earth: I flow,
to the rushing water say: I am.

Perhaps our minds cannot understand what Rilke means here. But in the yoga concerts we can ‘do’ his poetry. And maybe we notice that our questions slowly disappear and we quietly start living in the answers.

Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
Translation: Andrè Meeusen
Image: Roberto Gemin

This month, I had the opportunity to experience for myself what the combination of yoga and live music can do, during a rehearsal with the Genetic Choir. Although I have been organizing yoga concerts for over a year, I have never been able to attend one as a visitor. Now, I was not only playing the role of yoga teacher, but I was also lying down in the poses as a student.
     To be honest, I didn't know whether it would work: a yoga concert with an improvising choir. But after the first notes, lying in the 'caterpillar pose', I already knew: a beautiful butterfly can be born from this. Whether it is a Gregorian chant or African call & response, the harmony of voices strikes a chord within. As the rehearsal progressed, I found myself dwelling 'far within slow time', as the poem by the Irish poet John O'Donohue says: the calm 'silence of stone' took me over. On the rhythm of my breath, I relaxed and was soothed by the choir singing. Sensations rippled through my body, and it was as if they were expressed by the solo voices weaving through the choir. The interplay between harmony and dissonant voices, made listening an emotional experience. The choir felt like a warm bath, which knew how to soften the sharp edges in my body by giving them musical form.
     Take refuge in your senses, the poem prescribes. The choir taught me to listen to my body in a different way. With the wisdom of twilight under my arm, I left the rehearsal room. Next month, the butterfly will emerge from the cocoon!

Poem: John O'Donohue
Picture: Hana'a Abd-Alraziq Aj
The full poem is available in the booklet Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US), and can be ordered through the official website taking care of his legacy: johnodonohue.com.

I came accross this poem of the renowned Dutch poet Rutger Kopland while browsing through his collected works, inspired by the lyrics of Dutch pop singer Krystl, singing about emptiness. 'Where I stand,' she sings in her song Wandel naar mezelf, 'I am yielding to the void.' Preparing the yoga concert with Krystl, I was actually looking for these famous lines:
Lie down now sweetheart in the garden,
the empty spaces in the tall grass, what I
always wanted me to be, an empty
space for someone, to abide.
That is poetry: it is beautiful, without being sure why exactly, or what it means, to be an empty space for someone. And it turns out that this emptiness can also be invading and fulfilling, as the other poem of Kopland says. What is this void, to which Krystl wants to surrender?
     Among the mystics, emptiness is a code word for consciousness. Our awareness is like an empty room, taking no space itself, so it can be filled completely. Consciousness has no dimensions or objective qualities, it just always is - that's why all our experiences can occur within this elusive 'being aware'. The appeal of this emptiness is that it's at peace with everything - just like an empty space has no quarrel with the stuff you put there. Our mind cannot get this, as it understands things by discerning them from each other. An endless void is unthinkable.
     What excites me about the yoga concerts, is that we don't discuss or explain the poetry of Kopland or the lyrics of Krystl: we do it. We lie down on our yoga mat as if it's an empty space in the grass. Then, slowly it happens, we fade from our thoughts and go forgotten, let emptiness invade us, yielding to the void. And perhaps, thinking we are everything we hear.

Poem: Rutger Kopland
Translation: Andrè Meeusen
Picture: Moira van Damme

When we're looking for happiness in this world - whether chasing material things or immaterial experiences - we make ourselves into slaves, Rumi says. That doesn't mean we should remain in lotus position on a mountain top to see life passing by. The great paradox of the mystics is to 'do nothing', as the taoists say, yet keep on tasting, taking, drinking life fully. If you don't, Rumi conveys in the modern rendering of Coleman Barks, 'you're not living your truth'.
      The yoga concerts are a practice in this 'confusing joy'. Each yoga posture offers the possibility to get to the essence: see that you are aware in everything you do, that this presence or consciousness is the only thing that is always there - that you are this space of 'being aware'. And each posture activates, invites (or sometimes: pushes) to feel what really is, what your senses and body are telling you, to feel the energy of it, going through the resistance into surrender - to live your truth fully.
      Some snapshots of the yoga concert with this theme made it into this video: a tribute to Rumi, to my musical friends Couple Positive, and the flourishing nature of the Amstelpark.

Poem: Jalal ad-Din Mevlana Rumi
Rendering: Coleman Barks
Picture: Moira van Damme

Remarkable about the American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019) is her popularity under a wide, spiritually engaged audience while also being respected among the literary establishment. According to the New York Times, she was 'far and away, this country’s best-selling poet', while she received a huge diversity of awards: the Goodreads Choice Award (based on readers' votes), the National Book Award (chosen by booksellers) and the Pulitzer Prize (a prestigious jury prize). More information and all her publications can be found on the official website taking care of her legacy: maryoliver.com.
      Mary Olivers poetry is deceptively accessible, as every line is easy to understand while each poem is touching on the mystery of life. In the above poem Messenger, she writes about her work, which turns out not to be writing poetry: her work is 'loving the world'.
      That's exactly how I have come to understand the organization of yoga concerts. It's not about the achieved results, the number of visitors, or the financial profits. What matters, is that I love what I do. And every yoga concert is an excercise in attention, in 'standing still and learning to be astonished'. Our 'body-clothes' make a voyage of discovery in each posture.
      Gratitude for what life gives, does not mean being cheerful and glad each moment of the day - life also has it tides. Therefore, I recited another poem of Mary Oliver at the end of the yoga concert, which can be found underneath this blog. It speaks about the sea, with her eb and flood, that points out to the unhappy beach walker, 'I have work to do'.
      It is interesting to look at both poems together. The sea does her work by being the sea, rolling in and moving out her waves. In the same way, I did my job by cleaning toilets, administer vat, and think of how to translate 'equal seekers of sweetness'. We all move along the tides of our moods, our thoughts and feelings, and in the meantime we take our place in the world, live this mysterious life. What matters is not our moods, or what we do, it's the place we take, the way we receive everything life gives. That's the work we all have to do. It is deceptively easy. We 'only' need to stand still and be astonished.

Poem: Mary Oliver
Picture: Moira van Damme

The poetry of Mary Oliver is deceptively accessible, as I wrote above. In much of her work the paradox is visible between the nondual and the dual, the emptyness and the fullness, the silent 'being' of the sea and it's always shifting, rolling in and moving out.

Poem: Mary Oliver
Picture: Moira van Damme

There was no other way than to bring Rumi's Song of the Reed, the opening lines of his magnum opus the Mathnawi, to the first yoga concert with Sinan Arat, whose music embodies the whisper of the reed. Not only does Sinan play the ney, the reed flute that was Rumi's favourite instrument, he also comes from Turkey, the country where Rumi lived most of his life and is known as 'mevlana': teacher. This poem is a rendering of the original lines, using several sources in English and Dutch, especially Nicholsons translation in English of the Mathnawi (I:1-18), and Abdulwahid van Bommels Dutch translation, as well as Coleman Barks rendering in The essential Rumi (p. 17) as a source of inspiration.

Poem: Jalal al-Din 'Mevlana' Rumi
Rendering: Andrè Meeusen
Picture: Moira van Damme

For the yoga concert with bansuri player Kees van Boxtel, I used one of the poems of Elias Amidon, a modern sufi that wrote a beautiful poetry booklet called Munajat with forty poems, that I read during a forty-day retreat in the desert.

Poem: Elias Amidon
Picture: Moira van Damme

For the yoga concert with cellist Ernst Reijseger, I wrote a poem that was inspired by a finely tuned drill machine singing in the early morning. On the Dutch version of this page you can read how this came about.

Poem: Andrè Meeusen
Picture: Moira van Damme

On January 20, Didge Jerome (Jeroen van der Sluis) visited the Jungle with his didgeridoo for a grounded Song of Yoga. This poem of Nancy Wood suited well to the occasion. In this way, every yoga concert gets its own colour, through the theme, musician, and poetry.

Nancy Wood is an American writer and photographer, who authored books of poetry, fiction, children’s books, and nonfiction steeped in the American Southwest. The region’s wild mountains and Native American spirituality inspired her life view and profound poetry. Many Winters, her most famous of ten volumes of poetry, sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide. Several of her poems are in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal.

Visit nancywood.com, a site beautifully maintained by the Nancy Wood Literary Trust, for more information and poetry of Nancy Wood.

Poem: Nancy Wood
Picture: Nancy Wood © Nancy Wood Literary Trust

In December, I made my full-blown poetry debut, with Marynka behind the piano. At this page, it floats a little wider into the world. Everything I can say about it, is of course already in the poem.

Poem: Andrè Meeusen
Picture: Moira van Damme

Ik kom aan in elk moment. Dat was de sleutelzin van het gedicht van Thich Nhat Hanh, waar ik mijn yogales van afgelopen zaterdag omheen had gebouwd. Een wijze les, die ik me de hele week kon voorhouden. Tijdens het maken van mijn website kwam ik elke dag een nieuw probleem tegen, waarvan ik niet wist of ik het zou kunnen oplossen. Het voelde alsof ik een boek in het Russisch aan het schrijven was. En als een klein wonder dat het gelukt is.
      Op zaterdagochtend ging ik vroeg op pad, omdat de vorige avond in de Jungle een studentenfeest was geweest. Van de Ecstatic Dance op zondagochtend weet ik dat het dan een flinke bende is. Bij de Jungle bleek dat ik in de haast niet de goede sleutels had meegenomen. Dus ik ging op mijn fietsje terug naar huis. Inmiddels bezweet, kon ik de sleutels nergens vinden, niet op hun vaste plek, niet op andere mogelijke plekken. Tot ik ze na lang zoeken vond in mijn jas… Via een gaatje in de jaszak waren ze in de voering terechtgekomen, om zich in een hoekje te verstoppen. Weer op de fiets bleef ik mezelf voorhouden dat alles zijn tijd heeft, dat we de zaal nog steeds voor kwart voor elf schoon konden krijgen. Ook toen het stoplicht op rood ging, op een plein waar het altijd een tijdje duurt voordat het weer op groen springt...
      Ik dacht aan het gedicht en hoe ik dat ook op dit moment kon toepassen. Daar op het verkeersplein, waar de zon lachend stond toe te kijken. Hij hing nog laag, net boven de daken uit, niet zo sterk nog maar ook niet zacht, een felwitte schittering tussen de huizen door. Het is zo eenvoudig. Ik kom aan in elk moment.

Opgeruimd fietste ik weer verder. In de Jungle was het inderdaad een bende, met als hoogtepunt de bakjes waar de toiletborstels in staan: allemaal tot de rand gevuld, met als basiskleuren geel en bruin.
      Precies om kwart voor elf had ik met vuurvreters Sebas en Lianne de ruimte schoon en klaar. Francesca (artiestennaam Fralalai) had haar harp inmiddels geïnstalleerd en het publiek begon binnen te druppelen. Even later kon de les beginnen. We kwamen aan in dit moment.
      Dat is een stuk makkelijker als Fralalai begint te zingen. Ik geniet net zo van haar spel als de deelnemers, maar toch had niets me voorbereid op de overweldigende reacties die na afloop over elkaar heen buitelden. Dit was veel meer dan een yogales, zei men, het was een ceremonie, een reis, waarbij de muziek, de poëzie en de yogahoudingen je aan het eind ergens anders hebben gebracht dan je aan het begin was. Juist door in elk moment opnieuw aan te komen, opent zich een plek die het verstand alleen kan begrijpen door er, over de tijd heen, een verhaal, een reis van te maken.

Gedicht: Thich Nhat Hanh
Vertaling: Andrè Meeusen
Foto: Moira van Damme

Dit gedicht dwarrelde door mijn hoofd toen ik de naam Song of Yoga bedacht. Ik heb meteen een vertaling gemaakt van de bewerking van Coleman Barks, die de gedichten van Rumi in het Engels hertaalde in een vrije versvorm, waarmee de oude sufi volgens zeggen de meest gelezen dichter van Amerika werd. Met Aleid heb ik het gedicht afgemaakt op een van onze poëziedagen.

Hertaling (Engels): Coleman Barks
Vertaling (Nederlands): Andrè Meeusen & Aleid Swierenga
Foto: Moira van Damme

Ondanks het daverende succes van de hertalingen van Coleman Barks - vrijwel alle quotes die op internet rondslingeren zijn regels uit zijn werk - is er ook kritiek, vanwege de vrijheid waarmee hij de poëzie van Rumi een eigen (moderne) vorm geeft. Hij zou nauwelijks iets heel laten van de oorspronkelijke tekst. Toen ik me erin ging verdiepen, viel dit me erg mee. Barks verwijst zorgvuldig naar de Engelse (doorgaans behoorlijk letterlijke) vertalingen, zodat iedereen kan controleren wat hij gedaan heeft. Deze oude Engelse teksten lezen als een uitleg waarbij de poëzie verloren ging. Barks gaat er soms mee aan de haal, maar tot mijn verrassing waren veel van de mooie beelden die hij gebruikt echt van Rumi. De hertalingen van Barks brachten de poëzie terug, de krachtige beelden en muzikaliteit die Rumi's werk kenmerken en maken dat zijn gedichten negen eeuwen later nog steeds levendig en nabij voelen.

Voor dit gedicht heb ik geen vergelijkingsmateriaal, omdat Barks verwijst naar bronnen die ik nergens in tweedehands zaakjes en online boekenplatforms heb kunnen vinden. Een aantal frasen lijken me afkomstig van Barks, maar enkele andere zijn typisch Rumi, zoals het beeld van God die de rietfluitwereld in zijn hand houdt en het idee dat momenten in ons leven zijn als een noot.

Hertaling (Engels): Coleman Barks
Vertaling (Nederlands): Andrè Meeusen & Aleid Swierenga
Foto: Moira van Damme