Virabhadra… warrior…

Did you know that this is not the actual Sanskrit word for warrior? It’s in fact the name of a very specific warrior in Hindu theology, sent by Shiva to avenge his love.

The story goes like this: while Shiva was sitting in meditation, his father-in-law, the king Daksha, invited all the other gods to a sacrifice at his palace – excluding Shiva. Shiva’s wife, Sati, became very angry at her father for this, and she showed up at his palace to yell at him. She got so angry that she burst into flames and fell to ash at her father’s feet.

Even from his deep meditation, Shiva could feel that his beloved had died in her father’s palace, and he assumed her father had killed her. So he created a warrior called Virabhadra to go and avenge her death. Warrior 1 pose represents Virabhadra rising up in front of Daksha’s throne with sword in hand–warrior 2 is him chopping off King Daksha’s head–and Warrior 3 is him planting the head on a stake for all the party guests to see.

The story continues that Sati reincarnated on the spot to beg Shiva to come out of his meditation and set things straight; when Shiva realized his error, he replaced King Daksha’s head with the head of a goat, and all was forgiven.

What a story hmm?! This story teaches me a few things:
1. Don’t be so quick to judge a situation before you have all sides of the story.
2. Well, that there is incredible POWER in the force of LOVE.

Have you done the warrior poses recently? Try it again with this story in mind, and it will change your practice immediately. Feel STRONGER – more powerful, more confident.

This is a well-documented phenomenon: changing our SHAPE can change our entire MOOD. Quite often, our self-protective posture (when we’re sad, scared, nervous, stressed, etc.) looks like shoulders rounding forward, as if we’re trying to hug ourselves, shrink ourselves, turn ourselves into a little ball. The Warrior poses ask us to do the exact OPPOSITE, and it creates the exact opposite effect in our body.