Today I tried something new, and somehow it feels less like trying something new and more like stepping quietly into something that had been waiting for me.
This year has already felt different. Since late last year, and more consciously since January, I have been shifting. For so long I lived almost entirely in my head — thinking, writing, structuring, producing. I was proud of that intensity. It built my career, my identity, my sense of worth. But somewhere along the way I started to feel that I was flourishing only as a mind, not as a whole person. And that feels incomplete.
So I have been experimenting with paying attention to my body again. Pilates in the mornings. Yin yoga in the evenings. Choosing studios that are five minutes from home because I know myself — if it is inconvenient, I will not go. There is something tender about admitting that I need to reduce friction in order to care for myself.
The mellow hum classes at Humming Puppy have felt almost medicinal. Long holds. Dim light. The humming frequency in the background. No performance. No needing to be flexible or impressive. Just being. It already felt like a rediscovery of something I once knew but had forgotten.
Then on Friday the tutor mentioned a 90-minute Rudra Yaga fire ritual on Sunday at noon. I had no idea what it was. A fire in the middle of the yoga studio? Chanting? Religious roots? I signed up simply because I was curious. I told myself I would observe, nothing more.
Today was 33 degrees. With the fire burning in the room and the windows open, it must have been 35 or 36 inside. I expected discomfort. Irritation. Restlessness.
Instead, I felt tranquil.
I was sweating, yes. But the heat did not agitate me. It did not feel oppressive. It felt almost neutral. That surprised me more than anything else.
I began to wonder whether climate shapes spirituality more than we admit. In humid, hot environments, without air conditioning, one either learns inner regulation or suffers constantly. Perhaps that is why so many contemplative traditions emerged in such climates. If the external temperature cannot be controlled, the internal one must be. “心静自然凉” — when the mind is calm, coolness arises naturally. I have heard that phrase all my life. Today I felt it physically.
Nothing in the room changed. My nervous system did.
There were 28 of us, only two men. We sat around the fire and chanted. We offered wood, oil, rice. The smoke rose and the flames responded. And for those 90 minutes, ordinary time loosened its grip.
Ritual does something that daily life does not. It interrupts the secular flow. It creates a boundary. We were no longer 29 separate individuals with careers, emails, deadlines. We were simply bodies around fire, breathing the same air, hearing the same sound. There was a strange intimacy in that shared environment.
What moved me even more was the thought of continuity. The tutor said that people hundreds, even thousands of years ago performed this same sequence. And people after us will continue to do so. The same gestures. The same offerings. The same rhythm.
For someone whose professional life is obsessed with novelty — new theories, new contributions, new insights — it was unexpectedly comforting to participate in something that is deliberately repetitive and ancient. Nothing innovative. Nothing disruptive. Just continuity.
It felt like stepping into a river that was already flowing long before I arrived and will continue long after I leave.
When we offered materials into the fire and watched them disappear, I did not feel loss. I felt conversion. Wood became flame. Oil became heat. Rice became smoke. Nothing vanished; it shifted form.
I wonder whether this is what is happening to me this year. I am not abandoning ambition. I am not extinguishing drive. I am converting it. Transforming its form. What once burned outward may now need to burn inward.
At some point during the ritual, I noticed myself mapping the five elements from Chinese cosmology onto the scene. Metal in the bowls. Wood in the fuel. Fire obvious and alive. Earth in the rice and plant matter. I searched for water and could not find it at first. Then I realized it was everywhere — in the flowers, in the vapor, in the subtle moisture that allows combustion.
An Indian Vedic ritual, interpreted through a Daoist lens. It did not feel forced. It felt natural, almost inevitable. Perhaps this is what it means to truly inhabit one’s cultural background — not as a boundary, but as a lens.
I was worried that 90 minutes would feel long. It didn’t. Time dissolved. When it ended, I was surprised. And I found myself asking when the next session would be.
That surprised me too.
I think what touched me most is not the religious aspect, but the permission to slow down. To sit in heat without fighting it. To participate in something that is not about achievement. To be part of a temporal continuum rather than a personal project.
This is not a dramatic spiritual awakening. It is quieter than that. Softer. Almost understated.
But I can feel something reorganizing.
This year I am learning that flourishing is not about adding more. It may be about integrating what is already there. It may be about cooling the inner fire without extinguishing it. It may be about standing in the heat and discovering that calm is not the absence of intensity, but the capacity to hold it without resistance.
I am grateful that I went.
And perhaps more importantly, I am grateful that I am becoming the kind of person who goes.
When I got home, still slightly smelling of smoke and warmth, I instinctively messaged Joanna about the ritual. I think I didn’t want the experience to stay only inside me. I wanted to share it with someone who would understand.
She had just come back from hot yoga herself. We laughed about the heat, and when I told her how I didn’t really feel the temperature during the fire ritual, she said, “Inner peace wherein outer peace follows.” That line stayed with me. It felt like we were meeting in the same idea from different paths.
Then I discovered something I hadn’t known before — she is actually a certified yoga teacher. She had done her 200-hour training in Byron Bay and even taught before Covid. I was genuinely surprised. It felt like another small coincidence, or perhaps just another reminder that people carry depths we don’t immediately see.
We ended up talking about philosophy beyond postures, about going deeper into culture, about Bali and Langkawi and tropical seasons. The conversation moved so naturally between traditions — Vedic fire, Daoist roots of yin yoga, Australian training, Southeast Asian retreats.
Afterward, I felt quietly grateful.
Grateful that my life now includes friends from different cultures, different climates, different spiritual languages. Somehow all these threads — Chinese, Indian, Australian, European — are not pulling me apart. They are weaving me into something wider and softer.
Maybe this is also part of my evolution: learning that depth does not have to be solitary. It can be shared.