"It is not the body that should dominate, not the energy of the body that should be the measure of success, but rather it is individuals who should also give meaning to an exercise through the agile activity of their thoughts, perceptions and consciousness." - Heinz Grill.

It's not just the vital, unconscious forces of the body that gets the body to move. In Move Within Yoga, we experience other forces and tap into the energy body (not purely the physical body) to move and lengthen into poses, and into life itself. It's not something our logical brains can understand or will understand no matter how much you study; you have to go into the poses or the experience for yourself.

I appreciate learning about the body, and it's inspiring to hear about discoveries and developments in physical health that have evolved the study beyond 1950s' anatomical books and diagrams.

However, even with the latest upgrades into body awareness, we're still very much bound - at least in the industrial West - to a materialistic view and relationship with the body. Yes, it's working with matter, but as long as we're breathing, spirit infuses this matter in mysterious ways.

Flowers are a great inspiration. They are an integral part of our natural world and have the vital power and energy to form themselves in unity, harmony, strength, dynamism and coordination. Some flowers have more of these qualities than others. Part of my yoga studies was observing these very qualities in different plants and plant life.

The peony is the crown prince of flowers for harmony, strength and coordination. They are outrageous in their beauty, which they fully and joyfully give in an extremely short bloom season. Flowers have no regard for time or for gain. Peonies give and give, with those blossoming heads that smell fragrant and look luscious whether in buds or with petals wide open. They hold nothing back in their blooming cycle. Peak bloom happens in the northern hemisphere between late May and the first week of June - they were the flower of choice back in 1868 when the first US Memorial Day holiday was honored on May 30th. Sometimes a heavy rain is enough to trim peak bloom season to just a few days. They not only symbolize how fleeting and short our lives are, but how temporal the sweet spots are in those lives.

I had the privilege and luck of catching acres and acres of peonies in peak bloom at the display gardens of Peony's Envy in Bernardsville, NJ. There are 700 varieties and cultivars here. It's a mecca for peony lovers. You've never seen pastel colors look so dramatic and glorious than in rows and rows, bunches and clusters of peonies in borders, beds, under woodland, or tumbled together in a bouquet. Cut peonies are the bouquet-equivalent of jumping out of bed and looking stylish and put together without effort.

This year's peak bloom has now passed. It's over for another year. Many bloomingheads are now brown and shriveled. While there are a few cultivars blooming, Peony's Envy makes clear that the party is over; there's not much left to clip in its cutting fields. It's so contrary to any other business or organization in its brutality, but so typical of the peony and nature. Once it's over, it's over. No clinging, no attachment, no pretending, no denial, no striving or pushing the truth. no fake flowers here. But while the flowers are now gone, their bushy green foliage will remain all summer and then there's autumn - the best time to plant them, according to "The Old Farmer's Almanac."