Kajira Instincts

For many, like this girl, that training is not as easy as perhaps learning the positions, and it is an ongoing process within a kajira that is tested repeatedly. A kajira will often find herself faced with emotions and reactions that are difficult. Automatically, we want to spit out impolite words -- or run and hide.

But in neither of these, do we grow. We grow, as kajira, in learning acceptance. In becoming like the willow tree, we learn to survive the storm by bending gracefully under the fury, yielding to its power, and rising tall and strong again when it has passed.

It is perhaps the most difficult of our training, something only we can train ourselves to do, and it is never-ending as new situations arise to test and tempt us to react in ways unbecoming of a kajira. Rising above our natural instincts takes inner strength and grace.

But a kajira who has learned acceptance is, perhaps like the willow tree, the most beautiful. She embraces each adverse event as an opportunity for growth, for she knows that in the midst of the storm’s fury, there is the nourishment of the rain.