Chaos is Calling

Harmony in Entropy

Entropy can be described as the amount of variation or different combinations of states within a system. Physics, and particularly the theories of thermodynamics propose that ever-increasing entropy is the nature of the universe. More combinations of parts, taking up more space, creating more heat, all the time. The words chaos and randomness are also used to describe states of entropy. 

The more space, heat and elements or particles exist within a system, the more entropy, chaos, or possibility, is present. 

Entropy is also described as the amount of thermal energy within a system that is not available for mechanized work. Just by practicing yoga you exhibit a significant amount of metaphorical entropy. You have made yourself unavailable for efficient labor for a time, to engage with your interior world. You have exited daily systems of work and expectation, to function wholly as yourself in reverence to aliveness. 

When we ask for big opening of the body as soon as we reach the mat we are often greeted with muscular resistance, injury or frustration. We are the closed system arriving to practice, beginning in a state of limited entropy, cool, condensed and fairly rigid or ordered. But as we lean into our nature, as part of this writhing universe, as we apply heat, and create more spaciousness, increase the complexity of our movement, invite breath as another form of input into our system, our entropy increases. We dance with the chaos that is part of us, and embrace the possibilities that it foretells. 

I have always been interested in the idea and language of alchemy, a transformation of rough parts into the exalted, The beautiful work of being human is in part to take pain and longing and transmute them into connection and beauty, without disavowing their origins. To feel the depth of heartache that incises a human life and remember that you are not alone. To experience the homecoming that is beauty, and that love and tenderness are possible in your body. 

I am interested in alchemizing the language of physics, our rational cognition to reveal the poetry of our embodied consciousness. What if we recognized ourselves as constituents of an entropic universe? What if we recognized ourselves as made of the same elements that fill the formulas of thermodynamics, and applied the heat of devotion to expand the possibilities of our perception? What if we used the space of the mind to perfect our love, the senses of the body to take in stimulus as input into the living systems we are as humans? We can use the vocabulary of the known and observable world to feel into the direction of the unknown. I am much more interested in the usefulness of these metaphors than in their accuracy. 

The perfectly Tantric thing about this concept is that the very "chaotic" nature of entropy creates great harmony all throughout the biological world. It is entropy that causes dense molecules in liquid to disperse until they are evenly distributed throughout that liquid. It is a dance with entropy that balances the salt to water ratios in your cells. Some have theorized that death is the ultimate entropy; disorder within a system at its maximum state. Death feeds new life.

The predictability of chaos or randomness is observable synthesizing natural order everywhere. Chaos creating harmony, as pain begets beauty in art, as heartbreak preludes genius affirmations of the human spirit and our deep imperative towards love. 

So as you step on to your mat remember that there is an order to this chaotic experience of being. That you can trust your body to unfold with time. That the warming, breathing, patient building, falling, sweating, slipping, stretching, feeling, is your natural chaos calling. You are unfolding brilliantly with all the intricate harmonies born in to your being.