The Arts and Yoga

In the future we will be bringing you profiles on individuals or organizations that bring the arts and yoga together in the form of poetry, dance, theatre or painting.

While doing this research we came across the work of Leza Lowitz.  In a lovely collection of poems entitled Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By, Leza is combining her passion for poetry with her devotion to yoga.

The book contains 60 poems each titled with the name of a posture or breath exercise. As you read through them you can hear how Leza wrote them as a reflection of her own inspired feelings from her yoga practice. Her writing has a quiet honesty and sincere connectedness between the pose and life’s challenges and gifts. It is easy to see how these could be included into anyone’s daily practice or meditation.

In 1989, she left the U.S. with only $500 in hand and moved to Toyko to seek out a new creative life.  She successfully established a writing and editing career and has received numerous awards for her poetry and fiction. She is also widely known as an interpreter of Japanese culture and has completed two novels based in Tokyo along with a collection of short stories. Today, now in Northern California, with her husband Shogo Oketani who is also a writer/translator they are working on translations of Japanese writers.

You can read an excerpt from her book Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By.
[tags]poetry,yoga,japanese culture[/tags]