Degrees of Muchness

I have to take my hat off to Tim Burton (once again)…the visionary behind the defining film moments that include characters like Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd and Beetlejuice has once again given me a cinematic moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. There are aspects of Burton’s films that always touch a chord with me – the gloomy, pseudo-Gothic ambiance which I repeatedly find every time I spend time in England is one, his ability to transform the morbid into the comical (the two have very often been interchangeable for me throughout my life) is another, but most of all, the significance and validity that he attributes to the fantastical, to the fringe of what is commonly accepted by the mainstream. And Alice in Wonderland brings all these amazing elements to dizzying new heights.

I know…this is starting to sound like a film review, so I’ll veer off here a bit…the reason I felt compelled to write about the film can be found in one of the lines spoken to Alice by the Mad Hatter when he says, “You used to be much muchier before. Yes you were much more Alice the last time we met. You have lost your muchness.”

The notion of being able to alter such a basic word in our vernacular to embody such meaning, such enormity of the human condition and potential, really left its mark on me. Everything I work towards, everything I write about here, and everything I discuss with students in my classes all lead to that one word: muchness. If my definition of Yoga is about being the best version of oneself, about being the least blurry version of oneself,  then I welcome this new arrival in my proverbial word pool with fanfare. It’s all about muchness. Finding one’s own, tapping into it, and then making it glaringly visible for all to bask in and be inspired by.

How do you all tap into your own muchness?