The Journey Home Through the Pieces

Kabbalah, Yoga, and the Art of Becoming Whole

I recently heard an ancient teaching from the Kabbalah that moved me so deeply. The teaching says that the universe began with a great outpouring of Divine Light — so vast and radiant that the vessels meant to hold it couldn’t contain its brilliance. They shattered, scattering sparks of that Light across creation.

That image, called the Shattering of the Vessels (Shevirat HaKelim), is not just a cosmic story — it’s our story too. Every heartbreak, every loss, every challenge that splinters our sense of self is a modern echo of that original breaking.

The Kabbalists didn’t see the shattering as tragedy. They saw it as the beginning of a journey — a Divine invitation to repair, to remember, to return to the source of Light. The return is called Tikkun, meaning “restoration” or “repair.” It’s the process of gathering what has been scattered and bring it back into harmony.

The Yoga of Repair

In life, we experience this same story time and time again. We come to our spiritual practices carrying our fragments — physical, mental and emotional. We breathe, we move, we open. Piece by piece, the scattered parts mend themselves. Every inhale becomes a gathering of Light. Every exhale, a letting go of what no longer serves us.

The body, like the world, learns to hold the light more steadily. Not perfectly - but wisely - with resilience born from practice.

The Sanskrit word yoga means “union.” It’s not just the union of body and breath — it’s the union of gathering ourselves back together.

Yoga is the slow, sacred work of recovering from the many "shatterings" of our lives....calling home the parts of us that have been scattered by stress, loss, or distraction.

Yoga becomes the way we can reweave what has come undone.

When we practice yoga or sit in meditation, we participate in both personal and collective healing. Each moment of awareness, every act of kindness or forgiveness, becomes an act of Tikkun—the sacred repair. We gather Divine sparks simply by showing up for ourselves: by feeling what is present, breathing with it, and allowing light to move freely through us, again and again. To feel is to heal, and through that gentle openness, we help restore balance within and around us.

The Divine Journey Within Us

Kabbalah teaches that the Divine is not only the Light before the breaking, its the journey back to ourselves. The sacred lives in every intention and action we make toward awareness. Its the way we relentlessly tend to our inner life. Every yoga practice, every breath, is a remembering...a gathering... toward truth.

Contemplation

When life shatters you, the Light does not disappear — it scatters. Every time we pause, breathe, or forgive, we gather the sparks and bring them back home. Wholeness is never the absence of breaking — it’s the movement to gather what was lost and begin again.