Snowflakes and their study are a perfect metaphor for developing appreciation of our lives and everyone else’s – all of us alike, made of the same material and all unique in design. If we pause to remember that each snowflake is singular, something inside sighs with awe and hums with wonderment. Awe and wonder are rare feelings, so fleeting they easily pass unregistered and unnoticed, the signs – spontaneous relaxation, shoulders dropping, a full moment of comfort, a soft smile – often ignored.
Studying the individuality of snowflakes became the overarching vocation of Wilson A. Bentley and defined his life (and death). In Vermont in the late 1800’s, he documented the intricacy of each flake with careful, methodical quickness and precision, photographing hundreds of them over 13 years. His other tools, he later noted in a piece he wrote for the magazine Popular Mechanics, were humble: “a pair of thick mittens, microscope slides, a sharp pointed wood splint, a feather, and a turkey wing or similar duster.” *
Our bodies are complex and beautiful, too, and we work kinaesthetically in yoga practice, with attention and kindness using simple props: a mat, a carpeted or bare floor, a cushion, a blanket, a timer, an open window. In Bentley’s obituary, the writer said, he saw something in the snowflakes which other men failed to see, not because they could not see, but because they had not the patience and the understanding to look. * Something similar is true in yoga practice. We become curious and patient explorers. And in the end, as with each snowflake, structure drops away and we’re left with the ephemeral experience of beauty, integration and release.
* Please read: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-man-who-captured-the-unique-beauty-of-snowflakes