Sunday, June 27, 2010
Beginning with Shiva
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Yoga, A Practice of Being Present
Yoga, a practice that reaches back possibly 5,000 years, when once upon a time individuals needed to escape the confines of their society and headed for the hills. Historians indicate that perhaps they were shamans, seeking healing for themselves as a vehicle for healing in their communities, mediating with the gods. They sat in caves and made inquiries, exploring inner universes, seeking ways to free themselves from suffering, from the ego.
Yoga. To yoke, or to join; bringing all aspects of self, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, into balance, into harmony. This union is a coming home to the truest self. It is a process of transformation created by intention and attention to a practice. As it has evolved, yoga can be a number of different pathways including devotion, or bahkti; study, or jnana; meditation, or dyhana; selfless service or karma yoga. Today, the popularization of yoga is the pathway of hatha yoga. Hatha is defined as the joining of opposites. A hatha practice is one where breath supports the rhythm of the postures, where attention to the body in motion stills the mind into focus. The asanas are distilled from thousands of years of practice into the basics postures of many contemporary yoga styles.
The form of a hatha practice is rich. Building heat, creating fire: Ha/Sun. Drawing inward, cooling: Tha/Moon. The asanas that may be part of a class include standing, sitting, forward, back and side bending, twisting, inverting, lying on the belly, lying on the back. T.V.K. Desikachar calls it “a program for the spine at every level—physical, respiratory, mental, and spiritual”. Opening energy channels, or nadi’s, are affected by this attention to the spine and alignment. There are anywhere between 75,000 and 300,000 of these channels in the body! The primary 3 are the shushuma or the spinal cord, and the ida and pingala spiraling up either side of the shushuma. Locks, or bandhas, affect the flow of energy in the shushuma, retaining and releasing the flow of energy. Mudras, or gestures, may be incorporated. This ancient use of the hands can be as simple as a prayer hands. Look at a picture or statue of the Buddha, his hands are in a mudra. Add on top of these, the breath, pranayama: heat building, cooling, energy raising, relaxing, slow breath, sharp breath, all serve different purposes, but can be seen as another way to keep the mind present. Want a natural high? Start bringing these pieces together.
Yoga is a way of presence, of bringing all of oneself into the present moment; the body, the mind, and, in its full expression, the heart or spirit. Presence is an invitation to balance and peace of mind. Prana, our life force, asks us to be here, now. However, it is a two way street which first involves showing up on the mat! Waking up, self-awakening, requires making the intention to do so. A hatha practice creates the opportunity to pay attention to what the body is doing, how it is doing it, what sensations arise out of the actions. The opportunity is there to focus the mind on the body, on the breath; watching the breath: the inhale, the exhale, the spaces in between. It is also an opportunity for the spirit to dance between the two, allowing for the practice to be a creative expression. Best of all, it is a window through which we can learn to observe ourselves with a lens of non-judgment.
A hatha practice is not mutually exclusive to the other pathways. Add a bit of attention to bahkti and soar. With bahkti the divine is manifested in all things, it is LOVE. The Bhagavad Gita, one of the sacred scriptures of this tradition, says “the perfection of yoga is to meditate on the supreme personality of godhead within one’s heart and make him the ultimate goal of life.” In that epic,
The great news here is this: How old or young, big or small, flexible or tight does not matter in order to have an enriching experience of this ancient way. The only thing to do in order to begin a practice is to show up. Maybe it is to a class, maybe it is with a DVD, maybe it is out of a book. In today’s world, the points of entry are everywhere. The first step in any journey is possibly the most difficult, but once momentum has begun, simply put, how good it feels will keep you coming back for more. From the personal to the collective, as we heal ourselves, freeing our own sufferings, we become a vehicle for healing on larger scales. It is said, ‘Let peace begin with me”. Welcome home to your Self.
published online by Sac-Be http://67.222.169.121/being_present.shtml