Category: choice

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sight, vision and yoga

Present in the yoga cosmologies is an  understanding that the world, the physical world with which we interact every day, is an illusion –  “Maya”.  What is  not an illusion is the love that is the creator who goes by many names. The illusion is ever changing but the loving awareness behind it stays constant and the same.  That loving awareness is within us and around us – omniscient, omnipotent, and everlasting.  The Sankhya philosophy maps out the non-spatial terrain between our sensory interactions with the illusion and our experience of that omniscient loving awareness. Our senses interact with Maya – and that is the field we must work with on our journey. Our sense of sight relates uniquely and powerfully to the experience of the illusion.  Through sight, we see a world full of enemies or friends, flowers or concrete. As with all the other senses, the yogic approach is to purify the sense of sightn so we can have direct vision through the eyes of loving awareness.  As our yoga practices blossom we don’t make ourselves think something positive about the world around us so we see it out there – we actually begin to naturally see differently.

We can consider two components of seeing and vision: the physical eyes (and all the associated physical organs), and the spiritual eye – which only opens as a result of spiritual conditions.  The physical eye sees the world of lack and separation – the illusion.  The spiritual eye sees the truth – loving awareness.  The seeing mechanisms of the physical eyes have a way of blocking the vision of the spiritual eye.   By consciously directing the use of our physical eyes, we unblock the visions of the spiritual eye. The means of preparing for this are our standard yogic tools of discipline (training the eye to focus), renunciation (turning our focus away from disturbing visions) and elevation (cultivating the desire to see in a more uplifted way, and seeking association with others who sincerely are seeing in that way). 

One fundamental practice is to monitor carefully what we allow in our visual field.  The yogi cultivates discernment and turns the gaze away from that which is not conducive to their path.  It’s not about ignoring the challenges before us, but but we don’t allow our sight to become absorbed in it. Think of the last explosive movie you saw…it’s easy to get pulled in. There are paths which work specifically with gazing on death or destruction but personally I don’t work with them, and I don’t recommend them – not because they are wrong, but because I believe that it requires extraordinarily skillful means to navigate that kind of practice effectively. It’s not something to be over confident or over trusting about.  It tends to plump the ego. There are many other simpler approaches.   

We work to choose what to invest our sight in. I think the best example of the challenge of gazing at the destructive was the television reporting after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center.  I lived in New York City – and all our televisions went out – and were out – for days.  Most of us there saw the event as it unfolded in the material world around us.  The internet was not yet a primary source of information.  So, we went about doing what we needed to do.  Meanwhile in the suburbs and towns across the United States of America – the public was tuning in to a 24/7 hour a day show of the repeat of the film of the towers going down.  Many felt compelled to watch to be in the know about what was going to happen next.  I must say, my friends who watched that loop on repeat had a much harder time dealing with the trauma than most of the people I knew who lived in the city at that time.  That image of destruction looping before their eyes was burned into their consciousness – together with the accompanying fear.  Watching doom on a long term basis can create some inner conditions that are difficult to deal with and heal from.  So, yes, we must pay attention to the illusion, but elements of it which keep us fixed in undesirable states of mind we consume only enough to have the information that we need to manage our lives.  In this case a yogic choice may have been to check in from time to time for updates rather than really tuning for a long period of time.

In general the act of gazing magnifies what you absorb through the eyes.  Surround yourself with simplicity, beauty, upliftment, and check any tendency to rubber neck when the horrific or compelling crosses your path.  This isn’t a prescription for walking away from a tragedy where one might be helpful, but it is a prescription for discernment. While doing the work of helping if called to do so, the yogin focuses on the potential to be helpful and not the apparent tragedy.

A question we can ask ourselves regarding right sight is “Do I want my life force (or my time)  to be spent looking at this?” Intention and conscious decision making are fundamental to success in yoga.  Know that what you absorb will, in some way effect the mind.

The potency of the ability to direct our gaze becomes illumined as we train on our yoga mats and meditation cushions.  The directed gaze becomes a propellant for the movement of the life force, or prana, traveling in the yogi’s sushumna nadi (a central pranic channel which travels along the spine).  The gaze “pulls” the life force. An uplifted gaze will pull the prana upward.  This is cleansing and uplifting.

The directed gaze in an asana is called “Drishti”. Drishti means sight or vision.  In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika 1.37 we meet this beautiful description of the practice of Siddhasana or Adept’s pose. 

“Press the perineum with the heel of one foot, place the other foot on top of  genitals.  Having done this, rest the chin on the chest.  Remaining still and steady, with the sense controlled, gaze steadily into the eyebrow center; it breaks open the door to liberation.” P 102,   Swami Muktibodhananda tr. Translation by the Bihar school

Drishti is a practice where the Hatha yogin rests a soft gaze on a specific point while performing, moving into or out of their asana.  Opinions vary as to where to rest your gaze.  Some general principles to keep in mind are that you should select a gaze where the back of the neck is long and the heart lifted.  A well-chosen and executed Drishti is not just about the eyes, it’s about the whole body.  As your sense of Sthira and Suhka (steadiness and joy in a posture) develops in your practice, the whole body will be energized and uplifted by the gaze.  The body looks towards the divine. So, yes, generally it will be an uplifted gaze.  For specific instructions on drishti in various yoga postures see Light on Yoga, BKS Iyengar.

This uplifted gaze also is born in the mind of the yogi.  As we shall see when we get to the mind in our exploration of the building blocks of Sankhya Philosophy, the mind influences the senses and the senses influence the mind. And uplifted mind uplifts the gaze and an uplifted gaze uplifts the mind.

Another very potent yoga practice related to the sense of sight is tratak.  Tratak is a meditative, deeper more focused form of Drishti.  Taking a classic meditative posture, the yogin gazes, without blinking, at a candle lit at eye level until tears come and the eyes are flushed out.  Then, the yogin closes the eyes and gazes at the third eye center between the eyes and slightly back.  An inner vision will manifest of the flame, a blue dot, a deity.   The key to the practice is the steady gaze and not giving in to the temptation to close the eyes. Give the practice a specific length of time, say, 20 minutes.

 The practice of tratak is woven deeply into the experience of the third eye and the power of manifestation through the Manipura Chakra (the Solar Plexus Chakra). I don’t really recommend trying to manifest a specific desire, but rather to understand that  the truest desires of the heart – which we often are unaware of –  will manifest organically as we develop the skillful means of yoga: concentration, awareness, letting go, balancing, contemplating the Ageless wisdom, and cultivating joy, to name a few.

/*This concludes our exploration of the senses as the ground floor of the map of the Sankhya philosophy – the direct experience of the world around us and how we can work with them effectively to enhance our yoga asana practice. For the next post we will begin the elements.  All of the blogposts are accompanied by a separate newsletter I send out via mailchimp.  There is no marketing or advertising or charge (I promise)– it’s a just to share some deeper details with motivated students.  This month’s newsletter will touch on Yantras, and a closing statement on the senses.  If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter please subscribe below.  I don’t sell your info, I promise.  You can see this month’s newsletter at https://mailchi.mp/05b51002ed24/sankhya-the-senses-sight*/

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Yoga and taste – cultivating essence

Essence by Natalie Ullmann

रसोऽहमप्सु कौन्तेय प्रभास्मि शशिसूर्ययो: ।
प्रणव: सर्ववेदेषु शब्द: खे पौरुषं नृषु ॥ ८ ॥

raso ’ham apsu kaunteya, prabhāsmi śaśi-sūryayoḥ
praṇavaḥ sarva-vedeṣu, śabdaḥ khe pauruṣaṁ nṛṣu
Bhagavad Gita Chapter 7 Sloka 8

7.8: I am the essence of pure water, O Arjuna, the radiance of the sun and the moon. I am the sacred syllable Om among the Vedic mantras; I am the sound in ether, and the ability in humans. (Bhagavan Shri Krishna)

In this sloka from the Bhagavad Gita Krishna points out that divinity expresses as the essential quality of all things.

I’d like to add the “leap of the cat” to this list.  My cat Lakshmi has had number of serious physical challenges – she is 13 and continues to blossom thrive.  Over the years I’ve seen that the sign that she is truly on the mend is the return of the “leap”.  She’s been recovering from surgery and I was delighted the other day to see her leap up on a forbidden table and knock over a lamp – signs of life. 

In our exploration of the senses – taste has a big part of play as a portal to the tangible essence of purity in the physical realm. 

The journey of yoga is a journey of reclaiming the aspects of ourselves that are NOT physically based.  It’s a journey to understand and experience our essential nature  which is unlimited and  wholesome(which is more fun than it sounds).   As the reclaiming occurs we discover our essential nature is divine.  We come to know what that means, and through that we come to know the divinity all around us and beyond us.    

Sankhya, a classical philosophy of India, commonly taught alongside the practices of yoga, is represented by a chart of the journey from the densest physical experience to the essential sublime.  We have been exploring how the construction of the chart can be  used to hone and develop our practices in such a way that they have depth, sustainability and transformative potency.

With the sense of taste we delve into a further mining of the yogi’s jewel of discernment.  Though cultivating full awareness of the tastes we ingest we begin our journey to discern the pure, the nourishing, the essential.  Developing a taste for this in our food extends out into the development of the taste for that which is truly clear, supportive and essential in our lives.

The yogi’s journey is  very much about minimalism as ideal self-care. To hone simplicity, balance, nourishment and well-being in such a way that we can maintain it easily and leave time for practice.  The good life is an uncluttered life.    From this perspective an ideal is to learn to identify what is essential and detach from everything else.

To begin to taste pure food and pure water is to begin the journey of deep knowing about what we need – to care for our physical bodies, our relationships, our roles;  uncovering that which is essential for our well-being.  This isn’t good or bad – it’s practical.  Every facet of our lives take time.  By identifying that which is essential we can streamline. 

This is not to say that we don’t have fun from time to time. 

So how do we engage our sense of taste in a productive way?

Taste is a reflect of something – a reflection of qualities of a substance or an object.   Lettuce is light and juicy, potatoes are sweet and earthy, brown rice is also sweet and tomatoes are zingy and pungent.   Fresh food tastes vital and bright and stale  food tastes dull and  flat.  Our food is transformed into body tissue, and the more vital the body tissue, the more rapidly we will progress in our yoga practice. Imagine pouring red beets into your bloodstream, or cleansing the body with juiced fresh kale – dark robust and full of chlorophyll. 

Some general rules which can help with the development of yogic taste:

Think live instead of dead.  (fresh broccoli vs.  a hamburger)
Simple instead of processed.  (baked potato vs a potato chip)
Mother nature instead of the chemist (fresh herbs and spices vs. “natural flavoring”)
Nutritious instead of empty. (Butternut Squash vs. refined sugar)
Varietal instead of dull (Beets, cabbage, lettuce, lemon, seaweed vs. lettuce every
single day).
Satisfying instead of depriving (taco Tuesdays with fresh corn tortillas and tomatoes
vs. brown rice and broccoli every day)

The yogi develops deep awareness of the sense of the taste of freshness.  At first, it may not seem like the most fulfilling choice.  The experienced yogi may enjoy both steamed broccoli and store bought highly processed French fries – but recognizes clearly the fulfillment of the taste of freshness in in the steamed broccoli.  Divinely made -with discernment, the taste of fresh vegetables surpasses anything man made -without effort.  The more awareness we have around those choices – the more our sense of taste develops.

Remember, as hatha yogis we are transforming the lead of our bodies as they are into the alchemical body – withstanding of all disease processes, a body which can regenerate and heal itself.  We change on a molecular level through practice.  Nourishing the body with that which is pure and wholesome, comes from nature supports a practice through which the nature potency of the body mind spirit complex is brought forth. 

For every blog post (about once a month or less – there is an accompanying newsletter with a different perspective on the subject at hand. Yoga after all is experienced as trying things on from one perspective to another and another until the light goes on about the whole that encompasses the parts. You will not be subjected to marketing.

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Sankhya, sovereignty and the sense of touch

In our investigation of the Sankhya philosophy and asana we begin with a study of the senses.   On the map, the senses are on the bottom row, left side – classified under sattva.  (see image below) For now we will consider sattva as awareness.  Senses are intimately connected to the quality of awareness.  Classically,  yoga is a discipline through which we access and become aware of our inner wisdom through practices by which we are trained to withdraw our senses from the external world.  As we turn them inward – our connection to the sacred and the infinite resources of wisdom and awareness are revealed.  The magnificence of asana is that it is a physical practice which results in a state of transcendent experience and understanding beyond the physical. Working consciously with our senses facilitates opening to greater levels of awareness and allows us to realize those more illumined states of awareness in the physical world.

When we practice, keeping measured attention on the breath will develop the objectivity we need to interpret the information we take in through our senses.

We can think of the information that we take in from our senses as data and the understanding and interpretation of that data is done by the mind.  Sankhya philosophy identifies different aspects of mind.  We’ll get to that later.  I just point this out because it’s just like looking at a spreadsheet,   The numbers don’t mean anything.  The meaning comes from analysis and the purpose with which you observe and work with  them. The more we can step back into an objective, non-interpretative relationship with our sense data the more we will understand about yoga.  For example, pain can be dangerous, healing, warning, or a clue for a potential adjustment. We need to be in a non-interpretive state to discern the meaning of the pain.

The following five senses organs are enumerated in the sankhya philosophy: 

The eye, the ear,  the tongue, the nose and the skin.

The disciplines of focus and austerity in the yoga practice are designed so that, just as we might learn to articulate the movement of a limb, we might also manage those sense organs.  As our practice evolves into greater levels of subtlety, we become masters of how a given piece of sensory data is interpreted.

*****************************

Today I’d like to consider touch.  Touch is a very physical sense and the physical body is the asana yogi’s primary vehicle.  The fundamental  and first level of awakening awareness of touch in the yoga practice comes through the feet on the ground.  Consider the following progression: 

  1. Tadasana: mountain posture – the feet are both on the ground  steady and even – the weight dispersed through the pads of the toes the ball and the heel. Both feet work together as one foot.
  2. Vrksasana – tree posture – we shift the weight to one foot, and connect the sole of the other foot to the inner leg.  The weight of the body is evenly dispersed through the standing foot
  3. Virabhadrasana 2 – warrior II -we begin to master weight distribution between two feet with the same sense of dispersion between the toe, ball and heel pads. 
  4. Adho Mukha Vrksanana – handstand – all the weight on two hands (look ma – no feet!)
  5. Adho Mukha Svanasana – Both hands and both feet on the earth and separated and new possibilities emerge in terms of weight distribution and articulation of the hands and feet against the earth. 

Some things we might note:

  • The touch of the body against the earth
  • The touch of two parts of the body against one another
  • The touch sensation of distribution of weight.
  • The touch sensation of activation of muscles and pressure.
  • Add to this the qualities that might be included in the experience of touch:
    • pain
    • pleasure
    • revulsion
    • hot or cold
    • heavy or light

Through attention and awareness the sense of touch becomes proprioception and kinesthetics – where our awareness of the inner landscape awakens and knowing our purpose in time and space. 

Take it further –   what is revealed is how the body works – including the internal organs.  Through attention to the more overt layers of sensation – awareness of the subtle developes and we awaken into clairsentience.  “I have a feeling”.  It’s like a gut instinct but much subtler and tuned to a different frequency.  Consider laying your hands on someone – a gesture of friendship or love or passion – all different frequencies or “vibes”.  Touch also has a relationship with the heart – this “I have a feeling” is a dimension of the emotional heart but also the spiritual heart. 

For the asana yogi, the heart is the seat of the nadam, the inner guru, sound vibration, the sound of vibration of Om.  Yes.  Vibration.  Detected by touch. 

When we practice asana we open doors to expanded understandings of….well, everything.  So as we pay attention to touch in practice – it opens the question of “pain” in yoga practice.  Many opposing views of how to relate to pain in yoga are espoused in the yoga community.  But through awareness we develop discernment about the sensations in our body – like pain.  This awareness is related to our personal sovereignty.

Consider a way  of relating to ourselves and the world which relies totally on external sources for interpretation (the doctor, the internet, our mother, the person one mat over from us in class).  This way of relating which denies our capacity to interact observe and interpret the signals of our own body.

Consider a way of relating  where the sensation itself governs us.  For example “Oops I feel something – I’m not going there into that forward bend, back bend, – I’m going to avoid sensation completely”.  The healing potential of the posture is never even approached.  We give our power of choice away to the sensation.

Consider a different way of relating, different than the ways described above.  Consider becoming aware of a sensation, observing, breathing, noticing the quality, and then noticing the quality change as we gently shift the body part a millimeter, or stretch a little deeper.   Then we come to know:

 “Oh – this pain indicates I need  the attention of the doctor”, or  

“Oh, this pain indicates I need to go deeper in the practice”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I need to be gentle in practice”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I’ve been slumping at my desk.”

Through careful observation of sensation we reclaim our power of CHOICE.  No small thing.  Moving into this state of sovereignty by activating awareness and choice –  we no longer make the pain all powerful by ignoring, fighting or delegating it.  We hold the possibility in our hands and through attention we discern the next best step towards wholeness, healing and yoga.

I always try to create a post and a newsletter to be released simultaneously. They aren’t for marketing purposes. This is just a way to share what I learned in my years of teaching. In the coming releases I anticipate that the information in both will really be useful. You can sign up below. You will not receive anything other than these materials. The newsletters are also available on the NatalieteachesYoga facebook page and on Tumbler.

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An image of the chart of the sankhya philosophy with senses illuminated.

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About the Body: Headstand

Let’s not take a headstand out of the yoga practice!  Find a good Iyengar instructor and learn it from them! 

Around 2012 there were rumors that yoga  teaching  insurance would no longer cover classes where headstand was taught.  It was a rumor.  A  threatening one to us old school teachers who were under the gun at the time.   But headstand  is a posture which is open to debate.  In the classical schools it is the king of all postures.  In more modern accommodating classes, you may not ever encounter it. 

I am in the first group.  I studied and taught Jivamukti Yoga which has roots in the Krishnamacharya lineage.  Krishnamacharya was the root guru of three notable  traditions originating in his students  – Ashtanga (associated with K. Pattabhi Jois), Iyengar (associated with B.K.S.  Iyengar) and yoga as taught by T.K.V. Desikachar which he called “yoga”. 

At Jivamukti we practiced headstand for five minutes a day, and it was taught in almost every class.  I feared it deeply.  When K. Pattabhi Jois came to New York to teach I walked through my fear and took some of the classes the classes.  The first day he singled me out and did not let me run to wall during headstand.  He held me off balance in the posture for 12 very, very long breaths.  I was sweating bullets and seeing my life pass before my eyes.  The next day, he walked over, put in me in the headstand in a balanced way, and then walked away.  From that moment forward it was a favorite.

This was how it was taught in those days.  For me, this  was very effective. 

I’d had a long-standing issue in which  my cervical spine would lock up and cause much pain to me.  Going to the chiropractor helped but nothing really changed. 

I walked out of the Puck building that day and stopped on the sidewalk to stretch my post headstand neck.  As I stretched my neck the spaces between the cervical vertebrae expanded and my neck elongated in a way I’d never felt before.  I was already sold on yoga, but with that opening I was sold in a new way.  My curiosity about Patanjali, ancient sage of yoga and so called “jungle doctor” had been unleashed in my practice in a whole new way.  There was healing to be found in yoga.  The world looked a little different.

As a body worker and Shiatsu therapist I suspect in a casual unproven way that the pressure on my cranial sutures released some stress patterns in deep levels of my fascia.  (but don’t try this at home on your own, find a good teacher!). 

Remember headstand is just Tadasana, mountain posture turned around.  The posture is famed for the capacity to uproot all those places where we are stodgy and stuck in our ways.  It’s a fabulous transformer


No more than once a week I send a newsletter…no ads, just commentaries, perhaps the words to chant and perhaps some songs for your playlist. No ads, no pressure, just sharing a little of my experience of yoga. Its usually paired with a blog post and offers a different perspective of what I’m exploring in the blog.

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About the Body: Being Present

Our bodies are fields of vibration.  It’s obvious right? Even though it feels woo.  My teeth are denser than my muscles…that means that they are at a lower vibration.  They are more solid. 

An exercise we can use to experience this directly is to focus internally from the densest to the subtle-est. Bones and muscles,  tendons and ligaments, internal organs and the fascial tissue that weaves it all together, and then the boundary of the skin, then feeling the air on the skin.  You can experiment with this yourself. Don’t hesitate to use your imagination to connect with the various parts of the body. 

This simple exercise is priceless in terms of becoming aware of our bodies in time and space.  Often we aren’t in our bodies! We are thinking about past and future…using the imaginal mind to unfurl stories and memories which exist only in our minds.  – when we open our eyes they aren’t here any more, or they don’t exist yet. 

If you’ve ever attended a Vipassana meditation retreat you may have done a simpler more diffuse body scan to begin your meditation practice.

Bringing our attention, focus and awareness back into our bodies is an essential part of the transformation power of yoga.  As we learn to be present to the body in this spacious non-judgmental way, the emotional wounds the body carries can be healed.  The power of this cannot be overestimated.  Carrying a body full of memory interferes with our capacity to fill our present moments with newness- the fullness of our love our creativity. 

Was this useful for you?  I hope so.  If it was I encourage your to sign up for my newsletter.  Once a week or so …its yoga information and inspiration based.  No sales, but I do share songs I love that might be fun additions to you practice.

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The Fruits of Yoga: Awakening into the Experience of Infinity

About the body

II.47 Patanjali Yoga Sutra Steadiness and ease of posture is to be achieved through persistent slight effort and through the concentration of the mind upon the infinit

II.48 Patanjali Yoga Sutra When this is attained the pairs of opposites no longer limit.

(translation of Sutras by Alice Bailey)

One of the techniques from the classical practices which is really powerful in uniting the two opposites is something called moola bandha.  Moolah is “root” and Banda is lock,  and the experience of moola bandha or root lock can be activated by several different approaches.

On the physical level a very simple way to begin to activate this root lock is to engage in lift the space between the anus and the genitals. Bring your attention to the area and attempt to draw it up and in toward your navel.  Now hold that for your entire practice while breathing at the same time.  For me, to be honest, I have the best luck with this if I work with it in seated forward bends and standing postures.  Some yogi’s can perform this to an extent they levitate the body.  In my opinion working with it on both levels is useful, and working with it simply is safer. 

On and energetic level what moolah bandha does is move the energy in an energy center called the mooladhara chakra(the root chakra) which energizes the entire pelvic girdle. To directly experience our energy requires patience and the cultivation of a subtler level of attention.  But for some, this is easier.  Just know that if you keep practicing consistently and well you will have tangible experiences of this kind of energy and be able to learn to manage it.  As a matter of fact we all feel our energy all the time.  Some examples are the experiences of sexual desire or butterflies in the stomach. When we’re focused on identification with our sexual identity,  our financial identity our tribal identity and our identity as a body (as opposed to as a spiritual being) the energy of this center moves out into the material world. We may notice this as an experience of deep fatigue. The energy also moves outward if we seek our answers outside of ourselves, rather than listening within.

 When we work with Moola Bandha this way of looking at ourselves and looking for answers shifts. We begin to wake up to a different way of understanding our lives –  what are we creating, how we participate in the larger community of the universe, what is our personal path of love and what is our authentic expression. When we start asking these kinds of questions, looking in these directions for the answers to the questions that arise in our lives Moola Bandha is activated on an energetic level. When it’s activated on an energetic level it often spontaneously arises on a physical level as well.  The trick is to keep the state of mind as you re-engage the external world.

 A powerful way to support the physical practice of moola bandha is to shift our attention towards these universal considerations while we practice.  Our attention will work harmoniously with the physical contraction of the space between the anus and the genitals.  By working these two aspects together we activate a powerfully gentle form of transformation. How do we shift our attention while we are in our practice? Shouldn’t our attention during our practice be on our practice?  I encourage you to ask those questions when you are on your mat in your personal practice. There are as many approaches to this integration as there are people practicing yoga.  Some people meditate before practice. Some people chant before practice. Some pray.   Some extend the benefit of their practice to others or take a moment to envision that somehow as the practice transforms them  – that the world around them will transform into a peaceful world where beings are happy and free.  The possibilities are endless hence Patanjali’s statement about the limits.     The important thing is to consider incorporating these kinds of techniques into your practice on a physical level.  In actual practice an effective moola bandha will show up in a lightness – a freedom of movement,  a steadiness of the mind,  and a stability in the grounding of the posture. It may also show up as a different understanding of yourself in the practice and this I will leave you to discover on your own!

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Awakening Inner Authority

Teacher and student- the heart of yoga

Balancing on your own two arms – it’s a heart thing💖

In the newsletter this month we’ve been focusing on the relationship between teacher and student. By understanding the ideal dynamic of that relationship in classical practice we can enhance our capacity to learn yoga well on our own or with outer teachers. 

When looking to external sources for guidance, information, understanding – there is a transfer of authority involved in the learning. We learn by imbuing a source with authority. To learn we must be willing to consider that the external source has valid and relevant understanding of what we want to learn, and we must be willing to try on, sincerely, what they have to offer- to be open to it.  At this time scientists and doctors are held up as the pinnacle of valid authority-in other cultures in other times shamans and mystics are revered authorities. For some, journalists are valid authority. Judges are authorities in our culture.   

From the yoga perspective authority is not inherent in any of those people. Others confer that authority on them.  True authority exists on a whole other level – in the realm of inner wisdom that we all have access to. Scientific findings are replaced, legal decisions are over turned, medical advice is found to be wrong.  From the yoga perspective relative authorities like these can be useful but the truest of authorities is the limitless consciousness that we can access by looking within ourselves – beyond intellect, beyond knowledge in the deep silence.

Regardless of your reasons for practicing yoga it’s likely your mind has quieted down through the practice – revealing glimpses of peace and stillness.  This inner fount of silence and peace is also the source of ultimate authority.  It’s not your personality, it’s not your intellect-it’s the place inside you where your true potential resides waiting to be revealed. The more we choose to connect with it the more that silent wisdom self pervades our point of view.

So how do we access this fount consistently? Asana (postural) practice is a big part of this – by staying peaceful in an uncomfortable position we train ourselves to access this peaceful place at will.  There are layers to this….first we just stay an extra breath and then another and then another. Next we practice staying focused on the breath rather than  discomfort.  Once we have mastered that we can bring ease into the posture by softening gripping resistance.  Then in that space of wisdom and peace we can mindfully press more deeply into our alignment or our depth in the posture with wisdom. Press forward with wisdom.

As you practice nurturing this peace within while on your mat, it might be worthwhile to practice accessing that quiet space within when challenged to make a choice.  Test the wisdom.  This process of testing the wisdom born of silence can be helpful in making a relationship with our inner authority.  We begin to recognize the difference between acting from our fear or our wisdom, and our faith in this subtle deeper wisdom grows.  We begin to reclaim the authority that we may have given away to the world around us.

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Yoga, Freedom and Moving into Sovereignty

The focus this moon month in the newsletter is freedom or in Sanskrit, Mukti.  Mukti translates as “liberation”,  freedom, and it’s important to understand that freedom in the sense of yoga is different than freedom in of our day-to-day life – although they are related. We may think that having tons of money would be freedom or rebelling against social conventions would be freedom. Freedom is not inherent in those experiences.  Ask anyone who has very large amounts of money or who has lived in the counterculture for a long time and in their story you will hear of the oppressions that still remain.  In yoga  freedom is something that we develop inside ourselves as we cease identifying with the fluctuations (vritti’s) of our mind. That’s the  second sutra of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. The fluctuations of our mind frequently take the form of how we think of ourselves, how we think of others and how we think of the world we live in. These mental constructs can become rigid and block our ability to be open and spacious and, well, liberated.  The freedom of the yogi comes in the form of an inner sovereignty which allows us to become the masters of our own minds and to use that freedom to choose the path of love over and over again.

Yoga is a discipline that leads to freedom The practices of yoga involve experiencing certain kinds of restraint and under those conditions finding the freedom there. When the  restraint is lifted you have a different understanding of who you are. Restraint comes in the form of tying yourself in a knot in an awkward posture and remaining peaceful.  Restraint can mean  being willing to suspend our immediate desires in order to allow a higher state of wisdom consciousness to guide our actions.

When we tie ourselves in a knot in a posture we stir up the deep resistances we have to living.  The knots are knots within our consciousness and so the goal is that to breathe, to be present to what’s happening and not fight with it. Consider this first level of freedom one that you could find contentment even when circumstances around you are not to your liking.  That’s a tremendous amount of freedom. Sometimes for whatever reason it’s not the best idea to change a circumstance. Even though it’s uncomfortable, it’s better to be strong. This capacity is honed in the practice of asana.  Accept the limitation, breathe be still and allow your inner guidance to direct you step by step to moving beyond the limitation into a deeper expression of the posture.

This kind of yoga training reveals discernment – the capacity to understand if our impulses are coming from our authentic heart desires or our desire to control. It’s a powerful means of developing aligned autonomous inspired choice making. Sovereignty. It is a gift of the yoga practice born of moment by moment alignment with self and that is the freedom. Rather than having others dictate who we are or who we become  or what actions we take in our lives we are free to take action in alignment with our highest best interest.  Yoga will take us to a healthy and beautiful body of all different kinds of shapes and sizes but this is the heart of the yoga  – this sovereignty and the freedom that emerges through practice.

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The Elements of Sadhana: Santosha- Contentment

In the newsletters we’ve been talking about creating a sadhana – a conscious spiritual practice of yoga, a discipline of yoga as conscious spiritual practice. This past week I introduced the mahavratam or great vows outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. These vows aren’t something that Patanjali devised – he compiled them from studying with the esteemed yoga masters of the day (which was some time a few  thousand years ago no precise date is known).  There are ten of them. They are often considered to be moral imperatives. In practice I’ve found it more useful and more authentic  – I get better results – if I let that idea of morality go and open up to practicing them whenever and however I can, trusting that they are actually learning devices for me.  Through practicing them I open to understanding who I am and who everyone else is.  As I open to understanding I make better  choices. The ten mahavratam are: nonviolence, non stealing,  adherence to truth, continence, non- hoarding, cleanliness, contentment, austerity, self- reflection and devotion. In the newsletter I briefly talked about the practice of saucha or cleanliness. Today I’d like to speak a little bit about contentment, or santosha. 

One thing to consider when practicing these – they’re also called yamas and niyamas, restraints and observances – is that we are always creating. We are creative beings – extensions of the divine, which is the creative energy of the universe, the supreme creative energy of the universe. This is an underlying paradigm of the yoga practice.  The yoga practice will reveal that we a specks of divine creative consciousness – and we can live from that truth. This is co-creating, which is yoga – to be yoked to the divine. The restraints and observances clear the palette of our consciousness, enabling creativity which is unbridled by our past. 

 With yoga the idea is that creating in alignment  with the infinite divine opens the doorway to limitless possibilities- and that wisdom, that intelligence – will create richer more satisfying possibilities than our personalities with their cravings and conditioned attunement to lack. If we choose it, these practices deepen our understanding of the elements of a good life.  This is partly why I encourage you to set aside the idea that they are imposed morality.  Practiced lovingly, they open the way to a delicious abundant live.  Less is more. 

With the practice of santosha or contentment this connection between our behaviors our beliefs our thoughts in the world that we experience is made very clear. 

Perhaps in your life you have met those or perhaps you’ve been in this space yourself ( I know I have been) where you feel a need to complain about everything. I’ve seen a real uptick in this during the COVID situation. 

 I think we can all agree there is much to be addressed in the world., but right now we have to accept what’s happened and what is happening and learn to work with it. Shaking our fists at a perceived enemy is unlikely to change the world…changing ourselves is likely to change the world, not only because we engage those conversations differently. 

But let’s think back to the before time – before COVID – and remember those days in offices or classrooms or social gatherings where we or our friends or neighbors or our family would lapse into days where we complained and complained and complained. Surely we’ve all known in ourselves or others that momentum that complaining develops – once you start complaining there just seems to be more to complain about. The yogis understood this very deeply through their meditations , analysis and self reflection. The practice of contentment is to practice contentment under all circumstances that’s a key of these mahavratam – under all circumstances.   So in any moment (the grandeur of universality demands we operate one moment at a time) when faced with complaining, we choose contentment.  It’s like putting down a heavy object.  “I just don’t want to carry the weight of my complaints, so I’m a gonna put this down, right here.”  It’ll be okay.  Once we’ve entered a quieter state of mind, wise action can emerge more clearly. 

What does that mean – in the yoga practice – to work a difficult situation? Perhaps it is to rest in the understanding that you’ve participated in the creation of it and take responsibility for the fact that you’re there. You skip the blame (of yourself and others) you skip the victim story and nurture and invite the ability to see the situation differently.  Liberation arises when we realize there is no one to blame.  The practice of contentment opens our minds so that we are able to see that. To be honest, in content I perceive that there is nothing to complain about.  It’s all perfect.  But to deeply know that feeling we have to practice.  

One of the ways that we can train ourselves in the vast practice of contentment is to practice on our yoga mats. One of the most obvious powerful and potent ways to do this is to be content with a posture even as you are working to transform it. Where I am is fine but I’d like to deepen it. I’d like to expand it; I’d like to move to the next expression of it. So the first part of that is to enjoy every posture just where you are with it. This is one of the reasons why the postures that we can’t do are so important. As I say this I realize that this is one of the biggest difficulties of a home practice is that we never bump into those postures that we don’t like. At the same time if the classes available around us are not suitable – to force ourselves to go into a class that is just full of difficulties makes no sense either.  So what can be a good idea in your practice is to add a small step towards a posture that you would like to attain someday. For me right now this is wheel urdva dhanurasana. 

 I had an accident last fall where my wrist was smashed. I’ve consciously decided to recover slowly. In my full practice days I would do three full or wheel postures every day.  Wow right?  To me that seems like wow.  I was never a born gymnast. That posture has intense ramifications on the wrist and feels remote to me but at a certain point I had an intuition a revelation that in fact I would be able to do it again in this lifetime So what I’m going to practice this moon month is to sit at the wall and take a camel posture and place my hands on the wall. A highly modified introduction to the movement that would lead to wheel. And I am content.. This is the beauty of modifications in yoga. What they do is – if you practice them fully,happily embracing what the modification has to offer you – it’s actually like working the full posture you develop the shape energetically on a deep level and it opens from the inside out. One day your’re ready and the full posture emerges – like a chuck busting out of an egg. 

So how do we learn about modifications if we’d like to incorporate them in our sadhana?  I highly recommend them even if you don’t have an injury. Spend some time in modified postures.  By working with the modifications you’ll learn some of the paradigms of postural yoga. We’re very fortunate to live in an opulent world where there’s all kinds of information about yoga on the Internet so I’m sure you can find some information about modifications there.  As far as books books go and even Internet the best school of yoga from which to learn about modifications is the Iyengar school so I encourage you to look into that when choosing postures to work in your sadana. 

Once you’ve practiced santosha on your mat for some time don’t be surprised if you  catch yourself practicing it in your life.  You don’t have to make a big trip out of doing all of these mahavratam.  Just know that they can extend to all circumstances, and they’re not limited.  Your contentment is not limited to certain circumstances.  You can start practicing them in certain circumstances until you feel confident to apply them in more challenging circumstances.  

OK that’s our blog post for today. As always it’s my sincere wish that this information be useful to you and that your practice will lead you to a blessed and wonderful life. 

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Experiencing Yoga:  Overcoming Obstacles within – without

This month in class – as we practice asana, we are holding space for the understanding of yoga as presented in the first pada or book of the timeless text Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. In this pada Patanjali lays out the arc of yoga – he spells out the origin and result of the practice as well as  some fundamentals of practice itself.  He also spells out the inner and outer obstacles.  This is important.  Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people in the world find well-being in yoga.  We all want that  well-being, but, well, maybe we just don’t feel like we can do yoga. My teacher once taught me that the hardest part of yoga was just getting to class. Do you have obstacles? What are they?  As a yogi, I confront those obstacles daily. As a yoga teacher, my life is filled with persons telling me why they can’t practice — at job interviews, at the bank, at the dinner table and in the grocery store.    Hey, maybe you just don’t want to! Nothing wrong with that!  But if you do want to, acknowledging the obstacles and being willing to engage them can be a powerful move forward towards actually becoming stable in your practice. It’s really important to note that Patanjali spells out both inner obstacles (our thoughtforms) and outer obstacles (i.e.not feeling well). Adopting a two pronged approach to address these two apparently separate dimensions of our being can be a powerful catapult into a strong practice.

For many of us, the outer obstacles seem to be the easiest to focus on in the beginning.  It seems that  if there was just a little less traffic we could get there.  But, from the perspective of yoga, the outer obstacles always have an inner corollary.  The outer obstacles Patanjali identifies are: illness, laziness, negligence, the attraction of pleasures, confusion about the practice, attachment to the way things are and a tendency to fall back on old habits.  The inner barriers to the experience of yoga are the various thoughtforms that we have been conditioned to believe are true and unchangeable (“I’m not athletic – never have been since I was a kid”).    The solution to the equation is yoga.  In the samadhi pada Patanjali describes the experience of yoga arising as we shift away from identification with our conditioned thoughtforms and engage with and identify with the ground of consciousness which is fresh and clear and unfettered. 

Arm balances – historically – have always been a big struggle for me.  It took seven years for me to do a handstand.  When I finally stood on my hands, it was a surprise.  My physical effort had been minimal; linking to some measure of illumined consciousness had been maximal.  It’s a story I lived many times in my years of practice.  Today, faith in myself and a willingness to let go and link up with a more illumined perspective is still essential to my practice.  If that linkage wobbles, so does my posture.  But what I saw in that moment of my first handstand was that I had held myself down with the belief that I could not support myself with my own two hands.  To be honest, that epitomizes much of my life journey and my journey through yoga.  It’s been a journey from dependence to independence. 

The first step is a little bit of willingness to see what our inner thought forms are.  We don’t have to worry about changing them.  A willingness to consider that they are there can go a long way towards dissolving them.  Patanjali identifies them as:

  • What we’ve learned intellectually from valid sources
  • What we’ve learned intellectually from invalid sources
  • Hearsay – what we’ve heard about, but have never experienced.
  • The arising of states of non-wakefulness (sleepiness)
  • Recall – drawing forth of past experiences (memory)

Because the obstacles can be so deeply embedded in our programming it does take a bit of faith to get on the mat at all.  But if we desire the sovereignty to deeply transform ourselves and our world that desire can propel us along in our practice until faith in the practice emerges.  It’s all in what you focus on.