pain – Natalie Ullmann

February 4, 2025November 4, 2025

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:

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.
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
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.
Adho Mukha Vrksanana – handstand – all the weight on two hands (look ma – no feet!)
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.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

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

February 23, 2024September 22, 2024

The Yogic Anatomy of the Koshas: The Anandamaya Kosha and Deep Rest

The Anandamaya Kosha, the subtlest of the koshas, bodies, sheaths, or dimensions is commonly translated as the “Bliss Body” . Commonly is an important adverb here – as “nanda” is joy in form and “a” is often creates an opposite. So, bliss, yes, but bliss beyond form. For starters we may want to distinguish between the state of ecstasy that can be achieved by high vibing our practices through drugs, music, endorphins, and exuberance – and the state of ecstasy which is Ananda. Form bliss is not bad. “Beyond form” bliss just does different things. The nature of the Anandamaya Kosha is akin to a subtle sweet flickering sense of joy. This sense of joy arises from the experience of wholeness that is characteristic of this beautiful dimension. It is the origin of all healing, the resolution of pain and trauma, and the understanding of our place in the universe – that we are infinitely unique, genuine, and valuable. And so is everyone else. If we are in touch with the Anandamaya Kosha we don’t have to force, cultivate or practice such a perception. We experience it continuously and directly. There is no perception of competition in the world as true sparkling confidence emerges.

The Anandamaya Kosha is timeless. I once apologized to a student for a short śavāsana (Corpse Posture) at the end of class. “No problem”, he responded, “When I’m in śavāsana I’m in a timeless space – so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter whether it was 2 minutes or 10.” Good point! So, why does the amount of time that we spend in śavāsana or meditation – immersing ourselves in the Anandamaya Kosha – matter?

The koshas aren’t layered upon one another, but co-existent – like light, sunbeams, oxygen molecules and wind – they influence our life experience in an integrated way.

In the Anandamaya Kosha – in that space of wholeness – all the experiences that fracture us don’t exist (sadness, fear, lack of self-worth). The time we spend in the Anandamaya Kosha is a time of deep rest for all aspects of our being. Resting in the Anandamaya Kosha there are no mental gymnastics, no triggers to the nervous system. For whatever amount of time we are there. This is why everybody looks 10 years younger after a retreat. It is a rest in deep peace.

Practice Tips

Practice śavāsana or Yoga Nidra practice. Use a timer to avoid being worried about time.
Meditation. Once again – use a timer to avoid being worried about time.

December 28, 2023March 18, 2024

Digesting Trauma: The powerful medicine of Hatha Yoga

“PTSD is the inability to forget” Dr. Ellen Kirschman ¹

Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.1

Yoga is the ability to digest and transform our thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences so that our clear and sacred selves will shine through.

Yoga is the experience of peace that emerges when our afflictions have been overcome.

Yoga is the freedom that arises when our past has been processed and we are fully present.

Some experiences are very difficult to forget. If, at the moment of trauma, we are unable to fully process and digest what is happening, that experience can be held in the physical body (also identified as the “Food Body” or Anamayakosha in the yogic anatomy map known as the koshas) Sometimes food and experiences are indigestible – uncomfortable, painful, difficult to absorb and process. The blockage caused by the undigested matter can obstruct our access to the other dimensions of our being – our knowledge, wisdom and joy. Through understanding this we can use our yoga practices to digest and heal traumatic memories stored in the physical body.

There is an inherent wisdom in the process of yoga practice. We can buzz along in our lives just fine, and then, one day the blockage becomes apparent and it’s time to heal it. We’re not defective if we have issues. It’s pretty normal to have a degree of trauma in the body. Yoga is a fairly sophisticated method of dealing with the residue of trauma due to this potential for digestion and transformation. We could just manage our symptoms. But we are invited – in the deeper levels of yogic experience – to transform what was not processed into insight and wisdom. It takes deep willingness, an open mind and considerable bravery. But the rewards are ample.

There are multiple approaches to processing trauma through our yoga practices. We may be experiencing the impacts of the trauma on the psychological level, and our yoga practice restores equilibrium. But going further - by breathing and feeling and observing arising memories on the mat – if we are spacious enough – the memories are released from the physical body and new understandings of experiences awaken. The experiences are digested. We can use those same techniques in the presence of physical symptoms which can range from tightness to chronic misalignment to pain or acute injury. Wise presence in yoga asanas can resolve physical trauma through wise practice. This can be approached well by experimenting gently with specific postures that intuitively, or as a result of research and study, we believe will be related to the anatomical structures involved.

As we use the tools of yoga to train ourselves to be calm, objective and present to reawakened memories of traumatic feelings and experiences, we mitigate the cycles of recurrence. We move from the experience of being bombarded by the repetitions of memory and subconscious patterning to creating new relationships with the stories we have lived. The charged quality of the memory becomes neutralized and laid to rest. We may never “forget it” – but we can transform it into a tool for awakening, empowerment, deepening and opening to ourselves.

Just as digested food nourishes the cellular structure of the body, digested experiences nourish the stability and robustness of our neural landscape. They transform the very mechanisms through which we understand the world. We become less fragmented, less dissociated and more integrated. We become whole. In this way well-practiced yoga can be a powerful tool in the management and healing of PTSD. Some tips for practice are:

Work with the quality of your breathing. Begin with gentle but focused breath and explore how the different qualities of breath impact the physical experience of a posture. Look for the quality of breath that is in effect when you feel a muscle release.
Work with the quality of your attention. Begin with gentle but focused presence. You can train specifically in this – take a posture and maintain your gentle receptive attention on the bones, the flesh, the skin. The moment when a memory arises and you stay present rather than becoming lost in it is a power point for healing.
As you train in this way, it’s important to notice your reactions to the awakening of trauma in the body. The most common reaction is to attempt to control it by pressing it down – psychologically, physically – a kind of powering through. This will interfere with the release of stress pattern in the body. Allowing is key to healing. Assuming you are practicing with moderate intensity – you can practice staying present to discomfort. Of course – don’t force.

.Through a carefully cultivated yoga practice we reintegrate the parts of ourselves that have been locked away through trauma. No longer fractured in this way, we become whole, and the experience of PTSD can be transformed into a process of healing. While the knowledge of the experience still remains, we are now no longer bound by it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT40YKvLBTg ↩︎

Each blog post is associated with a related newsletter with related commentary, suggested reading and maybe a song or two. You can find past newsletters (and the current one )on my Facebook page NatalieteachesYoga. Sign up below to receive newsletters in your inbox. No marketing, I promise! Just content that I hope will open your mind to deeper levels of yoga practice.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

April 4, 2023January 24, 2025

Repetition and Understanding Asana

There are a few ways that repetition is useful in a yoga practice. First, it wears a groove and opens us to experiences of greater depth. Constant change in our yoga practices is amazing- it builds resilience and the ability to adapt. But this experience of yoga – to become yoked to our deeper wisdom self – requires that we dig down deep enough to hit a level of awakening beyond our normal waking state. One benefit of getting in a groove, if we do it consciously, is that when our practice gets disrupted it’s easier to shift back into the positive mental and physical states we are cultivating. Perpetual change can break apart obstructions which obscure those deeper levels of ourselves, but once again, repetition is a key component to really getting deep in there. Like digging a hole, if we just take out a scoop here and there as we wish…our well will never be dug deep enough to access the clear pure water. Yoga works the same way.

Repetition is also a great tool for assessing our bodies from day to day. To get an accurate assessment, we need to do the same posture as we did the day before. Yesterday, my Ardha Matsyendrasana (Half seated spinal twist) was at a level I’d never experienced in 30 years of practice. Today, it wasn’t even at my average. This is interesting. It’s information about my body, my habits and my stress responses to the world around me. Repetition can lead to realization and understanding.

The other thing to consider though, is that repetition invites unconsciousness if it’s not the right time and place to do it. I remember when I started practicing I frequented the local Bikram studio. I thrived in the heat and the repetition. Then one day my knees started to hurt. I took a break from the practice and focused on Vinyasa for a while. As I embraced returning to vinyasa, I realized that in Bikram class I was going to sleep. Instead of using repetition to fine tune my execution of the postures – I practiced by rote, but was thinking about cupcakes. At first I thought the form of yoga I was doing was the problem. I realized as I practiced more and became more knowledgeable that, no, I had just gotten bored and stopped paying attention to the details. As a teacher I saw many students who gave up a posture or a style of yoga because they felt it wasn’t good for them. My experience is that when we experience a painful result it’s a call to greater attention to our moments on the mat, and to develop greater self awareness of the body in whatever way we can. Sometimes a change in practice wakes us up. Sometimes we just need to tune in deeply to what we are doing.

So how to practice with repetition in a way that is wise? You can place the posture repeatedly at certain junctures in the sequence you are practicing. Say Arhdhamatsyendrasana…at the beginning before sun salutes, after standing, between back bends and forward bends, between each back bend. Working this way requires that you begin with a very gentle execution of the posture and go progressively deeper.

Another approach is to design a short sequence to prepare for the posture you are working on and then repeat that entire short sequence at key junctures in your daily practice. This creates depth, and you can tweak the sequence to explore the impact of various lead ins to the posture you are exploring.

The last approach I’ll mention today is that you can just repeat a single posture several times a day, every day for a certain amount of time – a week, a month, a year. This will help you truly own the posture in a healthy way – it creates an intimacy with it that can change your whole understanding of yoga. Practicing repetition in asana practice is a profound way to deepen your practice and to experientially deepen your understanding of particular postures, how they work, the dynamics created by placing them in certain points of sequence. It’s a great way to transition your practice and teaching from a place where you are practicing and teaching what you have been told by others into a place where you are practicing and teaching from your own inner knowing.

February 28, 2023April 4, 2023

About the Body: Focus, Concentration, Drishti

What is Drishti? Drishti is the placing the gaze at a particular place while in a yoga posture (an asana). Specific points of gaze are prescribed for certain postures, but it can be helpful to begin with just a few general rules.

The gaze is placed specifically and gently and a little out of focus. Ideally you don’t really “look” at anything. (this technique can be applied in tratak as well – see this week’s newsletter on Facebook).
A properly placed gazing point will properly position the head and neck, so if your neck hurts in a posture, adjust where you are gazing.
As a general rule, the neck is long, and the chin is neutral. The gaze then rests directly in front of you.
In some postures, the head is turn to look upward (Trikonasana or Ardha Chandrasana). In these cases the head is turned and the gaze is directed towards the sky, however if that strains the neck or forces the chin up or down, then place the eye gaze straight in front of you – in the same direction your heart or sternum bone is facing.
The tip of the nose can be used in any posture. In my opinion this can be the most intense of the drishtis.

What does the drishti do? It builds your focus!! Through applying it you may discover what focus can really do for your postures. It raises the heat level in the body. It steadies the mind, and thus steadies the body. It brings you into the present – which can help enormously if you are practicing being in postures for a long time (which is really good to do!). Focus can help you learn to manage discomfort – not through ignoring, but used wisely focus gazing outward and breathing when you are uncomfortable can teach you to be present to and transform your experience of pain.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

September 16, 2022October 2, 2022

About the Body: Breathing into Expansion in Yoga

It’s very popular these days to skip over the restraint practices in yoga (ethical vows, structured asana practice, breathing and concentration practices, lifestyle observations). Mastering them is the key to transforming yourself and your life through the practices of yoga and is an important facet of practice. Liberation as intended in classical yoga is a very specific experience. It’s not about crashing through to a new shape with the body even if it hurts. It’s not about “doing our own thing” without structure or discipline. It’s about being awakened into the experience of our spiritual wholeness. The restraint practices should not, and do not have to be dramatic or drastic. It might mean staying in a particular posture even if you are a little uncomfortable – maybe sometimes when you are a lot uncomfortable – in order to move beyond your sense of limitation. To practice yoga in this way does require a high degree of discernment – of learning to feel and experience the body and develop skillful means of working with our sensations. To some extent no teacher can really tell us that.

We used to work with the guideline that if the sensation is sharp you need to back off and approach the posture in a different way. For a dull softer discomfort we would generally stay in the posture and breathe ease into the form. The sensations we have are never black and white, so a guideline like this can’t be followed blindly.

We could consider this…if we bump into a tugging resisting sensation, then we are trying to expand in a place where there is currently contraction, and our work then is to find a way to allow the expansion. Breath is a good starting place, but it requires some attention to how one is breathing. How well you are able to receive an inhale? What conditions support that? Can you allow the lungs to expand? That quality of expansion will travel throughout the body as we allow it, and will gently open our places of deep holding and restrictions. To push against or fight against it will yield a different result. If we soften the mind and the heart and work with wisdom the experience of restraint transforms into its opposite – the experience of liberation. Tension melts and we are no longer restricted by tightness. This transformation of opposites into a unified experience is yoga – to yoke together.

The restraints imposed by the global experience of pandemic have resulted in massive shifts in the way we live and work and love. Training ourselves to be spacious and allowing in of those changes fosters our capacity for resilience and blossoming.

January 4, 2022July 24, 2022

About the body the body – In time

Hatha Yoga Pradipika Verses 103-104

“All of the all the processes of hatha and laya yoga are but the means to attain raja yoga. (samadhi) One who attains Raja yoga is victorious over time (death).” (Bihar edition and translation)

Perhaps when you were a child you experienced being measured. Sometimes parents make marks on the wall to emphasize how much a child has grown physically. As children we were measured physically, intellectually, emotionally… how we are growing? Then at some point the nature of that measuring starts to compare itself to an end point rather than the beginning point. We mark a wrinkle (one step towards old age) A gray hair (another step towards old age). Perhaps we worry more about a physical symptom than we would have when our hair was colored rich and deep and our skin was rosy and clear. One great blessing of combining the inner and outer yogas is that the processes are designed to liberate us from time. A mark of a well-done yoga practice is that decline is minimized and many times even reversed. One advantage of studying the tales of the great accomplished masters is that they completely transcend time. They choose when to leave the body behind. It’s a great teaching. There are many records (Paramahansa Yogananda, Shri Brahamananda Saraswati ) of enlightened beings whose bodies did not compose after death but remained intact as their devotees prepared the funeral rites. When Shri Brahmananda Saraswati was cremated it is said that his ashes were pure and white as snow. He also regenerated his body and brain after a stroke through study and practice of Sanskrit (an energetically based yoga practice).

What does that mean for us as contemporary yogis? We don’t really know. We don’t really know what that means. Will we be immortal? Do we want to be immortal? Will we just stay lively? Will we live on as souls beyond the body?

What we do know is that well-done yoga is a rejuvenating practice. It’s hormonal, it’s energetic, it’s the nervous system but essentially to tap into the field of consciousness is to tap into that place beyond time and that is infinite. To keep the spiritual dimensions of the practice front and center. Serenity makes for a great facelift.

How do we make this more tangible? The usual choices for this kind of experiment are meditation or chanting. The point is your body will change through these practices. And you can practice it and find out. Just note that other lifestyle choices will mitigate your results. Wise lifestyle choices will enhance them.

For me the door which opened the understanding of this spirit body connection was yogic chanting. I knew it immediately even though I was not spiritually or athletically accomplished. I was living in New York and had much pain in my body — weight training, aerobics, desk work, crazy diet — so many possible culprits for the pain. After finding no remedy that was clear through the western medicine lens I started yoga to ease the pain.

I noticed almost immediately that if the class started with an Om my body didn’t hurt as much during class. I thought it was a goofy thing and I made jokes about it. I figured I was imagining things, but then I found the Jivamukti Yoga Center in New York. Chanting was central to that practice, and I learned there that the ancient yogis understood that the body is made of sound. To those I spoke with and studied with there, when I made the statement that my practice was better if I Om’d first, it made perfect sense. I stayed with that practice for years and experienced many complex postures that I never imagined that I would do in part because my relationship with my body changed as I worked with this understanding that the body was made of sound. Things I could never imagine at 29 opened up for me as I moved towards and through a so called middle age. I am now 58 and I have less pain in my body than I did at age 29 – even in the wake of injury.

For this I rely on my yoga practice.

For the practitioner I believe that the bottom line of this is that we begin to consider that our bodies are not our masters — our hearts and our souls are. To embrace the spiritual aspects of the practice is not to deny the body but to nourish it at a deep level — beyond DNA, consciousness (which is experienced through practice) nourishes our very cells. You will be strengthened by it and it will cost you nothing to try.

June 20, 2021October 18, 2021

Refuge: Commentaries from last months emails

April 1, 2021 – Refuge in Hatha Yoga

HYP 1.10 for those continually tempered by the heat of tapah (pain – difficulty – challenges) hatha is like the hermitage giving protection from the heat. For those always united in yoga, hatha is the basis acting like a tortoise.

Perhaps this has happened to you —you select a relaxing and remote vacation destination, longing for a break from the hassles of day to day life. A deposit of thousands of dollars is placed – the time between making the arrangements and the date of the trip is consumed with the desire for that rest and relaxation. The state which will come when life as you know it is escaped for a little while. The day arrives. The plane is delayed, the luggage is lost, negotiating the unfamiliar terrain of the destination, for whatever reason, falls out of the realm of an adventure and just feels a little arduous. Now, I love to travel, I’m not knocking it, but it’s not always the escape that we want it to be, there are no guarantees of relaxation or freedom on any journey. But, as this sentence from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika puts forth, a well done yoga practice allows us to establish an essential experience of ease and refuge within.

Granted, a yoga class can have similar distractions to a pilgrimage in terms of time, obstacles, disruptions. But the function of a yoga class is to learn, to be together in learning and community The discovery of the inner refuge is the path of our personal practice.

The inner work of yoga, depending on the techniques you practice, can reveal many different things. There is the awakening of insight and contemplation, there is creativity and conscious co-creation, there is awakening and there is refuge. We have many alternatives to choose from.

What’s specific about the techniques of Hatha Yoga is that they support and develop this experience of refuge specifically. It’s put forth here at the beginning of the text, which is claimed to have historical roots in the origins of the practice of Hatha Yoga itself. The beginning of the text states it’s lineage back to the teaching of Shri Adinath, the first yogi, also known as Lord Shiva. As the text unfolds we are advised to create the conditions for the experience of Hatha Yoga. The conditions within and without, create a scaffolding for this experience of transition from a state of dualism to an experience of unity, and in that unity there is peace, there is refuge, there is healing and there is rest.

Last month we explored the kundalini energy. When directed in unconscious ways the creative energy can lead to the experience of fluctuation, conflict and unstable moods. Well directed and managed energy can be elevated to a steady state where such disruptions are minimized or ideally left behind. Think about it, we know sorrow only because we have known happiness, two opposing energies will always conflict until they are harmonized and when a pendulum swings one way it inevitably swings the other way. The idea as I understand it is that when we become anchored in this steady unified, harmonized state, which is yoga then the fluctuations and conflicts occur, but we are not imprisoned or buffeted by them. I measure the depth of the yoga practice these days, by my ability to stay steady in the face of those fluctuations.

This month we’ll explore techniques of focus on breath and gaze which support this experience of unity. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika refers to miraculous states where the physical body is transformed through the practice. This experience unfolds as we master our ability to be in union as we move in the physical world.

ENERGY ANATOMY – The Manipura Chakra

The Manipura Chakra (the city of jewels) is located in the area of the solar plexus under the rib cage. This chakra is “worked” when we twist, when we work with our diaphragms in breathing exercises and bandhas, and when we work with our gaze. Spiritually, psychologically, this center affects and is effected by or relationships with others in community — how we see them and how we are seen. My experience is that the gaze is a deep purifying technique for the manipura chakra. To use our drishti (a technique of gazing) breaks down the experience of self and other and harmonizes the relationships between.

Yoga at Home

One of the nicest things about working in a personal practice at home is that you can draw out the technique which your personal journey is calling for and work with it on your own schedule and with your own ability to focus and observe and digest the experiences that you have with a given technique. There is no one way of yoga. Traditionally, one would work one on one with a teacher, and a form of relationship which is no longer really available or desirable for many of us. Our opportunity in engaging our personal curriculum of yoga in a structured and mindful way provides the opportunity to experience a personal relationship with what refer to these days as the Wisdom Self. Engaging the Wisdom Self opens a deep level of knowing which reveals the journey step by step and provides an illuminated understanding of our personal function, our opportunities for rich and unique growth, and decisions which lead to deep healing.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

April 11, 2021

Many spiritual traditions contain within them an indicator of the power of taking refuge, as a means and an end. In Buddhism, one takes refuge in the awakened consciousness or the Buddha, the community, and the essential truth. In Christianity, it’s the experience of salvation, or being saved by surrendering into Christ consciousness. In yoga, that refuge is liberation or mukti, the experience of releasing into the limitless divine which is known by many many names. . This passage is located at the very beginning of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a seminal text on the yogic processes. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika is a manual for balancing the forces of the physical body to enable deeper levels of absorption in the state of union or yoga. Hatha Yoga is notable for it’s simplicity, it’s power and it’s promise, that the dissolving the separation of opposites or the sun and the moon, will protect us from the experience of pain.

While the language of the HYP is mysterious and riddle-like, the practice is simple. The text itself enumerates some extreme measures….living alone in a hermitage built to specifications outlined therein, avoiding overeating and regular folks, and avoiding long pilgrimages and women – to name a few. But basically, whittled down to essence, the foundations of preparation prescribe that we create a life which is relatively free of conflict. The hermitage of yoga is built of our own powerful moment by moment choices to stay centered or give into the temptation to fluctuate or be fluctuated.

We live in a world of duality: right or wrong, this or that, black or white, red or blue, science or fiction, spirit or matter, male or female, etc. It is our attachment to the opposing elements of that duality which causes the fluctuation within, and the conflict without. Hatha refers to the union of the Sun and the Moon. Our intuitive psychic qualities and our active and engaged qualities cease to be in opposition to one another. Instead they work together.

If you’ve ever butt heads with someone with a stubbornly opposing viewpoint you know how much conflict within and without is caused by that duality. When we choose peace the duality ceases to have power over us and we are protected from the pain of the fluctuations. We move towards yoga.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

April 17, 2021

Refuge II: Peace in the Body

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika describes the process of Hatha yoga as a refuge for those best by the pain of suffering. A considerable amount of our suffering is of the body, and later on in the text when the results of practice are described we are encouraged that the pain will cease. The text specifically points to a moment when all physical disease is eradicated. Last week we spoke of the transformative power of moving beyond duality as reflected in the word Hatha. Dualities are infinite in number (although limited in expression) and one such duality is the divide between the mind and the body. Think about it. How much of your time is spent warring with your body? Even many forms of so-called self-care are merely thinly disguised ways to try to make the body different than it is: it’s appearance, behavior sensations. Either it’s in charge or we are (you know those struggles over the chocolate thing). In the meditative processes of yoga it’s sometimes spoken of that the mind is a battlefield. Well so is the body. Part of the power of well-done Hatha yoga is that this dichotomy between mind and body can be dissolved into peace, and the body, once a battleground becomes instead a vehicle, a tool, a field which can be used for healing and transformation on a psycho-spiritual level.

In yoga 2021, we are best by images of what we should look like. They are changing but the images of perfection still loom large. There is much suffering in the attempt to spend your life trying to look like someone else! Any spiritual path can be distorted into suffering. A well-done practice, engaged with wisdom and discernment, yields a state of peace with the form we are in.

My classes are small. Being out of the studio is a blessing for that reason. Part of that is – I encourage students to back off, to give up the striving for the physical ideal, but to still be engaged. It’s pretty specialized…and good for those who are wanting to engage their inner being. It also requires an understanding uniquely yogic that just because you give up striving doesn’t mean that you won’t’ get what you want. It also requires and understanding that the inner work has the power to transform the physical form. Imagine this – your limitation – say a restriction in the hamstrings – to sit in the limitation and breathe and find peace and not fight against the limitation is the field of true inner strength. To learn to move forward without pushing against or opposition, but instead through the creative willingness and love in your heart, well….It’s a moment to find beauty in what is instead of what should be. And-practicing that way balances the energy field and tones the body in an integrated way. Creating balance within the limitation rather than saying …”If conditions were different…I would be balanced” This is a measure of true power.

As I practiced this way I found that many times something would change without my doing anything. One day I would be light enough to invert spontaneously. A deeper or more specified level of engagement and articulation would reveal itselve providing a deeper experience of integrated balance. But mostly, my relationship with my body changed. I began to love it for what it was, this little skin suit I trip around in. That alone lightened the whole thing up.

Many of you know that I broke my wrist last October. As healing progressed deeper levels of balance and healing were revealed. It was a significant injury. I’m finding that those years I spent finding peace in the limitation I had, in order to move beyond them is serving me very well. The injured part of my body is something I love and want to care for, it isn’t an obstacle or a burden or really even a limitation. It’s an opportunity. This is the first major injury I’ve had since practicing yoga, so much had my agility improved through practice, this kind of thing was rare and unexpected. But compared to my experience of breaks I had experienced in my twenties which were painful and inconvenient. My body became a landscape of areas which I dissociated from. (One of which was this wrist, which I had broken before). This is now an opportunity to relate to this broken part of my body with more awareness, to reintegrate into the whole of who I am in a new way.

This allows something else to happen. I become able to celebrate the way the miraculous unfolds in the physical form When I began to do down dog again, the carpals began to regrow. This appeared on the x-rays.

I am able to celebrate and bear witness too the body’s miraculous power os regeneration. At an age when the world would tell me my body should be deteriorating it’s regenerating instead. I imagine as I open my mind up to really accept and understand this, it will change everything. These are just a few of the ways that making peace with and building a relationship with the body via the practice of hatha yoga can be practical and useful. So, you know….come to class!!!

Love

Natalie

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

April 26, 2021

Refuge III: Refuge in Community

Although the Hatha Yoga Pradipika advises that the practitioner establish in solitude, in the larger scope of the practices of yoga, of which Hatha Yoga is only one (others include mediation, text study, chanting, service and others) the yogi is advised to take refuge in the satsang- or meeting with other truth seekers. Buddhism as well suggests that we take refuge in the community or “sangha”. Settling into an inner landscape of non-dualism (which merely means that we stop making a division between this and that) is in itself a form of refuge. But does this mean that we have to leave the material world behind and just melt into that inner state of peace and lack of conflict? No. We can take refuge in our ability to practice seeing others without conflict – in a state of right relationship: appreciating them as sacred, focusing on the spirit which expresses through them as individuals, and neither judging nor adulating them.

This understanding emerged in my practice after a long time. I kept searching for truth seekers or those who would provide right relationship for me, but to no avail. As I worked with resolving my judgements and adulations (in yoga terms aversions and attachments) I found that finding right relationship in the life I was living meant to recalibrate the way that I was relating. Period. Can I suspend my judgement about who I think someone is or what a specific relationship means enough to allow the particular gift of a given exchange to be revealed?

In the exalted spiritual philosophies we hear about oneness and emptiness and mirroring. In simple day to day practice I found that became distilled into physical form by not judging and not adulating. From there discernment began to arise, revealing deeper potentials or possibilities for the relationships I was in. What emerged was a much richer tapestry of relationship, one which I could not have imagined in that kind of good-bad, stay-go kind of relating I had been engaged with.

And then, a little bonus emerged. What was reflected back to me about myself in those relationships began to transform in a very rich, full, helpful way.

The practice of Hatha Yoga, cultivating my ability not to veer into one extreme or another, provided the support and discipline which empowered me to choose in every interaction whether I wanted to judge or not.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Refuge 4: The Power of Spirit

HYP:IV.113. A Yogin in Samadhi is not vulnerable to any weapons, not assailable by any persons, not subject to control by the use of mantras and yantra-s (incantations and magical diagrams).

When the yogi succeeds in leaving behind their dualistic thinking, quote, this and that, unquote, good and bad, up and down one attains an experience of unified mind, which is the entryway to the experience of yoga. It can arise in an instant, though some stay in it for an extended period of time. It’s blissful. It’s peaceful. It’s healing. It is a refuge. We are evolving spiritually, we humans, and what I see and know around me is that many people experience unified mind. Through the practices of yoga we can intentionally cultivate it. While most of us living in 2021 are unlikely to have enemies assaulting us with mantras and yantras, we are daily subject to bombardment by influences. Our capacity to be still, centered and true to ourselves in the wake of this is true empowerment. This sentence above, the last line in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, is a beautiful affirmation of the living refuge which is manifest as we cultivate unified mind through our practice.

While I don’t recommend stopping a bullet with the power of your mind, there are stories of the invulnerability of the human body when one is anchored in higher consciousness. In one of the books scribed by the great jazz musician and yogi, Alice Coltrane, it is briefly mentioned that through the auspices of her guru Swami Satya Sai Baba, she was lifted out of her body into a transcendental peaceful state of consciousness during a significant earthquake. The body was unharmed.

I was skeptical of the relevance of this story until my mind became a bit a little clearer. I know for me that I can make a crisis worse through my noisy inner dialogue. The longer I practice the more I am able to hold peace within,. Allowing for , even wondrous, outcomes to emerge from seeming challenges. It isn’t a blind faith, it is a consciously cultivated capacity to project a positive future for myself, rather than a fearful one. When we nurture conflicting thoughts, which is really a mundane example of dualism, this gets projected outward. We do not see our best interests amidst the fluctuations of our minds. As we learn to choose to nurture peace rather than conflict in our thoughts, this is projected outward. We project a more harmonious future. Don’t worry, the centered peace projected out does not mean an absence of action, fun or pleasure, it just means that the conflict is gone.

As our access to media expands we can be bombarded by the opinions of those who profit greatly from capturing our trust and opinions. To step away from the tides of this influence and anchor in and remain established (pratishtayam) in the inner refuge, we create to yoga, we become unassailable. By that I mean we can continue on our personally charted journey of evolution. The practices of yoga are designed for this degree of self-mastery or sovereignty. Yogi’s can choose to explore deeper and deeper subtler dimensions of this journey, which reveal the magic and powerful love and healing which is revealed through practice.

Interested in empowered choice – making? Check out my Destination Sovereignty Programming!

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Refuge IV: The Power of Spirit

HYP:IV.113. A Yogin in Samadhi is not vulnerable to any weapons, not assailable by any persons, not subject to control by the use of mantras and yantra-s (incantations and magical diagrams).

I was skeptical of the relevance of this story until my mind became a bit a little clearer. I know for me that I can make a crisis worse through my noisy inner dialogue. The longer I practice the more I am able to hold peace within. Allowing for , even wondrous, outcomes to emerge from seeming challenges. It isn’t a blind faith, it is a consciously cultivated capacity to project a positive future for myself, rather than a fearful one. When we nurture conflicting thoughts, which is really a mundane example of dualism, this gets projected outward. We do not see our best interests amidst the fluctuations of our minds. As we learn to choose to nurture peace rather than conflict in our thoughts, this is projected outward. We project a more harmonious future. Don’t worry, the centered peace projected out does not mean an absence of action, fun or pleasure, it just means that the conflict is gone.

As our access to media expands, we can be bombarded by the opinions of those who profit greatly from capturing our trust and opinions. To step away from the tides of this influence and anchor in and remain established (pratistayam) in the inner refuge, we create to yoga, we become unassailable. By that I mean we can continue on our personally charted journey of evolution. The practices of yoga are designed for this degree of self-mastery or sovereignty. Yogi’s can choose to explore deeper and deeper subtler dimensions of this journey, which reveal the magic and powerful love and healing which is revealed through practice.

December 28, 2020

Established in yoga…while moving through it all…

I fractured my wrist at the end of October. The cast came off, December 11. During the time in the cast I floated through time and space, a little removed from life, a little removed from pain, a little removed from sitting with this unexpected event in my life. I did some responsibility taking around that somehow, but generally, I was floated by my spiritual practices in this place beyond time. I didn’t struggle against the weight of the cast to do asana (physical postures) practice, because I understand true healing to take place on the level of consciousness, first. Lots of healing happened on that level, and then the cast came off, and I plummeted back to Earth. I was back in my body, remembering the accident and the pain, and meeting and seeing the limitation now embedded in my physical body. I was in shock. When I left the hospital and climbed into my car, I burst into tears. It wasn’t victimy. It wasn’t woe is me tears. It was sadness for the whole world, all of us, going through this experience of restriction. It was a visceral experience of the sense of vulnerability of our bodies and the sense of vulnerability to all kinds of forces external to us. This month in my classes we are talking about pratistayam, or to be established in. In Patanjali’s yoga sutra Patanjali refers to yoga as a state where we dwell in our true nature and the text builds a pretty good case that where we seem to dwell in the external world is intimately related to where we dwell inside. To make a choice to dwell in our true nature is to become established, and that is to position ourselves in such a way that the impact of external forces on our ability to move through the world is diminished. We become conscious co-creators of our life experience.

When I was in the hospital, initially, after the break, I was there four days. A significant amount of the time was spent discussing pain. This was what the hospital staff worked with me on. The managing of pain. The avoiding of pain. I liked the underlying message which was, you don’t have to suffer pain. I’d spent many years with the belief that I did have to suffer pain. Of course, there is that meme “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional”. I will say that what when you extract the suffering, it’s no longer pain. It’s just powerful sensation. But therein lies the rub. We have to choose not to sit in the state of mind of our own suffering. Randy, the very kind, bright-natured nurse who was my primary “pain coach” advised, “You don’t want to chase pain.” What does that mean? She explained that it’s very difficult to reduce the pain once you’ve allowed it to take hold. So, the process is to ward it off in advance, in this case by regular systematic taking of meds as the doctors prescribed. Every X number of hours. Isn’t that interesting? Patanjali advises the same thing. He says future suffering is to be avoided. And I think it’s good to note that Patanjali is not just one guy with one idea, but he organized all the information from what people who were practicing in that day were doing so, you know, it’s not the kind of information that gets outdated.

So if future suffering is to be avoided, how is this done? Yogically, there are a number of different interpretations of what that means but for today let’s just consider that part of it, avoiding future suffering, is that we train ourselves through asana pranayama meditation and good old fashioned discipline to stay anchored, to stay established in our true nature. Part of that training is learning to catch ourselves when we are not in our true nature. Randy advised that pain was a tricky thing. In my post cast life I feel what she meant. It’s random and it’s stubborn – arising with no apparent logic. Although, the mind will try to give it logical source, ‘I ate french fries yesterday and must be inflamed’. But then one might notice the pain lingers long after the french fries are gone.

The time came last week to remove myself from painkiller killers. You can’t really take Tylenol or aspirin, in large doses, forever. I’d left the high-octane painkillers behind while still in the hospital. There are herbs and there is homeopathy. Last week I began physical therapy and what I didn’t realize was how painful the process of rehabilitation would be. I’ve spoken before here about the releasing of fascial tissue and trauma stored within it. Now I’m living that daily and an important side note – when fascia is releasing you relive the pain of the trauma itself. Medicating at that point is thought to interfere with the release process. On some level, you have to feel it to heal it on the level of consciousness.

Just transcending just moving out of the place of awareness of the pain

might support psychological health in the moment, but holistically transforming the pain creates a more integrated healing. About three days into my PT exercises a return to a generally full asana practice, as I lay down to sleep, my whole arm caught fire with pain. It was clearly a fasica release, as I could feel the impact traveling through my body, as it had at the moment of the accident, dull but shocking. I already taken my herbs for the day. That was it. I was left with chamomile tea and deep breathing, as my only recourse. “I’ve entered the world of pain.” I thought, knowing that millions of people abide there full time. Now, I have some inkling of their experience, and I am awed by it. What that must be like to live there, in pain, through your whole body, all of the time. I think to myself that I don’t want to live in the world of pain. So as I breathe deeply and consciously, I effort to reorient myself to be situated, established, not in the pain, but in the calm center I have touched many times over my years of practice. Pain is tricky. It is seductive and magnetic and absorbing. This requires some effort.

But I really don’t want to live there. I chose to dwell in my true nature. The pain is not receding, but it ceases to be me. And instead, the sensation becomes an experience I am having. It sounds like splitting hairs. But when I pull myself out of the pain experience, it’s just another experience. I know that there is some experience within me at all times, that is not pain, and that somehow I will find my way to dwell in that space. I woke up the next morning amazed that I slept. Funny that, right? We think a billion bucks is the goal but how valuable is a good night’s sleep? The big deep pain of that evening is gone, but it still comes and goes both emotionally and physically as I reclaim the use of my arm as part of the whole of my body – and work to expand my reach. And now I feel really connected to a whole new level of this pratistayam thing – to master being able to sit in that calm sweet place as I deal with the challenges of the world. The practice becomes a a deeply essential life skill to have. It’s been very exciting. I was able to use my left hand to take some vitamins yesterday. And that was a big leap. And I’ve enjoyed creating sequences without the Down Dog for the time being. No plank, no Chaturanga. And a world of creative movement has opened up too. My treatment goal is down dog. Okay, so two months ago, right before the accident I was jogging and doing a forearm stand and enjoying the process of reclaiming each little step. And now and then, I feel a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, my yoga practice will evolve into such a grand adventure, yet again.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: