What the heart most yearns

I have not been able to write in this blog for about six months. It hasn't been because of any crisis, I just had nothing to say. Usually these posts are drawn out of me as a need to be seen. Then by writing once a month for a long time I began to feel an obligation. But for six months there has been nothing needing to be said, or feeling ripe for saying.

An ideal place for meditation
at Brahma Kumari Centre Frankston Vic

My practice has been ever deepening, as it does.

And of course I got so very busy preparing everything in advance for the big trip I took in January. There was simply no time for the reflection it takes to allow these posts to emerge as I put things in place that allowed me to be absent for three weeks. Over the past nine weeks my yoga students on Tuesdays and Saturdays have been coming on that journey with me as I answered the inevitable question, "How was your trip?" fully and honestly.

The trip was a pilgimage led by Christopher "Hareesh" Wallis, a Sanskrit scholar and initiated Tantrik Yoga practitioner with whom I began studies last year. In the combination of Hareesh's scholarship, his practice, extraordinary teaching gift, enormous generosity, his energy and good humour I have discovered offerings that are speaking right to my core. To say that the pilgimage through Tamil Nadu was life-changing sounds like a cliché, but it is true nevertheless.

Thank you to all the students who came on that journey during our yoga classes together over the past nine weeks.  Reliving it with you has been a great consolidation for me and I hope some of its immensity was translated through our classes for you, and you caught the flavour of "How was my trip?". And as we reached it's conclusion something else happened. The Christchurch attack rocked us all to the core.

The Arunachaleswara Temple at Tiruvanamallai (pictured here
 from the Arunachala Mountain) is aligned ona lay line East to
West straight to the heart of the mountain.
Om namah sivaya.
The mantra came alive in me at this temple.

In a video post after that event, Hareesh shared something really special. A Sanskrit prayer for the wellbeing of all. Hareesh posts a lot, and they are all gems of teaching. But this one had a special spark, and was in response to those dreadful events in Christchurch where 50 worshippers were murdered at prayers in their mosques by an extreme right, Australian born terrorist. We were all horrified. This is not who we are. Our hearts were crying.

Three heart to heart chats, with a teacher, a friend and a student contributed to the shift. I must proclaim my own heartfelt yearning and in that public proclamation fully confess, and be, what it is I am called to teach. And I really began that ownership in my Sunday morning class.  Thank you dear people who were present at that Sunday Meditation Body and Mind. I felt totally vulnerable and your support was wonderful.

You can listen to Hareesh's words through the link below, but here is a paraphrase of what he said, a rough transcription, please forgive inaccuracies:

No one can doubt that we are in challenging and troubled times, especially politically and environmentally.  No one who is paying attention can doubt that this quickening, this intensification, can only increase over the next decades. We don’t know what the outcome will be for the survival of our civilisation, of our species, of our planet, and it can feel as if we are standing on the brink sometimes, as we look at the rise of tribalistic ideologies and wondering if humanity will be able to overcome this tribalism which is an instinct in our brains to our evolutionary biology. And of course, the unknown factor here is awakening. In the time of quickening and intensification there are more opportunities for spiritual awakening. And awakening is what allows us to truly transcend our divisiveness within us and between us.  It allows us to transcend this tribalism, it allows us to transcend even our evolutionary instincts and to see ourselves in each other, despite all our differences. Also in a time of quickening and intensification, prayers offered from the deepest heart are more powerful.

"Awakening is what allows us to truly transcend our divisiveness within us and between us. It allows us to transcend this tribalism, it allows us to transcend even our evolutionary instincts and to see ourselves in each other, despite all our differences."

And then, the translation of the first stanza of the prayer:

May the wicked become good. May the good obtain peace. May the peaceful be freed from bonds. May the freed set others free.

It is the perfect storm. In class for the first time I publicly declared my heart's deepest yearning, and I said these words:

I dedicate my practice to awakening. I dedicate my teaching to awakening. 

Oh it is such a long, long time I have known my heart's true yearning. But for a long, long time I also dismissed it as a ridiculous fantasy, or not for the very ordinary folk like me. Engaging with the teachings of Richard Miller through iRest® have shown me it is not pie in the sky. Early flashes of insight were not imagined, and those flashes actually meant I could not not pursue it, no matter how long I looked in another direction. The very ordinary like me (or you) can attain to awakening, to freedom from the bonds of forgetting who we truly are.

Some people distil their Heartfelt Desire to a single word. Mine has been distilled as a feeling for a very long time, but when I turn it into words it is longer, one word does not seem to express it all, at least in English, how big it is! And in the last twelve months the first line was added to it.

Here it is, my heart on a platter. What does my heart yearn?

Stable in awakening

Awake … to Awareness

Open … to Openness

At one with Oneness

Manifesting as loving kindness and compassion.

I am not pretending that my reason for being is anything less. And to the degree that I have been freed from bonds, it is my duty to set others free. And that is the reason why I am called to teach. No pretending.

Which doesn't mean that I will not lead many wonderful movement classes where we stretch and strengthen and explore yoga posture, hathayogasana. Or that I will not also be dedicated to sharing how you might move more freely and with less stiffness and pain. Only in every class I teach I will no longer pretend that my personal goal is anything but being fully awakened, and as far as I have explored that path and fully embodied it, I am a teacher of that path.

Well it may have been obvious for some time, but it is also true that I have tried not to scare folk off with all this spiritual stuff.  But hey, it is who I am, it is my calling, now I am owning it.

What is your true heartfelt desire, your yearning? Are you, like I have for so long, not fully acknowledging it? I have to say, it feels totally liberating to have put it out there.

Here are the words and translation of that lovely Sanskrit prayer.

Durjanaḥ sajjano bhῡyāt

Sajjanaḥ śāntim āpnuyāt

Śānto mucyeta bandhebhyo

muktaś cānyān vimocayet

May the wicked become good. May the good obtain peace. May the peaceful be freed from bonds. May the freed set others free.

Svasti prajābhyaḥ paripālayantām

Nyāyyena mārgena mahim mahīśāḥ

Go-brāhmaṇebhyaḥ śubham astu nityaṁ

Lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhino bhavantu

Blessings on the subjects of those who are ruling, and may these great leaders rule the earth in a just manner. May food always be the lot of animals and spiritual practitioners. May all people be happy.

Kāle varṣatu parjanyaḥ

Pṛthivī śasya-śālinī

Deśo’yam kṣobha-rahito

brāhmaṇāḥ santu nirbhayāḥ

May it rain at the right time. May the earth have storehouses full of grain. May this country be free of disturbances. May spiritual practitioners be free of persecution.

Sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ

Sarve santu nirāmayāḥ

Sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu

Mā kaścid-dukha-bhāg-bhavet

May all be happy. May all be healthy. May all see only auspicious sights. May no one have a share in sorrow.

Sarvas taratu durgāni

Sarvo bhadrāṇi paśyatu 

Sarvaḥ kāmān avāp-notu

Sarvaḥ sarvatra nandatu

May everyone surmount their difficulites. May everyone see only auspicious sights. May everyone have their heartfelt desires fulfilled. May everyone everywhere be glad.

Svasti mātra-uta pitre no astu

Svasti ghobhyo jagate puruṣebhyaḥ

Viśvam subhῡtaṁ suvidatraṁ no astu

Jyogeva dṛśyema sῡryam.

May blessings fall on our mother and father; blessings on the animals, the people and the earth. May everything of ours flourish and be an aid to wisdom. And long may we see the sun.

Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ

Om peace peace peace

You can watch Hareesh's post and hear his beautiful voice intone the prayer here

Different views and details of a box made at a Sankalpa workshop
in 2018. I placed this box on the altar during class when I shared my heart.

Enlighten Me

There’s something wrong with the tube light.
It’s flickering on and off, on and off.

You might say that’s better than when it was off all the time
and I was crashing about in the dark and banging into things.
So much suffering.

Then it came on and everything was so obvious …
for some timeless moments …
before it went off again.

But there was a faint halo left
so I couldn’t forget its brilliance,
and I yearn for that light.
Other timeless moments have happened along the way.
Suddenly being in the light
and then the darkness closing round,
forgetting, almost.

Then it started this flickering business.
This strobing effect is really quite distracting.
It’s driving me mad.
Sometimes I feel drunk,
sometimes nauseous,
sometimes dizzy
with all this on again, off again
state of affairs.

But now I see there’s nothing wrong with the light.
It’s on all the time, but I can’t keep my eyes open.

Time to wake up darling. You’re dreaming.

© Tina Shettigara September 2018

Note: I am not a fan of the term enlightenment. Awakening is more appropriate. However the metaphor of a flickering light describes so well this phase of unstable Awareness that is also coming and going, that I couldn't resist using the term in the title.
View more of my poems

Dan Flavin "monument to V. Tatlin" National Gallery of Australia
Sculpture of fluorescent tubes
Photo credit: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=111377

Welcoming

Have you ever wondered why you keep reacting to similar situations in the same unhelpful way? Or why you feel deeply offended by something when others seem unruffled (or the other way around)? The thing is that everything that ever happens in our life, leaves a residue or imprint behind. This is a deep conditioning, not just in our mind but deep in the body.

In this post I take a look at these imprints, how the practice of Welcoming helps to resolve them, and then I give you a simple series of steps to practice Welcoming.

The body/mind carries imprints of our experiences

These body imprints have been well explored in the context of trauma by authors such as Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), and Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma). The imprints of trauma can be extremely debilitating because of their strength, but imprints are laid down from much more minor events of life as well.

These deep impressions may be quite hidden, and their sources forgotten. Indeed systems that teach the transmigration of the personal soul to a new body (reincarnation) believe that they can be carried from one life to the next. No matter that we may not know what they are or where they began, they influence everything we think and do. In the understanding of yoga and other Indian philosophies, they are called samskaras, literally meaning imprint or impression.

Have you ever noticed that the same circumstance, inflicted on different people, has a different affect on each of them, each reacting in different ways.  These days you often hear this discussed in terms of resilience: some people are more resilient than others.  It is discussed in terms of finding ways to build resilience. However the cause is that we each have different imprints from our past which are influencing how we receive the circumstances and therefore react. And in each fresh experience and reaction we are laying down more impressions, often reinforcing the ones that are already there.

Welcoming builds resilience

Without a way to address and resolve these deep impressions, sadly we will keep on reacting based on existing imprints, and we will keep on laying down new ones. Resilience will be elusive.

The good news is that we are not condemned to repeat this as an endless cycle. Freedom begins with the mindful practice of welcoming whatever arrives. It is simple and achievable by all of us.

How it works

At any given moment various events, sensations, emotions, thoughts, are arriving and leaving. Some are comfortable, and we might be inclined to want them to stay. Some are uncomfortable and we might be inclined to push it away, to try to close it out. If an arrival or a departure is resisted, it tattoos itself on your psyche, on your heart. It sticks in your body like a burr on your sock.

The initial work of the journey to experience psychological and spiritual wholeness is to gradually unpick the samskaras like unpicking those burrs from your socks, to invite them to fully unfold so they can at last dissolve. This is Welcoming: To invite whatever is arriving to unfold fully and dissolve away when it does, to neither resist its arrival nor its departure.

Welcoming is where you start. Learning the art of welcoming not only prevents the laying down of new samskaras, but it allows the old to reveal themselves in whatever sensory/emotive way they turn up today. Whatever is arising, in any given moment, welcome it with no refusing, allowing whatever is here to be fully experienced. Welcome whatever comes, fully so it has its opportunity to be seen, to blossom, and to fully dissolve again.

When the socks are free of burrs, that is, when the samskaras have been lovingly met and fully welcomed, we will awaken to who we truly are, whole and perfectly glorious.

Purifying

There are older meanings of samskara which are about purification and purification rites. As we welcome and resolve these hitherto unresolved issues in our body/mind we are indeed purifying ourselves to be who we truly are without blemish and to know ourselves as that without barrier.

You are already perfect and whole. But as the ore clings to the gold and needs to be refined away to release the precious metal, this purification reveals yourself to yourself as you already and truly are.

Meditation is the practice ground

Learning to welcome everything is said more easily than done, especially as those old imprints themselves will be coming up reactively to keep you in old grooves. Meditation can be the practice ground where you rehearse Welcoming in the safe container of the meditation. It builds skills that then get transferred into daily life.

3 Steps to welcoming everything

So here we are. Simple steps to begin to welcome everything, to unpack the old imprints and not to create new ones.

1. Practise somatic awareness - that is attune to sensations in the body.

They are stored in the body and that is where they will first present themselves. What is arising is arising in the body. Welcoming is assisted by acute somatic awareness. Everything will present as a feeling in the body, and Welcoming is easier when you can meet whatever it is at the gate rather than when it is pounding on the door of the inner sanctum.

Develop somatic awareness by:

• Practising a mindful form of Hatha Yoga
• Learning Somatic movement practices
• Body-sensing in iRest® and Body-scanning in Mindfulness

2. Develop a regular practice of a meditation that keeps you attuned to the somatic experience. 

iRest® Yoga Nidra meditation is perfect for this. In this meditation you will:

• Establish a safe haven of wellbeing that you can return to whenever you need 
• Begin the practice of Welcoming by opening the senses
• Notice the subtle feelings that herald emotions and cognitions
• Notice the memories, beliefs and emotions that co-arise
• Welcome everything as it is, and inquire into its need, its message, its source
• Notice how you are aware of what is arising and how welcoming is a quality of Awareness

3. After practicing in a formal meditation practice, bring the same practice to everyday life.

See how you are able to welcome whatever is arising in the process of your daily life. You might take small mindful moments to welcome what is present, just noticing and welcoming.  And then at times you will notice the practice happening at more difficult times.

What is spiritual?

For me, yoga has always been a spiritual practice. But what exactly do I mean by that? I have heard quite a few people say that they don't mind doing yoga but they cannot stand all that spiritual stuff. What do they mean by that? Can it be yoga without being spiritual?

I have also talked to a number of people who are reluctant to do yoga because they fear it will conflict with their religion. Is yoga religion? Is spiritual experience religious?

Like many, I actually began taking yoga classes, back at the tender age of eighteen, looking for physical exercise. I was seeking a movement discipline I could enjoy. I had never been great at sports, my racket skills truly suck and I find it hard to catch a ball. Yoga appealed, no rackets or balls involved, or so I thought back then. I am now actually quite fond of balls as part of my yoga explorations.

I did enjoy it. Turned out that my 18 year old body was quite flexible and strong, and yoga, the physical side of it, came naturally.  It wasn't long however before yoga revealed something more to me. It was something my feeble attempts on the netball court had never come close to. I began to recognize the spiritual in it, in me. All in all, doing yoga felt harmonious, I felt harmonious and whole, doing yoga.

This was natural and unremarkable. There was no sense of the hand of a god. Just a sense of deep connection I could not explain, but which was both extraordinary and ordinary, a paradox, undeniable and exquisite.

Spirituality is natural and unremarkable. It is as normal and as natural as remembering, a remembering of ourselves as we really are, which is immense, connected and easeful, forgotten in our taking on form and becoming caught up in sensation and thought.

Religion is troublesome because there are so many of them each claiming to be true. Since antiquity people have attempted to explain the unexplained by ascribing it, the ineffable, to God, a God, or different gods for different purposes. Religion has a hallmark of being organised and rule based, lest you offend the God. Religions are almost always organised around assigning power to human beings, usually men, over other human beings. Religion develops theology, a set of quasi-logical arguments based upon initial assumptions that spring from that particular religions revelations from the god to some founding father figure of that religion. Religion spawns its own mythology and demands obedience. Religion backs us into a corner that must be defended.

There has been a tendency to confuse spirituality with religion, as a process by which humans come to know God. But what if we remove the whole idea of God.

https://compassionaterebel.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/
if-gaining-enlightenment-is-an-accident-how-to-be-accident-prone/

Remarkably, spirituality still exists. Stripped of lofty and divine otherness, it becomes the very ordinary recognition of a part of ourselves which is not the body, not the senses, not the emotions, nor the 'thoughts that come and go, but greater and more sustaining than all of these. It is not discovered by listening at pulpits but in the simplest and most ordinary of actions, mindfully practised. Like eating a peach, mowing the lawn, or going through a series of postures and movements mindfully.

Any mindful activity, it doesn't have to be yoga. Perhaps it is surfing, or painting, or playing music, or washing dishes or racing a motor cycle.

But yoga was developed for this purpose. The whole system of yoga consists of practices that are designed to still the mind and allow the truth of who we really are to move to the foreground. I am not sure, but perhaps it is not even possible to do anything taken from the yoga practices and not discover a spiritual pathway in it. Even when doing a practice that has for all intents and purposes been stripped of its origins, and presented as a physical workout, these movements may simply awaken pathways of energy in the body that create the very conditions for remembering who we really are. This would explain a number of revelations that have been made to me by people who started in such a practice and came to the more traditional, in some ways, school of Yoga Spirit Studios, wondering what the heck just happened over there. For, as Suzuki Roshi said:

"Gaining enlightenment is an accident; Spiritual practices make us accident prone."

Even when you didn't know you were doing a spiritual practice.

Snakes and Ladders

This being a yoga aspirant is a game of snakes and ladders. Just when we think we are making great progress, there is a snake and we seem to slide down and away from the goal.

This image was found in an interesting article about the game. See a link at the end of this article.

However I begin to think that there is an illusion in this. Those setbacks are perhaps another form of progress.

I don't think it matters how we define the goal.

We ask you why you have come to yoga when you first visit our studio.

"Flexibility, strength and wellbeing"

"Feeling better"

"De-stress, health and wellbeing"

The answer comes in different forms but they are mostly along the same lines.

As we come into the practice we might discover how to breathe more fully, and with this comes a greater feeling of wellbeing.  It might even be a ladder, propelling us faster than we imagined towards that goal.

As we undertake physical practices that stretch us out, we slowly become more flexible, but the process might also release all kinds of tight areas in the body and this might also lead to a greater sense of wellbeing.  We might not still be able to touch our toes in a seated forward bend but we feel lighter, freer, more full of wellbeing.

Then comes the day when we are doing a practice and we suddenly feel really, really sad.  We have no idea why.  Sometimes the feeling persists and we carry it with us out into the world.  Is this a snake?  Have we just lost ground and been slid away from the goal?

I believe it can depend on how we greet this experience. If we can take this as a signpost we might welcome it, asking "why are you here, what do I need to take notice of here." The answer might be a revelation you can put into words, like "Oh, I remember that time in my childhood when...." or it might not, it might just stay around awhile as a feeling. Just welcoming it and exploring it may bring interesting resolutions.

So could it be said to be a setback or a part of the journey to feeling better overall, to a deeper sense of wellbeing.

It might not be sadness, it might be anger, frustration, irritation, or some other emotion we could be used to regarding as negative.

Next time this happens, see if you can welcome it instead, explore it, and seek of it what it has to reveal. Be patient.  Our habits of repression may have secured things behind a thousand locks and it will take time to gently persuade them to open and reveal.

So the game of snakes and ladders might seem like two steps forward ten back at times, but treating everything as an opportunity and a messenger, nothing will take us further from the goal, only closer.

You might want to check out this article: "The Game of Knowledge taught about the slow upward path of the spiritual seeker"

The dance of ever renewing delight

I recently spent a week on retreat, in silence, while also being in community. Try imagining sitting in a dining room full of other people and talking to no-one. Many find it impossible to imagine.

What a treat it was! And a week did not seem long enough in the end.

Silence doesn't only mean "not talking". It means "not doing anything that will take you away from the ongoing meditation and stilling of the fluctuations of the mind". Pretty much no texting, emailing, reading the frivolous, like Facebook,. I didn't take a computer, and the only book I had was my handbag sized copy of the Yoga Sutras interpretively translated by Swami Venkatesananda, as it goes wherever my handbag goes. I did indeed open and read it on a few occasions at night and during the long afternoon breaks, finding that it could take me deeper, rather than taking me away.

Another text that might have also taken me deeper would have been the Radiance Sutras had I thought to take it. Many of the meditation practices we did on retreat were from the Radiance Sutras.

The retreat was titled "Embodied Awakening" and was led by a very talented teacher, Anne Douglas. The title indicates that the body itself is a gateway to awakening. As we come into a heightened sensitivity to information of the body we start to open all of our perception, including to the experiences that are beyond the body.

Through repeated body-sensing practices, meditation and Yoga Nidra, and by not interspersing this with the things that would take us away, we began to enter a more awake state.  An awakeness that is awake no matter what the state of the body, awake even if the body sleeps, dreaming or dreamless, and awake in a vaster sense than ordinary wakeful states.

The Radiance Sutras are Lorin Roche's beautiful, modern, interpretive translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (c.800CE), a lovely text from the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. The title of this post is taken from Sutra 156.

Let me share Sutras 155 -156 with you.

155
Breath flows
Into this body
As a nectar of the gods. 

Every breath is a whisper
Of the Goddess:
"Here is the ritual I ask of you -
Be the cup
Into which I pour this bliss,
The elixir of immortal peace." 

156
The breath flows out with the sound sa,
The breath flows in with the sound ha.
Thus thousands of times a day,
Everyone who breathes is adoring the Goddess. 

Know this, and be in great joy.
Listen to the ongoing prayer that is breath.
Life shall dance in you
A dance of ever-renewing delight.

Perhaps you are put off by this talk of "the Goddess" so lets talk about that. Who is this Goddess?

The text comes from the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. The "Goddess" is, at a story-telling level, the consort of Shiva, who is sometimes called Parvati, but also is known as Shakti. But such terms are actually metaphorical. This God and Goddess are not personalities, they are the Universe, and they are in fact one. The Goddess is the energetic aspect of Consciousness that causes manifestation. In other words, Shakti causes Divine Consciousness to pulse, and matter to come into being. These concepts have a very nice correlation with astrophysics!

So everything is really Shiva-Shakti, and you can experience this, in your body. Your body becomes a pathway to knowing the Divine and a pathway to returning to the knowledge of your True Nature. So the 112 meditations of the Vijnana Bhairava are 112 gateways of the body to returning to your True Nature.

Here in these two sutras our gateway is the breath. "Be the cup into which I pour this bliss", be receptive to the breath, "be in great joy", "listen to the ongoing prayer", "life shall dance in you".

So next time you are lying quietly - in savasana at the end of your next yoga practice perhaps, or even in bed tonight, waiting for sleep, be receptive, open, listen, feel and quietly let this wondrous experience of the breath be meditation and prayer.

There is a poem about how I was feeling when I returned from retreat here.

You might also be interested in a previous post, Siva - Sakti.

Nurturing Inner Wellbeing

The Scream - Edvard Munch

I always knew that yoga was good for me.  On the mat I felt better, more at peace, more centered. Something was calling me, a yearning if you like, and on the mat I had glimpses of that for which I yearned.

But in between times I could still find myself screaming like a banshee, reacting to the vicissitudes of life. Oh, I might have been a lot worse without the time on the mat, but why oh why could I not maintain that equanimity in between times?

So the question arose: What did I do on the mat that was not happening in everyday life? Of those elements, what could I take into everyday life?

There are many elements. Here are a few lessons from the mat that can be simply applied in everyday life. Let me know if they work for you.

1. Somatic experience
On the mat during the practice of hatha yoga we are paying close attention to the felt sense of the body. In everyday life I discovered I was no longer paying attention. In meditation the mind also settles much faster if we begin to explore somatic experience. Try it now. Close your eyes and just start to feel the body, the sensations of the body. Start in one corner, perhaps in the mouth, perhaps in the feet, and begin to explore the sensation of your body. Then after spending some time in this exploration of sensation of the body, observe what has happened to thought.

More recently, and through my explorations of iRest^® Yoga Nidra, I have also started to recognise that all emotions, thoughts beliefs, in fact almost everything that comprises this personality that was sometimes a screaming banshee, all of it is a somatic sensation. This has been a break through recognition. By bringing somatic awareness into everyday life I can feel as sensation all the things that make me react, before I react. Sometimes I choose to let that move through and be expressed, but only if it is not distructive. Early warning systems, great to have on your side.

2. Attention to the breath
Breathing in raise your arms, breathing out lower and fold your body into a deep forward bend.... on the mat my teachers were always drawing my attention to the flow of my breath and encouraging me to flow with the breath in movement. And lying in savasana, or sitting in meditation, again, follow the breath, notice the breath.

I assure you, when screaming like a banshee I was not paying attention to the breath.

When my kids were young I made my own discovery, that when the kids were going crazy and I was going crazy, all I had to do was to remember to sing. We would all calm down. Of course! Singing requires attention to the breath.

Slowly over years of practice, and again further nurtured through Yoga Nidra, my perpetual awareness of the breath has increased, and heh presto, it too is an early warning system. If anxiety arises it always drives the breath upwards, away from the belly and into the chest. Anxiety always subsides if you can bring the breath down into the belly. Brilliant! Another tool for equanimity.

3. Intention
I remember my teachers inviting us to formulate our intention for our practice (often called "sankalpa" in yoga), and to repeat it several times as a simple affirmation. Yearning to be at peace, my affirmation quickly settled to be two words "Still Centre".

Often on the mat I would be totally in the still centre.

Do you think I was remembering those words when having an emotional breakdown?

Once.

Sobbing in bed, unable to sleep, for some reason it arose, and I used it as a mantra, over and over, and I slept and awoke refreshed.

Gradually I began to realise that there is enormous power in our self talk, and if that talk is a constant put down then we will believe that and our way of dealing with life will reflect that.

I began to practise positive affirmations.  But have you eve done that thing where you repeat an positive affirmation, and there is a voice in your head contradicts it?

When that happens, notice how it feels (coming back to somatic awareness), and then try on the positive affirmation, and ask yourself, if this were true right now, what would that feel like.

Intention can be in the form of a resolve for whatever you are doing, this yoga practice, this task, this day. But there is another intention which is more like my still centre mantra, which is an expression of that yearning that keeps you coming back to the mat in any case. When you have identified that one it will be so harmonious that the mind will not undermine it.  It is true, and it is pure and it is an expression of that yearning, which is, for who you truly are.

4. Welcoming
Honestly, I did not get this until I began to really seriously delve into iRest Yoga Nidra. Welcoming uncomfortable sensations did not appeal to me. However it is a wonderful truth worth discovering for yourself. If you stop regarding the sensations and emotions that arise as either good or bad, but as signposts that could point you either towards greater integration or away from a state of grace, depending on what you do when they arise, and begin to welcome them as signposts to grace, their power starts to drop away.

5. Inner wellbeing
So we come to cultivating inner wellbeing. From a place of inner wellbeing, welcoming becomes easier. When on the mat, in movement practice, in meditation, in Yoga Nidra, we practise contacting, truly feeling, inner wellbeing, and the more we practise, the more we can also call upon it in daily life.

If you are interested to know more about these practises, and bringing your yoga high into daily life, keep exploring yoga with a good teacher. At Yoga Spirit Studios you will find classes to explore wellbeing in movement, in meditation and in iRest Yoga Nidra. Come home to your True Self, which is equanimity itself.

The Power of Intention

"You are what your deep driving desire is"

These lines from the Upanishads have always held great resonance for me.

As I am turning my thoughts toward teaching a new course "The Power of Intention" a four week exploration of the intention components of iRest® Yoga Nidra, the ancient upanishadic words are repeating in my mind.

They continue (Eknath Eashwaran translation):

"As your desire is, so is your will;
As your will is, so is your deed;
As your deed is, so is your destiny."

So powerful is the way that we shape and frame our intentions, that we are advised and should take care in their framing. How does the mind interact with our intention? Is it undermining us with its constant chatter, its accumulated baggage of beliefs about ourselves. One way I find that iRest is so wonderfully powerful is that we are handed the tools to deal with all of this, and the tools to constantly refine our intention as well until we know it is the quintessential beacon to guide our lives.

Of course, iRest Yoga Nidra is not the only system to have recognised that intention is so powerful.

Lewis Carroll put it this way: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." And in another version "If you don't know where you are going you will probably end up somewhere else" (sometimes attributed to  Dr Laurence J. Peter of Peter Principle fame, and sometimes to former American pro baseballer 'Yogi' Berra whose full name is Lawrence Peter Berra - I am going with the baseballer).

The point is, that without goals you are aimless, wandering around in circles, and ending up in meaninglessness. But a goal, intention or heartfelt desire, leads you on.

If however you are framing desires or goals or intentions without skill, they may be as useless as not having any. If I frame my intention "I want to be happy" this is nothing more than a feeling state of not being complete.  It is fed directly from a self-belief that might be stated out as "I am not good enough" and it will serve as a reinforcing feedback loop to that self-belief.

A more powerful intention would be framed as an affirmation "I am complete and happy just as I am".

Through meditation and paying careful attention to how the Intention arises from our deepest states, the Intention is honed like steel in a fire until it is recognised as resonating deeply. When you find that resonance your "deep driving desire" changes no more. It will shape your will, and your action and your destiny.

Surrender

Could surrender be the next big step in your yoga practice?

Remember the Niyamas?  They are the second limb of the eight laid out by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. The Niyamas are the personal observances such as purity, contentment, diligence, and introspection. The fifth Niyama is "Ishwara Pranidhana".

Ishwara is often translated as "God" but is more of a concept with a wide range of meanings depending on the philosophical underpinning of its use. It could be translated as Higher Self. Depending on belief, faith or lack of it, the word Ishwara may be challenging for some.

Then there is "prandhana". Layered with meanings of devotion, dedication, respectful attention, the word often is translated as "surrender".

The English word surrender may seem to render us weak. Vanquished armies surrender, the loser surrenders. Is Patanjali asking me to be a loser? It is possible that the whole concept of surrender does not sit easily with us, especially for individualistic Westerners in a culture that makes dominance a virtue. I might think that if I surrender I will become a door mat, and the I that is doing that thinking rebels against that.  This is the ego-I at work.

Furthermore, "surrender to God" might really be a step too far!

Surrender is the ultimate act of letting go of our ego. Love is surrender. Think of a time when you were consciously loving, filled with love for another. Love places the other ahead of oneself, and as such it is devotion, dedication, respectful attention and surrender. The ego-I that does not wish to be a door mat has no place in a heart filled with love.

Patanjali points us to surrender to "Ishwara" as this is the path to move beyond that ego-I that stands in the way of our unification and wholeness with the ground of our Being. It doesn't really matter how we conceive of Ishwara - for some it will be Jesus, for others Mother Mary, or God, for others an Earth Mother, or Siva ... that which resonates with the individual is what is important.

Whether we are on the mat or in daily life, the fifth niyama invites us to dedicate all action and all inaction to that higher force, so that we can shift that ego-I out of the way and transform our lives into an congruous flow of love and wholeness.

When you are next on the mat practising yoga, could you surrender, to the breath, to release, to the felt sense of the shape you are adopting? Could you surrender thoughts to sensation, sensation to just being?

How to catch a monkey

• Take a coconut and drill a hole in it just big enough for a monkey's open hand to fit through.
• Tie the coconut down to the ground
• Put something inside the coconut that the monkey will find irresistible, such as peanuts or banana
• Wait

The monkey will soon come along and reach inside the coconut to grab the delight inside. But with his fist firmly around the treat he is unable to draw his hand back out. The monkey is most reluctant to let go of the treat and remains trapped!

This simple method of catching the monkey is a parable for our own suffering. Our attachment keeps us trapped in the condition of suffering.  Just as the monkey would only need to let go of the bait to be free, all we need to do is to release our attachment.

The Buddha gave the three causes of suffering to be attachment, anger and ignorance.

Patanjali, who wrote the "Yoga Sutras" lists five causes: ignorance (of our true nature); our ego, which defines us as many things, but blinds us to our true self; attachment, like the monkey; aversion or resistance, which is the flip side of attachment; and, fear of death. 

We are advised by the sages to still the mind. I suspect that this is even harder for modern people in the information age to do than it was before the endless barrage of electronically conveyed visual sand mental stimulation. 

I have noticed that when people come to meditation courses quietening the mind is often one of their motivations, yet when people sign up for asana classes relaxation, flexibility, strength and fitness are more often the reasons given. It doesn't matter really. 

If we learn the techniques of meditation we learn techniques to still the mind. It will however be challenging.

In a movement based asana practice, we may first engage in the outward sensations of the body, and the mind may be challenged initially to connect with the body, to discover a sense of its place in space. We may be confronted by limitations of the body. Yet the more we practice, the more we familiarise with the poses of yoga, the more we begin to turn inward, and the practice becomes a moving meditation. In the end we do begin to open to ourselves, to the possibility of discovering our true nature.

Qi Gong - Is it Chinese yoga?

In some ways Qi Gong sounds very much like yoga.

It has a diverse set of practices that coordinate body, breath and mind. Practices include moving and static meditation, massage, chanting, and sound meditation. Movements might be dynamic with slow flowing movements or passive, meditations with inner movement of the breath. Some practices emphasize static postures held for long periods of time.

With roots in ancient Chinese culture dating back more than 4,000 years, Qi Gong is practised for health and long life, as meditation, and to enhance skills in martial arts.

Qi Gong has many different lineages although in modern times attempts have been made to draw them together. Influences range from Dao and Confucius, to Buddhist strands that would have brought influences from the sub-continent of India, home of yoga.

Traditionally, knowledge about Qi Gong was passed from adept master to student in elite unbroken lineages, typically with secretive and esoteric traditions of training and oral transmission - just like yoga!

The name literally translates as "life energy cultivation". The concept of "qi" or "chi" is similar to the yogic concept of "prana", that is, it is a life-force energy, and like prana, qi flows throughout everything. Health, longevity and spiritual advancement depend upon free flowing and masterfully controlled qi.

The movements themselves may be very different from those we know in yoga, but the practices are somatic, with great mindfulness of the felt sense of the body. The breath also has a place of high importance in Qi Gong. Meditation and relaxation as a pathway to wellbeing are also important. So yogis will certainly find an affinity with the practice.

At Yoga Spirit Studios we remain curious about all somatic practices and pathways to wellbeing, so we were very pleased that a teacher of Qi Gong could come to the studio to teach some Qi Gong.

Secret Elements Qi Gong combines these ancient roots with the modern knowledge of kinesiology and psychology. According to Secret Elements co-founder and trainer Sascha Wagener the system is easy and can be learned by anyone.  It can be practised standing, seated or even lying. The secret to the power of these movements is in developing a deeper awareness of the body moving, and the process deepens with each practice. (Still sounds like yoga?)

This can benefit anyone, if you are recovering from illness, ageing, an athlete or a business person, anyone," says Sascha.

Cultivating right attitudes

First published in "on the Mat", the newsletter of Yoga Spirit Studios

Switching on the news can be quite depressing can't it? We should ensure we are informed about what is happening in our world, hiding our heads in the sand will not help. But there is so much violence, and so many people swept up in terror, death and destruction. I find myself very moved by it and frustrated too that as individuals we can do nothing to change it.

What we can do is cultivate the right attitudes in our own heart, ensure that we are wiring our own brains towards non-violence.

Non-violence, or ahimsa is the first practice that Patanjali offers in the Yoga Sutras, the very first of the yamas, which is the first of the eight limbs of yoga he lays out in Book 2, the Book on Practice.

However today I am drawn by a sutra in Book 1, sutra 33.

The mind becomes quiet when it cultivates

friendliness in the presence of happiness, 

active compassion in the presence of unhappiness, 

joy in the presence of virtue 

and indifference toward error. 

Sounds easy enough. But is it? In this sutra we are being given the clue to much needed equanimity in the face of all we meet, equanimity that will guide us into right action to fulfill our responsibilities.

Friendliness in the face of happiness: Sometimes another's success serves to remind us of our own failings and this may set our minds in an unfriendly direction. cultivate friendliness. Note the feelings of unfriendliness if they arise, invite it in, and then also invite friendliness. Move back and forwards between them. You will find that the unfriendliness loosens its grip upon you and you have cultivated friendliness.

Active compassion in the presence of unhappiness: It is relatively easy to be compassionate in the face of a friend's bereavement but what about the unhappiness of a homeless person, or a drunk or drug addict. Faced with the homeless person, drunk or drug addict, right there in front of us, do we feel compassion or aversion? First we can note that tendency, but then can we open ourselves to be with the other's suffering, acknowledging our oneness?

Joy in the presence of virtue: Is there a contraction present when we see the good works of others, perhaps because we feel ourselves to be unworthy or incapable of such giving? Note that. Then can we cultivate, feel its opposite as joy?

Indifference towards error: Why indifference? Does that mean we should not act when error is present, as in the bombing of children or passenger planes? The lesson here is to note the passion, the sadness, the anger, and the sense of impotence that arises in the face of error, note it and welcome it, and then chose equanimity, (indifference) as its opposite and cultivate that. Then we can act from the correct place, we can respond rather than react.

So much of the ever spiralling vortices of violence we see are fuelled by unskillful reaction based on hatred and fear. Patanjali offers another way and what better place to start than with ourselves, where we can act to make a change.

The Egg

As it is Easter I have been reflecting on all things Easter. Naturally eggs came up. I have always wondered about the place of eggs in the Easter story. A Sunday School teacher once told me it is to represent the stone that was rolled away from the tomb. Others naturally point to its new life symbolism, and that Christ's resurrection is a new life and it offers us a new life too.

The egg is a symbol that occurs across many faiths and traditions, often featuring in cosmology or stories of creation as well. It seems to come into the Christian tradition from earlier practices, reinterpreted. Red stained eggs, to symbolise the blood of Christ, were used in the early Eastern church, and there are stories that accompany this. But we know that coloured and decorated eggs were also features of other and earlier societies as well, including in the ancient Indian Vedas, the source of yoga itself.

The Brahmanda is the "cosmic egg", the totality of the universe. "Brahm" means "cosmos", "expanding", "biggest" and "creator". "Anda" means "egg" (pronounced with a long first a - aanda). The cosmos is conceived of as a giant egg, a giant, expanding egg.

This has a rather lovely resonance with modern scientific cosmology.We now know that the universe is indeed expanding, knowledge which came out of Einstein's theory of general relativity, predicted by Alexander Friedmann and observed by Edwin Hubble, There is also the notion that there was at some time a point of singularity, a minuscule gravitational dot out which the expanding universe arose, expanding in all directions, and continuing to do so. In the Vedas that would be called the "bindu", or it might be the "anda" at its smallest.

Science has yet to offer an explanation for the big bang that set all this expanding off.

Brahmanda is seen as simultaneously the bindu, source of all, and the macrocosm, all that is manifest. The manifest arises out of and within the whole, which is Universal Consciousness, Awareness. Yoga's goal, the union that is right there in the name "yoga", is our ultimate recognition of our being one with that Universal Consciousness.

So the egg in yoga can also symbolise a new life, awake to the full grace of Awareness.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Patience, perseverance, optimism and faith

Ram Dass wrote in his book Be here, now: "If you think you are enlightened, go and visit your family." The message is that the road is long and the potholes many if we are applying ourselves to our personal growth, the spiritual journey.

I often disappoint myself! Just when I think I am making progress, peeling off the layers of conditioning and learning to respond from the supportive home ground of Being, I bump up against my limitations and I react. Rats!

No point in cursing. I just have to welcome the limitation and get back to the meditation, and practise, practise, practise. Keep on dipping into Awareness, practising meeting what arises with welcoming, and repeating the heartfelt desire expressing that I am not limited by all of that conditioning.

I remain hopeful and am grateful for the fabulous tools that yoga teaches us. It can take some time to find the tools that will resonate for our unique vibration. I am also grateful that I have found the tools of iRest® Yoga Nidra, with its core principles of Well-being, Welcoming and Witnessing Awareness, and its delectable practises.

Your path may be different. Yours might be fishing or walking and the meditative experience that gives you! Whatever our path, at the end of the day we need patience, perseverance and optimism to stay the course.  We might fall off, but we can always jump back on.

We also need faith.  Not blind faith, but faith that we do have the tools that will serve us well and guide us home. I wish you all faith in your path. Om shanthi.