“You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.”
~ Sharon Gannon
Good morning friend! I thought I’d bring you a little different sunrise this morning, with my little cactus tree below, saying peace. Isn’t it peace that all of us truly wish for?
Well, today, I have a history lesson of sorts, to understand why we practice yoga, and what we may come to expect when we hit our mats. Finding peace can sometimes be a real challenge !!
We are energetic beings. As noted the other day, we have 72,000 nadis, or energetic pathways running through the body.
The physical practice of yoga can be seen as nurturing these pathways. In the earliest spiritual books regarding yoga, however, asana practice (or the physical practice) was just a minor part. In Patanjoli’s Yoga Sutra, asana was only mentioned twice in the 196 verses. And all that is said about asana is that is should be “sthira and sukham”: steady and comfortable.
The point of asana practice is to assist us in entering into meditative states, from which realization or liberation may arise. In Eastern philosophy, liberation means freedom from the rounds of rebirth that keep us bound in our earthly bodies, and keep us from realizing our spiritual nature. I suppose in Western philosophy, this can be seen as preventing us from permanently entering heaven.
And different schools of yoga practice have different techniques for achieving this. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which was written some 1350 years after the Yoga Sutras, is one of the oldest exact documents that we have concerning the physical practice. Compared to today’s practices, there were only 15 asanas listed, 8 of them being seated.
Some schools of yoga claim we cannot be liberated while still in the body, and they work to move our attention through meditation to the “subtle bodies” as quickly as possible.
But for the vast majority of practioners, we will find that we are very tightly bound in our physical bodies. We are holding lots of stuff, and our emotions and physical pains simply have the better of us. Relaxing body and mind is not as easy as it seems.
Thus the Hatha School of yoga rejected the “get out of body quick” approach, stating that since we can only meditate and practice yoga while in a physical body, we should treat the body well. So the focus of what we Westerners know as “Asana”, carried down through the Hatha Method, written by Swami Swatmarama, is to build a strong, healthy body that would allow the yogi to meditate for many hours each day. Thus, aiding in the ultimate goal to sit comfortably and steadily for hours, until such time as the mind truly steadied, and could reach what is known as “absorption”.
Now, you many wonder why I am bringing up a history lesson of yoga while talking about Chakra theory. Yesterday we talked Yin & Yang theory, as well as our “shadow self”, or our denied self, and how important it is for our wellbeing that we learn to address those parts in ourselves that we have hidden. To quote the spiritual master Lazaris “The shadow holds the secret of change, change that can affect you on a cellular level, change that can affect your very DNA”. Our shadows hold the essence of who we are. They hold our most treasured gifts. By facing these aspects of ourselves, we become free to experience our glorious totality: the good, the bad, the dark and the light. By embracing all of who we are, we earn the freedom to choose what we do in the world. As long as we keep hiding, masquerading, and projecting what is inside us, we have no freedom to be and no freedom to choose.
As a yoga practioner, and teacher, I can assure you that your shadow will come up and stand before you while you are on the mat. We practice the same postures over and over so that these “shadows”, that have become embodied, can come up and out, and become part of our totality. Balance-Asana. We are taught Chakra theory as teachers, because we can count on the fact that each of our students will be faced with all that they’ve been hiding from while on the mat. The asanas will provoke it. And we are asked to assist our students in helping them flow through it. To help them realize it’s only temporary. But to get it out.
My friend who had the big realization this past weekend found herself crying on the mat, caught completely off guard. A very deep memory and emotion had been triggered. This is nothing to be ashamed of, and should be anticipated. Of all the asana poses, she mentioned that she was satisfied she was able to get into Trikonasana, or triangle pose. As the poses relate to the Chakras, or the 7 energy bodies, this pose works with and can trigger and release emotions held in the 2nd Chakra, or Sacral Chakra.
If interested, you can find a listing of Asana Postures as they relate to the Chakras here:
http://www.allgoodthings.com/yoga/postures/chakraposts.html
Doing work in the 2nd Chakra helps us complete the cycle of spiritual growth, with the 2nd Chakra saying: I respect my needs and the needs of others in any relationship and will act accordingly.
As she let much emotionality go regarding her nature to be a helper, sometimes to her own detriment, she found herself able to find balance in the posture. And as we practice more regularly, we will begin to see days where certain postures are just “off”. And we will begin to correlate this to work needing to be done in each of the energetic fields.
It’s amazing stuff my friends! May you work to find your OM, to rest comfortably and steadily today in all that confronts you.
Namaste.
