Yoga Limbs Breakdown

Quoting Rolf Gates again, 'The limbs of tapas, or action, bind us to the moment. They are actions taken or not taken in the present. The yamas do away with those negative actions that create remorse about the past and fear about the future. The niyamas take the energy freed up by the yamas and channel it into actions that promote health in ourselves and others. The asana simultaneously teach us to stay with the matter at hand, while deconstructing the personality flaws that induced us to hide out in our imaginations in the first place. Pranayama trains the mind to concentrate on one point while further refining our physical and emotional health. Consistent practice of these four limbs teaches us to live in the moment.'

Shavasana

Shavasana is corspe pose in yoga, the finale at the end of a long class, the death of your current yoga practice to help you transition to the birth of your next daily activity. Rolf Gates thoughts on this final pose: 'What Seneca taught me was that an adult lives many lives. We invest years in a moment, and then that moment passes and we must be willing to let it go, so as to be able to embrace the next moment. A study on longevity found that the common thread among those who live long is their ablility to endure loss. This is the lesson of shavasana. We embrace the moment with all we have, and when the moment is over we step back and let go.'

Principle 11-

Not really sure why this one was not grouped with or next to Principle 6, it is rather similar. 6 to refresh you stated: Our life has universal and personal nature. Both dimensions must be respected if we are to be happy and free. Now for 11:

11- There is a personal and universal uncounscious. Turning awareness to the unconscious brings understanding and freedom.
Now just to point out, when we are aware of something it doesn't mean we become that or become aware of that. As I said yesterday we are not to become cold and distant like Vulcans nor be mindless drones like the Borg. So this is not saying we are to shut down and be unconscious. Its saying that we already are. To become aware of this, to observe it, to know it, respect it and accept it only then can we become awake where we need to or just let go of the suffering of control where we need to.
If there is Consiousness, or enlightenment, or being Awake, then like yin and yan the balance of the universe, there is the unconscious. In our personal lives we are blind, or unconsious, to many things about ourselves, our family, our neighborhoods, and the rest of the globe. Society as a whole, or even narrowing down to nations, communities or groups will have there own blindspots, or be unconsious, to manythings within there structure\system, to neighboring structures\systems, to the rest of humanity. Whether individually or universally this blindspot is commonly refered to as Ego. Where fear and desire are incontrol all the time, hurting, 'protecting' and blaming. The endless battle of 'im right and your wrong'. This false idea of thinking we have control, and our struggle to over power and obtain more control. A good question onced asked, how can we control anything, if we can't even control our own emotions?

A passage from Deepak Chopra: 'Buddha saw that suffering and evil are rooted in a mistake about how life works.'

Rolf Gates highlights this thought further in saying: 'The first affliction, the one from which all the others flow, is our mistaken view about how life works. We do not know who we are, and therefore we make poor choices about how to proceed. Accoding to yoga, the mistake we make is to identify with the external.
'In macrocosm, this can be seen when countries struggle with past wrongdoing. Elements within Fench society today, for example, are unable to come to terms with the Vichy government's culpability in the death of over three hundres thousand French Jews during World War II. Identified with a false image of France, they cannot simply say, "We were dreadfully wrong, and we are terribly sorry." To do so would be to overturn their image of France, and thereby unalterably change their understanding of themselves. And so, for the last half century, there has been a concerted effort within France to deny and repress the thruth of French treatment of Jewish citizens during the war.
'On the personal level, we arrive on our mats identified with the results of our actions. We are good if we "win", bad if we "lose". We compete with the students to the left and right of us. We bask in the glory of a good day, are crushed by the ignominy of a bad one.
'The emptiness of all this striving to control reality stems from the emptiness of our vision of who we are. The fall of Adam and Eve occured when they began to believe that they were seperate from God. Pollution, war, greed, and hate began when we stopped believing that we are one with all things. You are not your fingers ot your hamstrings ot this book. You are that which is understanding this book and which pervades all things. That is God, you are God, and you share God with all beings. Our time on the mat is a long journey from the idea of separation to the idea of connectedness. Our experiences on the mat, our reactions, our fears and desires are opportunities to find out who we are and who we are not.'

I think he wrapped this up rather nicely. I'm not going to quote these books in this post, however I Highly suggest reading the books 'A New Earth- Awakening to Your Life's Purpose' by Eckhart Tolle, and 'Bhagavad Gita- A New Translation' as translated by Stephen Mitchell to get a clearer, fuller understanding on the Ego, and about letting go of 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'bad'.

Also remember, even those that are Awake are still human, still prone to drinking, swearing, sexing, and bellyaching, because all life is beautiful, ever faset of life is beautiful, if it were a mistake then it would not be.

posted from Bloggeroid

Meditations From The Mat - Day 209

'What we need to do is to recognize Inner Nature and work with Things As They Are. When we don't, we get into trouble. - Benjamin Hoff

'Desire is the wish for things to be not as they are. What is wrong with that? In a culture that reveres progress, working with things as they are sounds depressingly like fatalkism. Did Martin Luther King Jr. work with things as they are? Did Helen Keller work with things as they are? Did Rocky? Well, yes, they did, actually. Dwelling in the real, individuals who accomplish great deeds demonstrate what is possible, demonstrating how t5hings are. There is nothing fatalistic about working with things as they are. Fatalism begins when we leave the present, when we forsake the real in favor of our imaginations. Within the real lie the seeds of all our dreams. As we accept and connect with the postures that are hard for us, we find understanding that leads to mastery. That is working with things as they are.'

posted from Bloggeroid

Principle 4

4 - Recognize the mental states that fill consciousness. Shift from unhealthy states to healthy ones.

Rolf Gates had written: 'I often lose sight of this. My practice becomes an obligation, a necessity, yet another thing to knock off my to-do list. When I approach my practice with this attitude, not only is it a whole lot less fun, but I am also missing the point. A fundamental principle of yoga is that the conjuction of the seer (us) with the seen (life) is intended to be educational. Our entire lives are one big lesson. In microsom, our time spent on the mat is meant to be an exercise in self-study, or svadhyaya. ... the divine spark, the magic, the beauty that we yearn for are our own. This is what we are studying, and the asana are our classroom.'

This just highlights an example of an unhealthy state of mind, where he had a poor attitude about what he was doing, he then recognized he was thinking this way and how it was negatively affecting him and his practice and then he made the choice to shift his mental state to a healthy postive one.

Sure i,or Google, could give you lists full of healthy and unhealthy states, but the main point is you know if how you are thinking is causing you or your experience or others around you to not feel your best|their best, then its apparent that the opposite mindset will give you and others the opposite reaction.

As Honey Nut Cheerios says: 'Bee happy, bee healthy!'

posted from Bloggeroid

Curing Disease

Rolf Gate quotes one of his student, here is what Amy L. Has to say about her yoga experience:
'I have had fibroystic breat disease. Within the first month of yoga, the disease-and all of the painful symptom.- went away completely. Emotionally, I felt as if I had lot go of something, and then I realized that my illness was completely gone. Yoga makes me feel more like taking care of myself, so I am more conscious of what I put into my body, and I am more present, more aware of how things are affecting me. I feel more committed to taking care of myself.'

posted from Bloggeroid

Meditations From The Mat- Day 135

Again I found today's read too moving not to share with you. This is an exert from the book by Rolf Gates. :

'Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and rightdoing, there is a field. Meet me there. - Rumi

Over the millennia, yoga has traveled between two opposing views of spiritual practice. In one view, the world is flawed, and the individual, an aspect of a flawed world, is flawed- and yoga practice is meant to transcend our flawed nature. In the other, everything is OK- and our practice is meant to remove our blocks to seeing this truth. Now, this may seem like semantics, but in fact nothing could be more important to sort out before beginning a serious spiritual practice.

I am of the mind that everything is already OK. For me, the sutras are an arrow pointing to the divinity within all of us. It is a given that in asana practice we do no disavow any aspect of our experience or our physicality. Rather, we progressively embrace what is real for us, so that we may find health and harmony. Why would this not also be true concerning every other aspect of ourselves? As you go deeper into the sutras, spending time with superlatives and ideals, remember that you are doing this study in order to remember yourself, to come home to all of 'you' (italic). Only after we get beyond ideas of right and wrong can we truly begin the practice of yoga.'

posted from Bloggeroid

Meditations From The Mat - Day 133

This is just a small quote from today's passage from the Rolf Gates book, 'Meditations From The Mat'.:

'Try to do everything in the world with a mind that let's go. If you let go a little you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom. Your struggles with the world will have come to an end. - Achaan Chah'

My current mantra is 'let go of taking things so seriously'. Or as they say in Van Wyler: 'You shouldn't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive.'

So take a breath, relax, and enjoy your day. =)

posted from Bloggeroid

Meditations from the Mat

As i have mentioned before in a previous post, Meditations from the Mat is my daily read book by yoga instructor Rolf Gates. Today is day 73 and the following is today's passage that I thought was very perfectly worded and just right for you all today:

Day 73

Lack of true knowledge is the source of all pains and sorrow. - Yoga Sutras

As we apply the principles of yoga, a profound understanding begins to resonate in our lives. we come to understand that the anxiety we feel, the suffering we experience, comes from not practicing yoga in the true sense of the word. Even the most tentative attempt at living our yoga produces immediate positive results. Bit by bit, we realize that we have been acting on misinformation and that our strategies to end or lessen our suffering have actually intensified the pain.

Who among us has not lied to avoid suffering, only to have the lie increase her suffering tenfold? who among us has eaten a pint of Ben and jerry's in hope of feeling better for a moment, only to spend hours in regret? Who among us has not spent months or years believing that when this or that finally happens, we'll be content, only to find that the contentment we seek is somehow beyond our grasp? There is no end to these predicaments - until we adopt a new plan, a new paradigm, a new way of thinking. Yoga offers us a new plan. In truth, it is a very old plan, and it encompasses the only plan that has ever worked. You don't need to embrace the whole plan to gain from it, nor do you have to believe in every aspect of the plan for it to work. But if lack of true knowledge is the problem, then openness to new information must lead to the solution. All you need is the willingness to make a beginning, to turn yoga from theory into action.

...

Back to my voice:

Just felt like adding a reminder and some thoughts about yoga-

-Doubt your doubts

-Accept where you are today

-Yoga is about self acceptance, not self improvement.

-Remember yoga is a journey, not a destination.

-Often times we NEED yoga the most, when we WANT it the least.

-Let go of competetion and comparison.

-Recognize that less is more.

-Allow resistance to melt away.

-Let go of expectation and limitations.

-Recognize that each day is different.

-Continuous practice, not just for one or two days. We are practicing all the time. (Means always practice love and nonattachment and selflessness. See others in yourself and yourself in others, let go of judgement and complaint and upset... always practice Letting Go!)

Most importantly:

-Be sure to have fun.

-Always be yourself.

Toxic

I prefer to read the book Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates everyday (as it is a 365 meditations book set up for one passage a day) and this year I started to actually read it beginning with January 1st, wanted to see how it felt to follow it with the calendar year.

Currently i am still within the section about the yamas -the ethical and spiritual observances help us develop the more profound qualities of our humanity. The yama that is being discussed in the current passages is about nonhoarding or letting go. Letting go of physical clutter, or not focusing too much on materialism, but also letting go of personal and spiritual baggage. Cleaning the skeletons from our closets so to speak, cleansing ourselves of negativity to better ourselves and to have a more powerful impact on others. Letting go of past blames and regrets, embarassments, jealousies, vengances, bitterness, etc. Letting go of our constant control to be perfect with everything and everyone, and focusing our engeries on knowing already that we are perfect and that all is well. learning to relax more and be more relateable and approachable. Learning to truly accept ourselves and appriecate what we have been given, and moving on, shrouding away the past and letting go of the whatifs of the future and allowing ourselves to be present in the present moment. Someone once told me that it is called the present because it is a gift and we should all learn to cherish it! *^_^*

There are many different meditation styles and techniques out there, one of the most well known and simplest in concept I personally find to be the most challenging to actually practice and master, and that is closing our eyes, calming our breath, and letting go of our thoughts and judgements and concerns and just being there in the moment, in the room listening to the sound of our breath or the tv on down the hall, or the dog barkign outside, or the wind chimes, or the rain, your tummy grumbling, what have you, but lettign go of labeling what you hear or feel, not judging anything or feeling emotion towards it one way or the other and continuing to just quiet the thoughts in your mind.

My challenge to you is to pause reading this or checking your email, or facebooking, or checking out porn (whatever floats your boat), turning away from your phone or computer, closing your eyes and for 3 minutes focus all your energies on quieting your mind, and just being in the moment, being in whatever room you are in however if on a bus or the train or something i suggest waiting til you get home so you dont miss your stop) I am practicing with you, so enjoy!