Category Archives: How Yoga Works

Seeing the Highest

During a recent at-home retreat, I opened my eyes after meditating and saw a fabulous golden sunrise. A candle was flickering on my altar and everything was bathed with an exquisite golden light. The whole scene was filled with both peace and a vibrating luminosity. I grabbed my phone to take a photo, but was disappointed in what I was able to capture of the moment.

This has happened to me repeatedly recently, especially out in nature, moments when I can readily see and feel the shakti-filled vibrancy, the tejas, the shining brilliant beauty. And I try to capture it in a photo, but it generally falls short. Perhaps my camera isn’t the best, or my photography skills are lacking. But as well, the camera can never capture what we can see from the deeper awareness of our Heartself.

You may have had at least glimpses of this experience as well. Many of us are overwhelmed by the beauty and vibrancy in nature. Or when we look at a beloved, a partner, child, parent, teacher or pet we may be able to see their inner beauty. Or when we experience a piece of art or music, we may be filled with awe. It is due to our hearts being open and connected. Personally, I yearn for this to be my everyday reality. And I know the increasing experiences I’m having of this is a result of my meditation practice.

When we do our internal practices, like meditation, we clarify our whole being so that we come to a place beyond the everyday thoughts (and in my world today, a lot of agitation), to rest in a place of quiet calm clarity. Then we quite naturally begin to see in an unobstructed way from that place of increased awareness. In the nondual philosophy, it is said that everything is a manifestation of the one still, yet pulsating, energy of Consciousness. And as we move along our path of practice, our ability to actually experience our external world as such increases.

According to tradition, this increasing ability results quite naturally from our internal practices. And it is something we can actively cultivate. For example, in the Pratyabhijñā-hṛdayam, Kṣemarāja outlines the process of vyutthāna, a slow emergence from a meditative state. We can revel in this increased state of awareness, and continue the heightened perception as we move into our world.

On a very practical level, whenever we emerge from the resting pose shavasana, we can pause with a more gradual emergence to experience this heightened and calmer state, and remind ourselves this place is always available and we can cultivate it in any moment. As we move deeper in our practices, our ability to see the highest in each and every thing in our world increases.

It is my greatest hope that we can all begin to interact with our world from this perception of connectedness. As more and more of us do this, we can begin to shift the energy around us, bringing more of the higher qualities of being into the world.

AWAKENING

(this is an excerpt from my book-in-progress)

Stepping onto the path of yoga generally starts with some type of awakening, whether conscious or unconscious. If you look back at your journey, you may identify turning points that have motivated a quickening of movement on the path. A time of awakening for me involved a romantic breakup and its emotional residue. In the depths of my despair, as I hit bottom, something inside reminded me of yoga, which I had dabbled in as an undergraduate. The breakup was a wake-up call, which led me to examine what I was doing with my life in a variety of ways.

This is so often the case, some devastating event in our life wakes us up, jolts us into our hearts and helps us to remember there is more to being alive than the mundane life we’ve been enacting. So I sought out a teacher, and that teacher led me further down the path, and then to another teacher and so on. It was a gradual process with successive levels of awakening and awareness.

But reflecting deeper on my life as a whole, I see a pattern of seeking something more. I repeatedly experienced a feeling that something was lacking in my life, something spiritual in nature. Initially I turned to Christianity since that was what I’d been exposed to. Then I sought out various substances and experiences as so many of us do, seeking to fill this sense of lacking on the material plane, through experiences or stuff.

And some of us get a taste of it from yoga asana, which was definitely my experience. After certain poses, I would experience a “bliss hit” as energy surged through my body, and I wanted more. And often after practice, I experienced some serenity and equanimity which would persist for some time.

Ultimately, all of these openings or awakenings are due to grace/anugraha. Life provides circumstances to which we can respond in many different ways. It is by grace that we choose to use these openings as an impetus on our path of yoga.

One form of grace you may have heard about is shakti-pat. Like so many concepts, the notion of shakti-pat has many layers of meaning and interpretation. “Shakti” means “power,” and” pat” is “falling,” so shakti-pat is the descent of power, or grace. It is a way that the individual experiences grace in their being.

Most of us have had an experience of spontaneous awakening, a hit of shakti-pat, to some degree, perhaps lying on a beach or in the mountains, sitting on a park bench, holding your newborn baby, experiencing art or intimacy. Somehow we just drop into the reality of the present moment, with a spontaneous realization of the Highest reality. Or it may come through some type of practice.

The experience can feel like a sense of Oneness, a recognition of the connectedness of everything and yourself as the center of it, or engulfing it all. Such experiences can be a flash, or a wave, and can last a moment or days or weeks. Yet for most of us, the experience eventually fades and we return to our mundane awareness.

In many traditions, shakti-pat is defined as something bestowed upon a student from a teacher. You may know of gurus who distribute such blessings via a touch or glance, or in other subtler ways. Some people report feeling an energetic transmission, when others say they’ve felt nothing. The student can receive or experience it in a number of ways. Some report a feeling of receiving a sensation small or large of the shakti, though for some, shakti-pat can occur without consciously registering an initial impression. In these traditions, this is the vehicle of awakening and movement toward greater awareness. From another perspective, reliance on a guru could leave a student relying on these “hits,” creating a dependency rather than self-sufficiency.

One way to think of grace or shakti-pat is that it is always available, it is always being offered, we just need to cultivate our awareness and experience of it, to open to it. We can receive it from many sources, be they friends, teachers, acquaintances or circumstances. I often sense a deeper presence and peace in certain people, including some of my yoga teachers. The absolutely free shakti can move through us in any number of ways.

The variety of experiences regarding the wake-up call, including the receptivity to a guru’s shakti pat, or a sensitivity to someone’s energy, points to a deeper understanding of shakti-pat. There must be some receptivity, readiness, or openness in the student to receive. This is related to the concept of adhikara, in the sense of a student’s receptivity and/or qualifications to receive the teachings.

Shakti-pat is the initial, and subsequent, awakening(s) which propels us on the path of yoga. It involves some descent of grace into the individual, which leads them to seek a teacher, practices, and teachings. It is often said, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and that is precisely because of adhikara, the readiness of the student to receive. This has certainly been my experience, as one teacher has lead me to what I needed next. At times I had wished I had met certain teachers sooner, but looking back, I wonder whether I would have been ready and receptive at an earlier time.

The importance of a teacher cannot be overemphasized. Sometimes the awakening experience can be very disorienting. They can happen spontaneously and unexpectedly and can be quite intense and/or confusing without context or understanding. They can also happen at any point on the path as your practice progresses, can take you by surprise, and be perplexing. An experienced teacher can help you move through these awakenings, providing you with the necessary knowledge and support.

The moment of initially waking-up, involving some shakti-pat, leads us to become a seeker. On some level, this impulse of the shakti has guided us toward the highest. I was lucky, as are you, since right now you are seeking deeper teachings of yoga, turning toward yoga for deeper fulfillment. However, the initial experiences of awakening are not enough to sustain us. As one of my teachers says, we need to move from being a seeker to being a finder. And the bridge for most of is some technique, some type of practice. Meditation is an excellent method for finding your deeper self and stabilizing the experiences of awakening into our everyday reality.

Freedom

Let’s take a moment to remember a fundamental teaching from the tradition: Consciousness in her freedom brings about everything in the universe (Pratyabijna Hridayam 1), and let’s focus on the second word of this aphorism: svatantrya. Usually translated as “freedom,” but remember the prefix “sva” means self, and “tantra” can mean loom, so another interpretation of this word is “self-looming.”

The tradition provides teachings on the various ways the highest Consciousness becomes concealed as we manifest as individuals, including the samskaras, all those latent impressions stored inside each of us that serve as activators of our thoughts and behavior. These samskaras can be negative habit patterns that lead us into suffering. And our practice of yoga, particularly meditation, attenuates those negative samskaras while at the same time laying down more positive samskaras. Our practice allows us greater access to the highest within us, which serves as a guide, if we listen.

As we loosen ourselves from the bonds of our samskaric patterning through our practice of yoga, we are better able to enact svatantrya, freedom. We are better able to consciously loom the fabric of our lives. Our journey of yoga yields the freedom to pause and make conscious what was previously unconscious. We gain what my teacher Paul Muller-Ortega calls “the ledge of freedom,” a resting place on our journey where we can pause and consciously choose our next step.

This is the pause that Arjuna takes at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita, when he asks his charioteer Krishna to bring their chariot into the middle of the battlefield to consider the most prudent course of action. Instead of galloping automatically into battle, Arjuna pauses to ask questions of his highest Self, and he listens carefully to the answers. In this way he then mindfully chooses the highest course of action.

Continuing to enact our samskaric patterns without pause, without reference to the highest, demonstrates a lack of freedom. Often we think we are behaving freely when in fact we are slaves to our habit patterns. We are simply doing what we’ve always done without even considering our options. We have so many opportunities to exercise our freedom that we aren’t even aware of. Our meditation practice supports us in breaking these habitual patterns, allowing us instead to pause and understand we have another choice that may be more optimal.

We are seeing this play out in the COVID-19 pandemic in ways both small and large. Our habitual patterns of behavior have been brought to a halt. Our choices are limited. We are forced into being more mindful.

For example, on a small scale, we’ve had to pay attention to our hands: how we wash them and what we touch. This is an exercise in seeing how mindlessly we have done these things in the past.

We are seeing how our habitual ways of thinking, our general mindsets are being activated with regard to how think about the whole situation. Do we tend toward fear, blame, paranoia, kindness, compassion, depression? As our lives are stripped down, we have the opportunity to look at these patterns and out of our freedom choose how to be. Or we can unconsciously allow the old patterns to dominate and reiterate.

We yearn to go back to “normal,” which essentially means we want to enact our old behavioral patterns. That may not necessarily be bad, but we now have the opportunity, in this moment, to pause in the middle of our battlefield and evaluate whether “normal” is actually the highest way of being for everyone involved. Is there a better choice when we pause, listen to our higher self, and think about it? We have the freedom to choose to do something different.

For me, this ability to take this pause, listen, and envision different options has broadened as I’ve become a regular practitioner of meditation. Honestly it has surprised me to observe my ability to more readily watch an impulse arise, pause to consider whether I want to enact it, and make a conscious choice.

Perhaps freedom isn’t about our ability to do or enact anything without recourse. Ultimately this can lead to bondage on so many levels. Instead, I think of freedom as being free of the bonds of unconscious patterns, and acting out of a conscious consideration of what is the highest action in any given situation.

CONTEMPLATE AND PRACTICE

To what degree do you feel free? Consider your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

What inhibits you from feeling free?

What encourages a feeling of freedom?

Are there circumstances in which you limit your freedom of choice and/or expression?

Observe yourself as you negotiate the COVID-19 circumstances. What is it teaching you about freedom?

 

THE OCEAN AND THE WAVE

Something that was quite confusing to me as I became more serious on the path of yoga was a pervasive message indicating that the spiritual path required renouncing all worldly desire. The images I had of being a yogi was of swamis in robes who lived apart from society so as not to be sullied by impurity.

As well, the practice and lineage I first landed in required harsh discipline of body and mind, and commitment to the method, further confirming the notion that to be a yogi required great effort and negation of any individuality. Together, all of this did not sit well, in my body and in my heart, and I kept searching until I found a path in the Tantric tradition that honored the journey of embodiment and living as a householder.

I learned there were different paths in the tradition. There was a renunciate path for those whose destiny was to withdraw from the world (and note that many of the early proponents of yoga in the west were in fact renunciates). But in addition, there is a path for those committed to living fully embodied in the world.

A wonderful teaching about these paths is that of the ocean and the wave, which is used in the tradition in different ways. For example, in the Classical Yoga of Patanjali, the definition of yoga is the calming of the fluctuations of the mind. From this perspective, our individual awareness can be thought of as an ocean or lake, and the waves are the vrittis, the fluctuations, all the thoughts and emotions that inhabit our awareness. Here the goal of yoga is to calm the waves of our thoughts and emotions so the lake is smooth and clear.

In my Tantric lineage, the ocean is often considered to symbolize Consciousness, the underlying ground of being, also called Shiva, or Shiva-Shakti. In this view, we as individuals are each a wave that emerges from that ocean of Consciousness. As our individual wave arises from that ocean, we look around and see the other waves of manifestation, and we tend to think that is all there is. This represents a forgetting, a lack of recognition of the source from which our individual life arises.

Here the path of yoga, especially meditation, is the means to remembering and recognizing that we are nothing but the ocean of consciousness, manifested as our particular individual life wave. Everything manifest is an expression of the absolute Consciousness, including each of us. But we have forgotten this.

Traditions that are renunciatory have as the goal to subside back into the ocean. The goal is to merge back into the ocean of consciousness. There is an associated withdrawal from society to help alleviate anything that creates waves in our individual consciousness.

From the Tantric perspective, instead, we want to resource the energy of the ocean to support the activities of our individual wave. We are successful to the degree we are able to clarify our awareness such that the ocean of consciousness is revealed to us. The means to this understanding is our practice of yoga, particularly meditation. In this way we recognize that we are nothing but the Consciousness ocean.

This connection then allows us to harness the energy of the ocean. We utilize that connection as householders to live to the fullest in a way that is aligned with our highest desires. Our work and our relationships are positively impacted. We become channels, if you will, for all the attributes of yoga we hear about: nonharming, truth, compassion, and so on. As well, it allows us to bring forth our own unique gifts. In this way we can be of greatest service, whether it is through something we bring into the world, or simply shifting the energy in our everyday realm through our demeanor and actions.

Reposing in the Heart

A beautiful Sanskrit phrase I learned from my teacher is “hridaya vishranti.” Some of you may remember that hridaya means heart. Vishranti means repose or rest. So hridaya vishranti is reposing in the heart, or perhaps taking refuge in the heart.

Heart here doesn’t mean our physical heart, or a romantic heart, or even the heart chakra. It is more like the center, like the heart of a tree. It is the essence, the core essence of everything. A poetic rendering of its meaning could be to repose into the arms of the Divine.

We each have an essence, core, innermost self. It is that part of us that is pure light and love, and unchanging. That part of our self that sits in the middle, silent and clear, as the rest of our chaotic world unfolds.

Vishranti, repose is such a beautiful concept. Could we relax into, allow ourselves to repose in our Self, our heart? Sometimes life feels exhausting, trying so hard to do all we want to do requires so much effort. Wouldn’t it be nice for it to feel more like a flow and less like a struggle?

For me, this is part of hridaya vishranti: to accept nourishment and support from a deeper source, to make it less about our individual will and more about channeling the Divine will.

What a wonderful idea! Drawing on our heart of hearts, not having to effort so much through our ego, or constantly try to manipulate our exterior world, but instead to feel authentically that we can rest assured that the heart will support and guide us. We can relax knowing this.

To authentically feel this, we need to make contact with that essence, and this is precisely what yoga, especially meditation, does. At the end of our yoga asana class, we physically repose in shavasana, and if you take a moment at the end you may palpably taste an increased centeredness and clarity. As we rest and repose in shavasana, our whole being integrates and assimilates the effects of our practice. We soak in the benefits of the practice which then colors our following activities, at least for a time.

And even so much more when we meditate. When we meditate, we align not only our body, but all of our being, our individuality becomes saturated with the qualities of fullness, love, and centeredness that is the essence of who we are. We have this place of refuge within us. As we meditate more and more, we become more steadfast in these qualities, reposing into the arms of the Divine.

SEED

Seeds are powerful things, as many traditions have noted: from a tiny seed the greatest of trees can grow.

In the yoga tradition, every one of our actions lays down a samskara, which can be thought of as a seed which is waiting for the right conditions to sprout. Just like physical seeds can be dormant until the conditions are ripe for sprouting, the seeds of each of our actions reside in our subtle body, awaiting fruition. They emerge as conditioned responses or habit patterns.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

So in every moment we have an opportunity to sow what we want to reap. A beautiful thing about our capacity as human beings is that we are free. The tradition calls it svatantrya – we have the freedom to choose which seeds we want to encourage, and of course which we want to discourage.

The external conditions of our life create the initial impulse for a seed to sprout. For example, the holidays bring up many old samskaras, both positive and negative. And this is super important to remember: samskaras can be positive, negative, or neutral.

So as conscious, mindful beings, we can exercise our freedom of choice to work with these samskaras, choosing to nurture those which are life enhancing and choosing not to enact those which degrade our lives and are not in alignment.

Our practices, especially meditation strengthen our ability to exercise our freedom. This works in a variety of interacting ways. Our daily practice lays down the seeds of connection to our deepest self, which allows an easier and more automatic access to that place at all times. Then this can allow us a moment of pause that is so important in reshaping our lives. There is a moment we have between an impulse arising, a seed beginning to sprout, and our conscious choice to allow it to unfurl into fruition, or instead choose to not lay down another one of those particular seeds.

In this way we slowly, slowly, transform our lives such that we are creating the potential for seeds that produce more positive impulses in our life to dominate.

Samdhana

I had the wonderful opportunity to study one of the foundational texts of Tantra, the Shiva Sutras, with my teacher Paul Muller-Ortega. He pointed to the theme of “samdhane” from the first chapter of the text, that I have found so useful. The word “samdhane” has the verbal root “dha” in it, which means “to place or put.” “Sam” means “with” or “together,” so samdhana means putting together, drawing something together, joining, uniting.

From what I learned from Paul, and contemplating the text, this concept of samdhana encapsulates so much of what our practice is about. My understanding of this concept of alignment is that it manifests in stages, and in all the different levels of our life.

When we take a step toward aligning with the highest through our practices, that intention accelerates an already set-in-motion movement toward alignment. It makes sense that a primary purpose and result of our meditation practice is to connect with the highest, the source of everything, and that from which everything manifests. But taking it back on step: there must have been some prior impulse within you, some seed that seeks the light, that encouraged or urged you to seek that connection in the first place.

And having heeded that impulse, that call to connect with your innermost self, the practice of meditation sets into motion the establishment of that connection. Through the practice of meditation, your awareness traverse the depths of consciousness to its source. This absolute source place is the root matrix from which everything comes into being in the relative world, which we see on the physical surface of our life.

Connecting with that source place of creating and manifesting energies sets in motion another aspect of samdhane. Our life at the surface begins to reflect and resonate with the source. On a practical level, we begin to experience that flow of creativity and manifestation rearranging our lives on its many levels. We find our desires, our thoughts and our actions, aligning with the highest such that aspects of our life that are more occluding, less supportive of the highest, begin to drop away, to be replaced by what is more affirming and supportive of the highest.

While this is an automatic result of our practice, it is a process, it is not instantaneous. It may take some time for the connection and alignment to come fully into fruition, as there are obstacles that must first be removed, all our old pain and patterns must be addressed in some way.

I see this process unfolding within myself in ways that are both delightful and painful. In my everyday life, I see more loving and compassionate responses arise naturally. I don’t have to force a kinder response, it is as if I am unable to do otherwise.

Yet because this process is still unfolding and evolving in me, at other times I see myself enacting old reactive patterns. But what happens now that I’ve been meditating a while, is that most times (sadly, not always…yet!) I immediately detect my misaligned pattern before I actually enact it. The pain of misalignment has become greater than any satisfaction from enacting old patterns that no longer serve.

So these teachings on samdhane indicate that initially our meditation practice allows us to align with the highest place from which all activity unfolds. So that unfolding of activity naturally begins to line up with the highest possible in any given moment. In this way, our entire life begins to be rearranged so that it is reflective and supportive of the highest.

 

EXPLORATION in LETTING GO #1

For a while now, I’ve been thinking of an idea that is popular in spirituality and health circles, but is as well grounded in yoga philosophy. It appears in various guises, names, and nuances: letting go, releasing, vairagya/dispassion, allowing. We’ve heard “just let it go,” which is so easy to say, and so hard to do. And that, exactly, is the problem. Letting go is un-doing, which seems impossible.

I’ve been thinking about it because it feels very important to me in my practice right now. With many years of practicing yoga, I seem to have embodied well the idea of practice and discipline. I know the efficacy of doing, of getting on my yoga mat, my meditation cushion, sitting down with a book or recording of my teachers to do studies, contemplating and writing. This I can do. But what about undoing?

To some extent, what has been done cannot be undone. I ate that chocolate cake, I took a nap instead of going for a walk, the injury happened, be it physical and/or emotional. This relates to karma, and the idea that every action has a consequence. My strategy has generally been to try to make better choices, and this is critical on the path of yoga. For example, redirecting my desire for cake to a healthier choice. My practice has definitely aided in making better choices overall.

Yet I can’t help but sense there’s more to it. Through my practice, I have noticed many attachments fall by the wayside when they no longer fit into my life. The letting go happened naturally like when a kid no longer cares for particular toys. Often it seems this happens because something else becomes more attractive. Again this is the result of replacing one attachment with another hopefully more adaptive one.

Still there are some persistent deep rooted patterns that continue to lurk, even after decades of practice. And as I’ve introspected, my conclusion is that in general they are all a fundamental disconnectedness with _____ . You fill in the blank: source, God, Self, heart, etc. It is a contraction that makes me feel smaller, and Tantric yoga philosophy calls it the “anava mala,” the fundamental separation of the individual being from divine source. It is a necessary contraction for the individual soul to become embodied, to take on the limitations of a body-mind.

How does one meet these deep-seated contractive patterns? I sense this is a place for actively letting go. But it feels extremely paradoxical. How does one undo? How does one actually release some deep seated pattern that has been reinforced for years, perhaps lifetimes? Can it be done, more precisely “undone,” or is it more of a process of replacing bad patterns with good patterns?

As a good yogi who started practicing on the level of the body, that’s where I am beginning my experimentation with letting go. I’ve begun to watch how much I hold in my body. I watched it first in shavasana, the relaxation and integration pose we do at the end of yoga class. There I can feel my body actively release. I put my attention to a contracted area and ask it to let go. For me this begins with my shoulders, as I am one of those people that carries the weight of the world there. So as I am in shavasana, I allow the muscles of my shoulders to release. Then I notice where else feels contracted, usually my jaw or my face, and again, send the message to relax.

I’ve also noticed it on the massage table, in the dentist’s chair, when I’m on a walk. I notice it as I sit here typing. I take a deep breath and release unnecessarily contracted muscles.

So I’m making some progress on the physical level. And I suspect this is teaching me something about letting go the deeper layers of psychological and emotional patterns that keep popping up. How do I let those go?

I have a lot of ideas, but I really don’t know. And for me, saying “I don’t know” is a form of letting go. That’s a start.

Stay tuned, I hope to have more to add as I continue my explorations. For now, you are invited to practice noticing and releasing bodily contractive patterns, shavasana is a great place to start. As well, I invite your contemplations on this subject.

REFINEMENT REFINED

judge

I previously wrote on “Refinement” (http://cindylusk.com/refinement/) and in the 3+ years since, I have refined my understanding of refinement. This points to precisely the process of refinement: it is a continuing process, and in that process there are many stages. And as I previously argued, this process of refinement applies to all aspects of your life. And yoga, particularly meditation, is a key means to facilitating refinement.

We all know this to a large degree on the surface of our lives. Take our bodies for example: many of us are continually refining our diet toward more healthy habits. Likewise with exercise.

As I discussed previously, our yoga asana practice is a continuing process of refining. We learn how to correctly align our bodies to an optimal pose, when to back off, and when to go deeper. We refine our ability to listen to our bodies.

Also in many varieties of yoga asana, we learn to work with our breath, which brings a deeper level of refinement. As we listen more deeply to our breath we notice its rhythm, if we’re holding it or it is agitated, etc. This somewhat more subtle avenue of awareness allows for refinement on a deeper level, as we begin to notice more subtle shifts in our being and awareness.

Our thinking also undergoes refinement. As we apply our minds to any subject, our understanding is refined. This is the process of vikalpa samskara: the refinement of our conceptual understanding of anything, be it it technical, philosophical or artistic.

To have maximum capacity for refining our lives and understanding on many levels, the yogic texts argue that we must refine ourselves. If the instrument we are using for refinement, our body-mind, is itself unrefined, then the results of using it to refine other aspects will be less than optimal. It is as if you’re using a blunt instrument to do fine work. To some degree it will work, but the results will be messy and unrefined.

The practice of meditation works to do this in many ways. First of all, the practice itself begins to rearrange and clarify our awareness. I think of one result of meditation as clearing a pathway to our highest self. So, first, meditation is like a cosmic cleaning service that clears out old, no longer useful patterns in our life. This includes anything that hinders our access to that pathway or connection to the highest part of our self.

And then, having established that connection, we are better able to access the wisdom and guidance that resides in that highest part of ourself. All of this allows us to begin to make better choices and generally just get clearer, which is the engine of refining our lives at the surface. Everything is impacted. As we access our hearts we can relate better to others. Our decisions are more aligned with our core such that we refine our lives to be more fulfilling.

Ultimately the connection and clarity allows us to be a conduit for sharing our highest potential and we find ourselves creating refinement not only in our own lives, but in the world at large.

Thus our practices enable the process of refinement for us individually to create a healthier and happier life. Through the alignment with our highest self that we contact with practice, we begin to fulfill our life’s purpose. Each of us has the opportunity to create a more fulfilling life that also can contribute to bringing forth in this lifetime our own unique talents and gifts.

May we each seek greater refinement and alignment with our highest self, for ourselves, for those with whom we interact, and to create a better world for everyone.

SELF-CARE

take-care

On social media these days, I see a lot about “self-care,” truly an important thing to do. Most of us know we must take care of our physical health through diet, exercise and rest, which are so fundamental to our well-being. And many of us understand there is some relationship between our physical and mental health that moves in both ways, each affecting the other. Yet few of us understand that there are deeper layers, beyond the physical and mental that need to be taken care of as well.

The beauty of yoga is that it can address all of these layers of being with its different practices. The practice of yoga asana, the postures, can stretch and align and heal our physical body. And as with many exercise modalities, we’ll feel better mentally and emotionally from our physical practice.

If your yoga practice incorporates turning the mind more consciously toward awareness of your breath and observing your internal sensations, feelings, and thoughts, you will begin a process of healing that goes beyond the physical. You will start to stretch and align and heal deeply held patterns of being.

And when you incorporate meditation as part of your yoga practice, you penetrate to even subtler layers of yourself, and eventually to your deepest Self. And that traverse which clears out the most tightly held chronic patterns and challenges will yield healing and positive effects in all the levels and domains of your life.

As you penetrate to your deepest Self, you connect with the Source of everything, that which connects and permeates everything. That process begins to align all levels of your being with all that is. You will find not only that you are healthier in all aspects of your being, but that you begin to flow more fluidly within all aspects of your life: your relationships, your work, everything.

And remember: yoga and meditation is for everybody. Often people feel they can’t do yoga or meditation is impossible. But the truth is: you can! You can experience the transformative effects of these practices, though you may have to find the right teacher. If you’ve ever been discouraged I hope that you seek out a teacher of these modalities to guide you into the depths of your being to facilitate the profound healing and alignment in life that is possible.