Archive for September 2011
How yoga Helps with long trips
According to Andrea, it is best to skip any type of heavy meals, alcoholic, carbonated, & caffenaited beverages 24 hours prior leaving. all of these, foods can dehydrate you which increases the pressurized cabin while in the air.
Stay active! walk around the airport for at least 10 minutes to help you with your in-flight circulation. A faster heat beat is a sign of oxygen going through your blood, enriching it and taking it to your muscles which improves cellular respiration. This is very good while you are unable to move when the seat belt is fastened for safety reasons.
In your seat, interlace your hands under your thigh and ease your knee and forehead towards each other (not one to do during beverage and meal service.) As your back rounds, feel the space being created between those poor vertebrae that are feeling compressed from sitting in one position for the duration of your flight. Hold for a few breaths and then switch sides.
Sit tall in your seat with great yoga posture. Holding the armrests, twist cautiously to one side for five breaths and then to the other. Enjoy the release in your spine and the fact that you and your neighbour are getting along so well as you turn in their direction.
Sit tall in your seat with great yoga posture. Holding the armrests, twist cautiously to one side for five breaths and then to the other. Enjoy the release in your spine and the fact that you and your neighbour are getting along so well as you turn in their direction.
refresh at your hotel
1) walk it off. Even if you feel exhausted or jet lagged, try to take that 10 minute walk again to get your metabolism and circulation going. Hey, what a great opportunity to check out your new surroundings! For meals, opt for salads and green veggies to help move toxins and fluids through you. Green tea is a natural diuretic and will help decrease water retention and swelling.
2) the anti-elephant-ankle pose. Lie on your back and elevate your legs up a wall for 10 minutes in Viparita Karani. Blood can pool and create pressure in our leg veins and fluid collects in the soft tissue. This happens as a result of being seated upright with our feet on the ground for so long. A gentle inversion makes it easier for our heart to pump oxygenated blood through these lower limbs and throughout our newly landed bodies.
3) soak your bones. Draw a warm bath with Epsom salts, or sprinkle some lavender or sandalwood oil in the water to wash away the airplane fumes.
Infusing your trip with mindful movement, a friendly spirit, good sense and good scents can make a world of difference when you travel. Whether you’re taking off for business or for pleasure, may these tips help you transcend times zones and sweeten your stay.
For more tips you can also read more in Andrea’s blog.
The benefits of yoga in pregnancy
If you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant and be fit at the same time, yoga would be the right exercise for you. Many advocates claim to boosts mind and body, and helps to have a smooth pregnancy as it helps alleviate pain.
Yoga is it is an ancient Indian a form of exercise that integrates a person’s well being. Its roots date back to over five thousand years and it means to unite. There’s many poses (asanas) that are synchronized with your breathing. There are certain breathing techniques used in yoga, called pranayamas.
Yoga can be a great benefit during pregnancy as it minimizes discomfort, and it helps with the birth and post- partum faces. It is believed by some that pregnant women who practice yoga have a healthier appearance, their bodies tend to be more flexible, and overall more elastic. Both of these are good for the labour as the ligaments tend to adapt faster for the process and reduce the pain experienced by the woman in labor. Another attributed benefits is the boost circulation and how it helps with the retention of fluid.
During pregnancy back problems tend to be very common. With the practice of yoga these aches and pains can be minimized and even have them gone. Yoga helps anyone become more aware of their body, and in pregnancy, it teaches women to adapt to new situations.
In the post- partum face, yoga has other benefits too. Yoga can be started right after six weeks after birth, to help gain strength in the abdominal muscles as well as with the pelvic floor while it helps women regain their original shape a lot faster.
Yoga for Balance
September is considered the “National Yoga month,” designated by the Department of Health and Human Services to create awareness of yoga’s proven health benefits providing people with tools to improve their well-being.
What is Yoga, What does it mean?
It is a Sanskrit word that means “union” or to “unite mind, body and spirit.” The purpose of yoga is to create a balance in the body by developing strengths and flexibility through the poses. Many make the mistake of thinking that yoga is just another type of exercise. However, the reality is that it is a system designed to create a clarity and harmony within.
A yogi or yogini – one who practices yoga – does a series of poses while controlling and synchronizing his or her breathing. Some yoga types bring the yogi (ni) to meditate and to chant. If practicing it regularly, the yogi (ni) will experience a slimmer, more flexible and stronger body. Other benefits found are greater amount of patience, a sharper mind, and a more relaxed.
Yogis (nis) usually have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, yoga provides them with pain relief, while increasing their flexibility, strength, helps them loose weight and keeping it off, improves circulation and cardiovascular conditioning. To find out more about the Yoga Month and how Yoga can improve your life, visit www.yogamonth.com. There may be some Yoga Programs available near you!
Benefits of Yoga For Athletes
Yoga has increasingly become more popular amongst athletes, who are looking to improve their performance when adding yoga to their daily workout routine as supplement. A “mind- body” connection can fix imbalances within the body and improve the performance of those athletes’ practicing sports such as golf, basketball, tennis, or football.
Yoga helps with the development of correct breathing skills and techniques, crucial in the success of many sports, and often ignored by many athletes. Yoga integrates the connection of mind and body through correct breathing patterns, helping build stamina and endurance in the yogi, or yogini. Focus, attention and the sharpening of one’s intuition are other great results found in yoga and its breathing techniques, which helps an athlete gain advantage over his or her rivals.
Yoga counts with many poses that create strength in the core. Its several types of contractions and movements create a diversity of resistance levels for the body, similar to the typical gym- workout. Unlike a gym session though, yoga can be practiced at home, work, and even outdoors. Here in Yandara, we do yoga at with the wind and sounds of waves of Baja California, with the gorgeous scenes of the sunset and the beach as our background.
Frequent practice of yoga increases flexibility and range of motion. Tennis and gold players often notice improvements in their swing because of the flexibility in their muscles and joints. This is particularly important for athletes as regular weight training practiced at a gym help develop some muscles, but ignores others. Yoga takes care of this imbalance by developing those much-ignored muscles through contractions used in the different poses.
Another benefit of practicing yoga is that yoga breaks with repetitive training that often causes boredom. It is also important element in recovering the body from a hard session of workouts like aerobics, since yoga can be adjusted to either high or low intensity based on the yogi or yogini’s needs.
Meditation
Sutra 1.2Yoga happens when there is stilling (in the sense of continual and vigilant watchfulness) of the movement of thought – without which there is no movement.
Sutra 1.3. Then the Seer abides in Itself, resting in its own True Nature, which is called Self-realization.
Sutra 1.4. At other times, when one is not in Self-realization, the Seer appears to take on the form of the modifications of the mind field, taking on the identity of those thought patterns.
Sutra 1.12. These thought patterns are mastered regulated, coordinated, controlled, stilled, quieted) through practice and non-attachment.
Sutra 1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with reverent devotion and without interruption over a long period of time.
Sutra 1.41. When the modifications of mind have become weakened, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal, and thus can easily take on the qualities of whatever object observed, whether that object be the observer, the means of observing, or an object observed, in a process of engrossment called samapatti.
Summary
Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga from the Yoga Sutras
1. Yama- Guidelines
1.Ahimsa- non-harming, kindness to all
2.Satya- truthfulness – the truth of who we are.
3.Asteya- Living for others not taking from others. Seva – Service.
4.Brahmacharya- By remembering the highest energy or force of reality, that energy is then not dissipated. As it is not dissipated, thus we gain strength, vigor, vitality, and courage.
5.Aparigraha- not clutching – trusting that all your needs will be met.
2.Niyama- Observance
1.Saucha- purity
2.Santosha- contentment
3.Tapah- practice
4.Svadhyaya- self-study
5.Ishvara pranidhana- devotion, love.
3.Asana- posture
4.Pranayama-breath control
5.Pratyahara-withdrawal from thoughts
6.Dharana- attention to the present moment
7.Dhyana- meditative absorption
8.Samadhi- pure consciousness
1. Meditation2. Yoga (Asana) Practice, Pranayama, practices related to the Body.
3. Satsang
A. Group study of inspiring writings: yoga sutras of Patanjalis and other yoga texts.
B. Music – Chanting, Bhajans, and Kirtan:Listening to and singing bhajans allows us to access our feelings and places of inspiration within ourselves.
C. Group meditation.
4. Satya – Truthfulness – Our true selves
5. Seva – Selfless Service – Karma yoga – Ahimsa
6. Bhakti Yoga – Love – Devotion
7. Nature
Spontaneity
For the past few decades, we have been trying in all kinds of ways to liberate ourselves simultaneously from our frenetic materialism and our tired religious traditions.
We are still looking for the same thing: how to integrate the experience of life in western society with a deeper consciousness that would bring us bliss and reconcile us with our emotional and sensory natures.
We want a path that would not be opposed to our life; a life that would not be opposed to our path. In short, we want a harmonious integration of the spiritual with the material along an accessible path, one not too estranged from the common culture. We want to attain plentitude without denying life’s marvelous effervescence; we want a light and moving joy that would bring us to a larger, more all-encompassing experience of reality.
If we look around, we can see those people who throw themselves into a hedonistic search for pleasure. They try to live out their passions, and sometimes they succeed. They frantically attach themselves to the material world and end up in a state of chronic dissatisfaction, which pushes them to undertake a more and more neurotic quest. These people are often egoistic; they leave a trail of destruction in their wake.
In opposition to them we find the people who are fascinated by the spiritual search and whose aim is to purify themselves of desires and passions by trying to reduce the impact these have on their daily lives. They are said to be wise of on the path of wisdom. They proudly claim to be of a spiritual school. In observing them we sometimes notice, along with their austerity, signs of coldness and hardness of heart and body; signs of a certain lack of spontaneity. A halo of fear encircles their whole being. They seem to have submitted themselves to overly strong tensions; their virtuousness seems a little artificial. Their tolerance has limits, they are often slightly fanatical – indeed, everything about them leads us to believe that their balance is precarious. It would take just one lovely temptation, it seems, to tip them into the neurotic quest for pleasure that they condemn in others.
Our cultural and religious heritage seems to tell us that we must choose: the spiritual against the body or the body against the spiritual.
It is rare that either the hedonistic quest or the spiritual quest, with its rejection of the body, brings us happiness, harmony, or joy.
So are we condemned to oscillate unceasingly between these two paths? In just about every person I meet there is a deep intuitive knowledge that a third path does indeed exist. We have suffered too much from fanaticism, violence, and exclusion; we have progressively opened ourselves to the world and its diversity. What men and women seek today is a path that reintegrates these opposites with genuine love and acceptance of all the richness that each human being carries within, a way of total love, which leads to the freedom to be.
Desire, Daniel Odier
Wise guide writing
Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the mind, busy, demanding, calculating; the other is the heart, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. As you listen more and more, and integrate your heart into your life, your inner voice, your innate wisdom of discernment, what we call in Buddhism “discriminating awareness guided by the heart,” is awakened and strengthened, and you start to begin to distinguish between its guidance and the various clamorous and enthralling voices of mind. The memory of your real nature, with all its splendor and confidence, begins to return to you.
You will find, in fact, that you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions. Your guide can also be a continual, joyful, tender, sometimes teasing presence, who knows always what is best for you and will help you find more and more ways out of your obsession with your habitual responses and confused emotions. As the voice of your heart awareness grows stronger and clearer, you will start to distinguish between its truth and the various deceptions of the mind, and you will be able to listen to it with discernment and confidence.
The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and illusions that they are. Gradually you will find yourself able to free yourself more and more quickly from the dark emotions that may sometimes ruled your life, and this ability to do so is the greatest miracle of all. Terton Sogyal, the Tibetan mystic, said that he was not really impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water. A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.
It has never been more difficult to hear the unflattering voice of the truth, and never more difficult, once having heard it, to follow it: because there is nothing in the world around us that supports our choice, and the entire society in which we live seems to negate every idea of sacredness or eternal meaning. So at the time of our most acute danger, when our very future is in doubt, we as human beings find ourselves at our most bewildered, and trapped in a trauma of our own creation. Yet there is one significant source of hope in this tragic situation, and that is that the spiritual teachings of all the great mystical traditions are still available.
So long as we haven’t unmasked the mind it continues to hoodwink us, keeping up a stream of suave and emptily convincing chatter, which actually says nothing at all.
Lifetimes of ignorance have brought us to identify the whole of our being with mind. Its greatest triumph is to convince us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even into identifying our very survival with its own. This is a savage irony, considering that mind and its thought activities are at the root of suffering. Yet mind is so convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become mindless terrifies us. To be mindless, mind whispers to us, is to lose all the rich romance of being human, to be reduced to a colorless robot or a brain-dead vegetable.
Mind plays brilliantly on our fundamental fear of losing control, and of the unknown. We might say to ourselves: “I should really let go of mind, I’m in such pain; but if I do, what’s going to happen to me?”
Mind will chime in, sweetly. “I know I’m sometimes a nuisance, and believe me, I quite understand if you want me to leave. But is that really what you want? Think: If I do go, what’s going to happen to you? Who will look after you? Who will protect and care for you like I’ve done all these years?”
And even if we were to see through mind’s lies, we are just too scared to abandon it; for without any true knowledge of the nature of our heart, or true identity, we simply have no other alternative. Again and again we cave in to its demands with the same sad self-hatred as the alcoholic feels reaching for the drink that he knows is destroying him, or the drug addict groping for the drug that she knows after a brief high will only leave her flat and desperate.
You begin to see also just how all-encompassing the sway of the mind has been over you, and in the space of freedom opened up by meditation, when you are momentarily released from grasping, you glimpse the exhilarating spaciousness of your true nature. You realize that for years, your mind, like a crazy con artist, has been swindling you with schemes and plans and promises that have never been real and have only brought you to un-fulfillment. When, in the equanimity of this present moment, you see this, without any consolation or desire to cover up what you’ve discovered, all the plans and schemes reveal themselves as hollow and start to crumble.
Because you have learned through discipline to simplify -your life, and so reduced the opportunities for mind to seduce you; and because you have practiced the mindfulness of heart, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own heart and the nature of reality.
by Sogyal Rimpoche
svadhyaya
In life, we inevitably come across situations, experiences, and interactions that cause an uncomfortable sensation in the body. Sometimes it may show as a clenching in the throat when someone is talking to us, or a churning in the stomach when we see someone else receiving praise or recognition, or a burning heat in the chest when we hear of unfortunate news. These sensations show up for us in unique ways and we each have our equally unique and different triggers. When the sensation occurs, we have two choices: figure out some way to get rid of it or figure out a way to go into it. The former is the way that we’ve traditionally been taught in the western world to go about solving our problems—the uncomfortable sensation, in this case posing as the problem or even worse, the person or situation that triggered the sensation posing as the problem. We’ll come up with just about anything to place blame externally for causing ourself that suffering. The latter—figuring out a way to get in to it—is a discipline, or practice, in yoga commonly referred to as svadhyaya, or self study. Its the practice of going deep within and studying the self to really see what is going on internally. Its here that we can begin to confront what is causing us to believe in the blame, believe that we are separate from each other, and slowly release that belief, liberating the soul to open up to the love and connection always available. Patanjali refers to this practice in Sadhana Pada of the Yoga Sutras, II.44. It states: ”svadhyaya-ista-devata-samprayogah”, translated by Georg Feurstein as, through self study the yogin establishes contact with the divine. The beautiful thing about this “education of the self”, a phrase referred to by Iyengar, is that it can come from virtually any and every activity in our lives. If we can be open to the idea that every action, every interaction, everything is an inspirational teaching or invitation for us to look deeper within ourselves to make peace with what’s there, we can see that our lives are the classroom for svadhyaya.
Traditionally, inspirational teachings come from a spiritual teacher or guru. In his book Self-Knowledge, Sivananda says a guru is “absolutely free from passion, anger, selfishness, greed, hatred and egoism….He is able to remove the ignorance of people. He can clear any kind of doubt. He can give practical, easy lessons to control the mind and the senses. He can remove the obstacles, pitfalls and snares on the path.” The guru knows the inner workings of the human ego. He or she knows and can remind us that the only direction to go in times of suffering is in. Its clear to them, the ways in which we create all these “blame games” to take the attention off our inner suffering; how we dictate how everyone else should change so we can finally have some peace around here. He or she knows that its when peace is made within the self through deep introspection, through svadhyaya, peace can be made with our external world. The teacher reminds us of who we are, who we’re not, and gives us a moment (or many moments) of peace from our daily suffering. However, he or she cannot do all the work for us. They can show us the path inward, almost like a signpost pointing the way when we’re feeling lost or we’ve made a wrong turn, but its up to us to place one foot in front of the other (or I like to think of it as one breath in front of the other) once the way has been illumined.
Once we have been made aware of the human tendencies then we can begin to apply them in our everyday lives. We can allow each moment and interaction to serve as an inspirational teaching, wherein each relationship becomes an instance of teacher/student. The classical teacher or guru can show us the reflective quality of unconditional love and universal awareness that we all share. But this is not necessarily the same reflection we’ll see when we look at our partner, or co-worker, or parent. These relationships are usually the ones that show us what patterns and defenses we uphold to keep us from living in that state of shared love and awareness. They are the relationships that “push our buttons” and bring up feelings of tension, heart break, anger, resentment. Here is where we can apply the lessons learned from our sat guru. We can remember what’s available all the time to us—this state of being in constant universal connectedness with one another. We can remember the method of operation of the human ego—to create a separate sense of “I-ness”. And through our everyday relationships study how our ego is keeping us from that state of connectedness.
In his book, Light on Yoga, Iyengar states that there are two things that make up this reality: truth and love. When we are in a state of feeling these uncomfortable feelings, usually its because we want things to be different. Common thoughts could be: “They shouldn’t have done that to me.”, “He or she should do it this way.”, “I deserve that more than he or she does.”, etc. So, lets look back at that Iyengar statement. Is there truth or love in any of those statements? Not love, because we’re not accepting the other person for who they are. And certainly your ego thinks those things are true, but in reality its not the case and the following is why. Life happens as it happens in each moment and it absolutely can not be any different then that. By going through in our head how people should be different, or even how we should be different is an argument against reality. An argument that we can keep up forever and never win. It causes great internal suffering that keeps us out of the present moment. If we’re constantly thinking about what could or should have happened in the past or what we wish could or should happen in the future, that means that we’re actually never allowing ourselves to open up to what’s available in each present moment. When we look at those triggers, those “button pushers”, and go into the sensations and thoughts of “shoulds” and “wants”, we can clearly see that the only reason for those painful thoughts and sensations is our own argument against reality—the truth of what’s in front of us.
Svadhyaya gives us the opportunity to go into the sensation and learn how we react, why we react, and take ownership over our sensations rather than pointing the finger at someone else. It teaches us that those buttons of ours that are being pushed are actually the right ones that need some pushing to show us where we need to let go in order to free ourselves from suffering. Once that state of suffering in separateness dissolves it allows us to open up to Iyengar’s second ingredient to reality: love. Love to see that another individual is standing in front of you trying to figure out how to get through this whole thing the best way they know how given their life’s experiences, just like you. We’re all doing the best we can to our ability and we can always love each other for that.
So where can you find support? Remember the words of those who inspire you in this path. Haven’t found a teacher in your area that connects to you where you live? Look no further then the internet. Dharma talks, meditations, and other spiritual discourses are vastly available now on websites and iTunes. Start with Dharmaseed.org and see where things branch off from there. Read texts that support you in remembering who you are. The Yoga Sutras, The Bhagavad Gita, and Hatha Yoga Pradapika are commonly known as bedrock or tri-pillar for yogic studies and always a good place to start. Overwhelmed by sanskrit terms? No problem! Ekhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Dan Siegel, Adyashanti, and David Frawley are just the start of a long list of amazing authors to check out. Like poetry? There’s Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, really just so many poets that illuminate the way. And remember there’s always yourself. The biggest support you’ll ever have that we spend a lifetime trying to realize.
The Great Tradition 1
The Divine made all beings in its own image; and all beings-made religions, each in its own image, and in its zeal made fetishes of them all. True religion in its inception is fresh and simple, like a newly-born babe bubbling over with vital life, but in course of time, like any other thing, it develops into an institution; and with that it begins to deteriorate, tends to lose its native vital elasticity born of the living touch of the Master-spirit, and gradually comes to acquire a socio-economic appearance. Instead of serving as a silken bond of love between all beings, it becomes a source of constant strife, rancor and ill will, tearing class from class and nation from nation and country from country.
When the cup of human misery is filled to the brim, then comes the Savior with the message of hope, redemption and fulfillment for strife torn humanity. The Savior tries to dress the festering social wounds and preaches oneness and equality to all beings in order to restore the equilibrium in the scales of human values. Alongside this, the main objective is to save human souls for a higher purpose: a true life of the spirit as distinguished from that of the flesh. Such indeed has been the goal of great Masters like Zoroaster, Mahavira, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Kabir and Nanak, each in their own time, according to the then prevailing conditions and people’s aspirations; for they always try to lead them from the line of least resistance, and dole out the basic goodness in terms that may readily appeal to, and fit in with, their mental make-up for a step higher in the process of evolution or unfolding of the spirit.
This is what Saints do for the general run of mankind, deriving their inspiration from the great reservoir of the spirit within, which is the same for all. The rich heritage in the religious thought of modern India the period from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century is one of outstanding importance. It is an era in which an attempt was made to reorient religion and present it in its simplest form: the form of true faith and universal love.
