YOGAHEART

Yoga is not about results, it’s about orientation. It’s not about where you end up, it’s about where you start from. We cultivate an attitude where in this moment, exactly as-it-is, we invite this wholeness, a mathematical elegance perhaps… we invite this river of all things into our hearts and from here, we flow with circumstances, devoid of self-aggression, and do our best.

Missing you all during our little Spring Break, so i’m sending a warm hello on what i would call a BEautiful chilly Monday morning. Although some might have different descriptive words for the sunlight diffused through the thick layer of clouds, and the misty fog in the cool damp air, to me, it’s simply beautiful.

Plain and simple, when we believe our thoughts, we suffer. If i tell you this weather is ‘good’, then i am believing something. If you think it’s ‘bad’, then we have a disagreement. Who’s right?

Quickly we can realize that what we think has nothing to with the weather itself, but more about how we feel about it. It’s so easy to see when it comes to weather, but much harder to see when we consider things that matter even more to us.

The whole world and everything in it, becomes acceptable or unacceptable to us according to our personal beliefs and desires. That’s the way the mind works and as long as we don’t give the feeling of acceptability or rejection to the object itself, but rather acknowledge that it is simply a personal preference, it is a good system. Judgment isn’t a problem. It only becomes a problem when i believe that my judgment actually says something about the world, rather than about my beliefs. Judgment is an amazing thing if you see it as a way to navigate our experiences so that we enhance joy, health, and wellbeing (of course i would say that ).

When this new understanding becomes more often and readily apparent, the words we choose in conversation start to reflect it. I might be more likely to say i’m enjoying the weather rather than make a statement about it. It gets really fun when our language starts changing around what we realize we were thinking about others, and even ourselves! It was truly the most amazing discovery when i realized that my judgments about myself, not only didn’t come from me, but they were not even about me!  My judgments of myself say more about my society and my upbringing than anything else. Wow, eh?

Anyway the point is, freedom is available. But not in the way we normally think about it. Freedom is available when we free the world from the way it’s tethered to our brain. When we let go of our belief that we know something about the world and how it should be… when we free the world to be exactly as it is…  we free ourselves. You might even feel a relaxation in your body as you read this. That is how you know that you are closer to the truth. The body relaxes, everything gets a little quieter in a way perhaps, and the moment floods in. You start to hear the birds and the hum of the fridge.

Yoga of Awakening

In pausing…
…we can notice something that can only barely be described as a silent, transparent, great openness.

Just that, a pause.
Not a doing! Actually it is a not-doing. In this stopping, the uncaused peace, freedom, happiness, can appear from always here.

This everywhere openness is often associated with Meditation and the seated position. When we find ourselves just sitting, that is, when the body and mind is at ease enough to wakefully rest, there is a greater chance of glimpsing this peace. So, if this is a process, in the beginning, it can be helpful to practice. Yoga of Awakening offers Yoga & Inquiry. 

1. Inquiry. Inquiry is the willingness to question regardless of how uncomfortable that may be. We learn to appreciate our mind for how it functions, why it’s doing what it doing, and why we believe the things we do… and if there is a balancing heart space in which this inquiry occurs… we may begin to smile, seeing the innocence of how it unfolds as it does… all the while a gradual releasing may be occuring [ie. releasing energetic/mental tensions]

2. Yoga. Yoga is effort toward mastery of your physical life in all aspects. Hatha Yoga is the health and wellbeing of the body [ie. releasing physical tensions]. Although Hatha Yoga is the most popular form of yoga in the West, we may be starting to realize that all aspects of our day to day life is our yoga practice. 

Yoga of Awakening combines these two in a way that holds a space for our unfoldment. 

As you work/play/do the things you do, rest. There is a deep stillness available in the midst of activity. It is seen when we no longer pay attention to the types of thoughts that continually try to improve our situations or tear us down with illusions of inadequacy. Notice that which is here all along, this peace.