The A to Z of Yoga: B is for Body, but…

The A to Z of Yoga: B is for Body, but…

by | Sep 14, 2015 | Uncategorized

This is a straight from the hips offering for those who love yoga, who want to know more, and who sense that it is a path of endless discovery. Because it is.

This A to Z of Yoga is hardly definitive. It is an invitation. I hope you will be delighted and inspired to dive deeper into your own journey of yoga as a fearless adventurer, a pioneer into the frontier of the incredibly unique and unfolding experience that is you.

B is for Body, but…

five bodies

But what? It’s kind of obvious in our body-conscious society that yoga is about the body, right. It’s now one of the most popular forms of exercise in the West. It’s a great way to build strength, flexibility and vitality, which also improves our mental and emotional wellbeing; and even better, it has the extra perks of ‘spiritual fitness’.

But… it runs so much deeper than that. The body really is the vehicle for awakening. This is the radical teaching of Tantra, that emerged in India only around the 5th century (remember that ‘classical’ yoga was birthed from around 500-200BC).

Departing from the dual split between matter and spirit that was the hallmark of the ancient Vedic traditions, Tantra offered a radical acknowledgement of the body, this human form, as an aspect or an expression of the divine. In Tantra, there is no separation between matter and spirit, mundane or divine. So this human body – that is both clumsy and agile, that feels aches and ecstasy, that we worship when it is slim and toned and curse when it is overweight or misshapen – is the divine form we have for experiencing and discovering life, and for awakening into all that we can possibly be.

In the words of Eckhart Tolle, “You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while.”

To fully awaken into this realization starts right here, in your human form, in your body. The body is the vehicle for awakening.

This is what my pioneering teachers Tara Judelle and Scott Lyons see as the underlying principle of a genuine modern yoga practice focused on awakening (check out Embodied Flow Yoga).

It is an invitation to become ‘somanauts’ – explorers into the inner world of our very own body-mind, deep into our own experience. To not only move the outer form of the body, but to really feel and sense inside the body with the fullness of our awareness, to discover its sensations and bring alive the consciousness of our tissues, our organs, our bones, our very cells.

Why? To discover life, to discover self, to understand and experience more of this awe-inspiring reality, to become awake, literally, in all the cells and fibres of our being.

Fortunately for us, we not only have the ancient and evolving tools of yoga, but also the incredible discoveries of science (see the video link below, for example), and new forms of movement and somatic exploration such as Body Mind Centering to add to our toolbox of practices of awakening – our practice of Yoga.

Hungry for more and ready to be awed?

And, here are a few more B-words to add to your yoga lexicon. Let these words take you down the rabbit hole of your own research, exploration, and contemplation.

B is for: breath, bhakti, Body Mind Centering (BMC), bandha, Bhagavad Gita, buddhi.

The A to Z of Yoga: A is for Awakening

by | Aug 31, 2015 | Uncategorized

A to Z yoga posesNearing the end of four months of travel that has taken me on a round-the-world extravaganza from Australia to Bali, Peru, Greece and back to Bali, and included seven weeks of intensive yoga trainings, four weeks working with plant medicine, two weeks of teaching retreats, countless hours of meditation, and fabulous adventures into the inner and outer cosmos, I somehow impossibly found myself at a loss for what write. Overloaded with exquisite experience and insights, everything has been wanting to spill onto the page all at once. And in the bottleneck, nothing could come out. Searching for an answer to writer’s block, and desperately wanting something to share with you all, I realized I needed to go back to basics, back to the building blocks…

So here it is: The A to Z of Yoga.

Over the next 26 weeks, I will be offering some of my personal insights into yoga, Sesame Street style. As with any great journey, expect some of the unexpected – and of course some old favorites. If anything, I hope you will be delighted, informed, and inspired to continue your own journey of yoga as a fearless adventurer, a pioneer into the frontier of the incredibly unique experience that is you.

 

Kundalini_2

A is for Awakening

It is no mistake that this is where we start on the journey of yoga. This is the point. It is the start of it all, and hopefully, where we ‘arrive’.

Since the beginnings of yoga sometime around the 5th century BC, somewhere around the Indus valley, yoga has been a quest for awakening. Call it self-discovery, enlightenment, liberation, the unfolding of consciousness, the journey to the heart – yoga is the path of awakening the self to the Self. This Self is the undeniable experience of oneness, of love, of bliss, that is the fabric of existence underlying our ‘everyday’ reality.

Now, if we were following the modern interpretation of yoga, we probably should have started with A is for Asana. But the fact is, asana is only one teeny little tool in the colossal toolkit that is yoga. And, believe it or not, it is not even essential…

What we know as yoga today is really a collection of practices, techniques, ideas and philosophies developed over many centuries by those who sought this ‘true’ experience of Self. Through searching, experiencing and discovering, these seers and sages were able to create a kind of map of practices and their results, to help guide the rest of us hungry wayfarers towards happiness, liberation and awakening. But let’s be clear: there are so many different paths, practices, conflicting ideas, and possible experiences on the journey, that to label any one thing ‘Yoga’ is to miss the point entirely.

So remember this: there are many ways to climb a mountain. Most important is that you know where you are headed, and that you take the first step.

But to think that awakening is something that you get only at the end of the journey, after much hard work and discipline, is also misleading: surprisingly and paradoxically, awakening can be gradual or it can be spontaneous. And it is a wholly unique experience for each person. What we are doing when we ‘practice yoga’ is not forging our way to awakening: it is only clearing away the debris for the river to flow – but when the rains come is not up to us.

 

Hungry for more?

Grab yourself a copy of “Wake Up Now” by Stephen Bodian, and/or “The Enlightenment Process” by Judith Blackstone… and…

Here are a few more A-words to add to your yoga lexicon. Let these words take you down the rabbit hole of your own research, exploration, and contemplation:

A is for: Authenticity, Ananda, Awareness, Arjuna, Ahimsa