I take my daughter for a walk every morning.  Sometimes I listen to audiobooks on my IPod in one ear while I walk.  Recently I have been listening to Thich Nhat Hanh's Mindfulness and Psychotherapy which is actually a recording of lectures this Buddhist monk gave years back to a group of psychotherapists.  At one point he was talking about the anger he felt during the Vietnam war when a village he had helped rebuild four times was bombed again.  He said he wrote a poem about his experience.  I became immediately more engaged as some part of me figured that monk's never actually feel anger - I was eager to know more.  What followed stopped me in my tracks and brought me to tears - this is his poem:

For Warmth
by Thich Nhat Hanh

I hold my face between my hands
no I am not crying.
I hold my face between my hands
to keep my loneliness warm-
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands to prevent
my soul from leaving me
in anger.

To keep my loneliness warm.... How many times in my life have I tried everything to rid myself of loneliness?  I've labelled it as negative, something I don't want to feel.  I've spent so much time with groups of new agers who project that spirituality means the eradication of negative emotions or thoughts.  In my times in groups based on this philosophy I have found the puritanical part of me satisfied by the thought that I could be "cleansed" of my darkness or my so called negative aspects.  And here, this monk of monks, an internationally known peace activist does not try to get rid of his anger or loneliness, instead he holds it with love.  One of the world's most spiritual people giving space to the totality of his humanness - imagine that.  

What would it be like if each asana in our yoga practice was like the hands in this poem.  Gentle movements that bring us closer to reality - not to change it but to keep it warm in the light of our loving awareness.  Downward dog - to protect, trikonasana - to nourish, the sun salutations to prevent my soul from leaving me stuck in any particular state of being.  I hold myself in the grace of gentle asana, no I am not crying - I hold myself in the grace of gentle asana to keep my humanness warm.  This poem did not say two hands to fix, two hands to change, two hands to purify.  This idea seems to be the inspiration behind much of the yoga we see today.  Instead, can we follow the lead of this monk whose spiritual power is evident in the fruits of his peaceful actions?  Instead of changing our natural human experiences can we honour them through our practice?  This poem has been my inspiration for weeks, it is taped to the mirror in my bathroom and I recite it by memory from time to time.  Thank you Thich Nhat Hanh for being another reminder Grace.

There is nothing like feeling radiantly alive.  Having enough energy to engage your life, relationships and work in a healthy and balanced way is essential to wellbeing.  What follows is a practice for helping  you cultivate and recognize your natural vibrancy.  The practice is two fold.  First, we tune in to the frequency of our energy body, or prana, and second we then invite awakening to this body through a variety of exercises. 

Awareness:  Here we are basically changing the "channel" of our attention.   We shift our attention from the channel of thoughts, preconceived notions about ourselves and our body, ideas and concepts to the channel of direct perception of sensation in the body.  As we descend our attention and dwell there for a few minutes we begin to sense the aliveness that "just is" within our tissues, bones and cells.  I like to tap the body from head to toe, as in Qi Gong, as a way to help focus attention on energy,  Spending time connecting to this aliveness it starts to become apparent that this aliveness is bigger than the borders of our physical flesh and bone.  We start to feel ourselves as expanded and spacious.  In connecting to our energy we become more sensitive to the flows and blockages within.   Often just shifting our attention to the energy body, our aliveness, creates a greater sense of well being because we are no longer focussing on worrysome thoughts or areas of discomfort in the body. 

Relaxation:  Allowing awareness to fall on all parts of our being is the first step toward relaxation.  Try it.  As you let your awareness fall on sensation, emotion and thought without getting stuck anywhere there is a natural unwinding uf tensions that take place.  When tensions release energy that has been locked in holding patterns can flow.  There is a misconception in yoga that faster paced, more rigorous styles of yoga are most effective for increasing energy.  Often, especially for beginners, fast paced classes does not allow for us to "tune in" and instead simply reinforced mental, physical and energetic patterns that keep us locked up.   As we relax through guided relaxation or supportive asana, muscles release, energy, blood, oxygen and nutrients can flow through our system and we become more sensitive and alive. 

Breath:  As the muscles and mental patterns that have us locked down around our diaphragm start to soften the breath becomes freer.  As we breath more fully the blood becomes more oxygenated, there is a feeling of lightness that results through the muscles.   The breathwork can be simple 3 part breath, or more complex pranayama such as ujjayi and kapalabhati.  If you are a beginner it is enough to just increase the depth and length of the breath.  (all complex pranayama should be done with an experienced teacher to begin with).

Movement:  Having cultivated a relaxed and tuned in attitude and more open breath we can now engage a movement practice that will truly build and free energy .  Asana, in the form of gentle flows, where muscles contract and release helps to pump blood, oxygen and nutrients through the system.  Heat arises and dissolves, joints find their range of motion, sinovial fluid is moved, lymph is circulated.  All of these things are the manifestation of energy's animating force flowing and working in your being.  Sometimes there are insights and emotions that rise up.  It's all energy. We are all energy.  From the gentle flowing asana it is helpful to move into static poses where we can spend time feeling, continually reconnecting to energy.  The static postures allows us to move into blockages and allow them more and more space to unwind.  Here we find ways of being in the body that fosters efficient use of energy and movement through alignment cues.  Once we are warm and aware then engaging a back bend sequence nourishes the nervous system and fosters alertness and vigor. 

Grounding:  After building energy the tendency is to want it to serve the ego's desire to get more done or go faster.  So we spend time in grounding asana, relaxation and setting intention.  Can your new found energy serve Spirit rather than ego?  Luckily, when getting in touch with our energy we also get in touch with the subtler connections and relationships around us.  It is easier to serve Spirit, or the Good of the Whole, when we engage life from a place beyond our ideas and thoughts. 

This practice is an introduction to playing in the realm of energy.  Have fun with it!  Let me know what you find!
If you have interest in engaging this practice in more depth please join me for the Vibrant Life Retreat on August 7th, 2010 held at Miquelon Lake Provincial Park, 20 minutes north of Camrose, Alberta.  If you think exploring energy is great alone wait til you try it in a group!   

Every once in a while I get sick of trying to make myself feel better with yoga.  Yesterday was such a day. After a small argument with my husband I prepared to enter the haven of my practice and I couldn't.  Every time I approached my mat a well of anger rose up in me.  I could have simply trudged through the thick wall of irritation that paralyzed my movements, as some approaches to yoga advise.  Instead I fell onto my bed, face stuffed cock-eyed into a pillow and stared blankly into the mess of my ensuite bathroom.  Blink.  "What the hell's going on?"  Blink.  "I only have an hour until Rowan wakes up from her nap, I've got to get on this practice if I'm going to" Blink.  Cue tear.  Blink.  Blink.  And there it was - sadness.  The aching in my eyes and the center of my chest made it unmistakable.  I didn't move, which is uncharacteristic of me, instead I just lay there, feeling. 

The anger that was hot inside me just moments ago seemed completely dissolved.   I let the weight of my body sink into the memory foam beneath me and laid there like a child who's favorite toy had just been run over by a car - feeling helpless against the forces of the world beyond my control.  Often when I sit with sadness everything that has made me sad since the last time I allowed myself to feel it rises up - disagreements with my husband, the oil spill in the Gulf, the lonely face of an old man in the coffee shop I frequent.  I was intentional with my breath and let it gently push into the aching areas in my body.   Then, something other than my will flopped me onto a bolster and I laid there with my spine supported and chest wide open.  I committed myself to staying there for as long as my sadness needed.  It must have been at least 15 minutes before I felt the urge to wiggle a little bit - knees up, little sway from side to side.  And then a full practice ensued.  

By the end of my practice I realized the great service my resistance and anger did for me an hour prior.  I approached my practice initially as a way to evade the discomfort of my argument with my husband.  I wanted to feel better and I wanted to use yoga to do that for me.  But sadness needed to be felt, not placated, not bandaided but truly understood and processed.  There are many things that we can use to placate our uncomfortable feelings - chocolate, beer, shopping, American Idol - the list is virtually endless.  Has yoga been added to your list as a way to evade reality?  Maybe what you experience resistance to your practice is simply something inside you that is sick and tired of being "fixed" by yoga.  Maybe, instead, all that lives within you simply wants to be held by it.  Perhaps the resistance isn't ego but  Spirit begging you to cease the obsession with fixing, changing or bettering yourself.  In a world full of ways to placate our sorrows, surely a system with 3000 years of experience in healing can offer more to us than a simple bandaid.  

The journey through my bodies comes to an end!   This exploration reinforced to me, yet again, the multidimensional potential of yoga practice.  The yoga community in the West spends a great deal of time milling about in the physical realm of the annamaya kosha.  In itself, of course, coming to know one's physical self is a fruitful activity and can lead to many benefits.  The unfortunate result of focussing only on one kosha is that yoga, then, can become simply another extension of a vanity obsessed, consumer culture.  

The over-valuation or over-emphasis of any one kosha leads to an unbalanced, sometimes extremist perspective on the practice.  In contrast to the physical obsessions of the West we've also heard the stories of the incredible feats achieved by yogi's dwelling in the transcendent realms of energy and awareness.  In some traditions these magical abilities become obsessions in their own right leading only to a different kind of vanity seen as righteousness - but, in the end it is vanity nonetheless.  

A practice that deeply respects the complementarity of the koshas and the importance of integrating each of them leads to greater balance.  Exploring the shit and pleasure of the physical realm grounds the potential for a deep denial of our humanity when only the koshas of mind and bliss are explored.  On the other hand, keeping mindful of our energetic and spiritual nature reminds the yoga butt obsessions within us (and they are within all of us to some degree!) that there is something more to our existence than achieving physical perfection. 

A deep honouring of each of our bodies helps us to realize our fundamental wholeness, or Pure Being.  This last "non-sheath" is what is revealed as we hold the totality of our human/divine nature.  This human/divine nature is expressed through all of the koshas.  What would it look like in your own practice to honour each of your bodies?  What would it look like to remind ourselves of the multidimensional reality that we are the next time we think we know which approach to yoga is the right one? 

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