Countless people have remarked how if only they had discipline they would practice yoga more regularly.  Discipline can be good, sometimes.  And sometimes it can be ego's way of promising guilt, self-flagellation and a spiritual life that is controlled by will - which is no spiritual life at all.  

It's hard not to think about discipline as a sought after quality of the most successful people in the world.  We respect the discipline of athletes, soldiers, business people and fitness gurus.  And in the name of producing a well-oiled human machine, discipline in this sense is really a formidable feat. 

The question is:  can we come to know our spiritual self through the same means as we mould our human self?  

I remember reading a passage somewhere by spiritual teacher Jean Klein about how discipline can be a way for the ego to tyrannize us in the name of spirituality.  After all, how is it that we can go about catching the nameless, formless ground of being that we are by adhering to a strict schedule of practice and regimented movements, techniques and exercises?  How have we come to think that through adherence to a calculated routine that we can come to know the spontaneous, passionate dance of our limiteless Spirit?  As if we could possible sift God into our hearts through the disciplines constructed by our ego self.  

In yoga, tapas is often translated as discipline - an important quality of a practitioner.  Mr. Iyengar, however, translates tapas as burning desire for spiritual development.  This creates a completely different connotation for this concept.  People often want to practice discipline in the usual assumed sense because if we adhere to it we can 1) give ourselves a pat on the back for being such "good little yogi's" and 2) because we can admonish other people for not being as good as we are.  To understand tapas, however as a burning desire we shift away from discipline as it is usually understood.  Instead, we surrender to the burning in our hearts to know "the more".  We let ourselves feel the ache for wholeness and THIS inspires us to our practice.  Yoga practice is a response to the call of Spirit.  We listen, hear the burning desire in our hearts for wholeness and are inspired to respond through practices - whatever they may be in that moment. 

Spiritual teacher, George Gurdjieff, talked about the importance of feeling the lack in our lives when we are not connected to our wholeness and then to experience the deep wish for reconnection.  When we experience these things deeply enough we are compelled to practices that create this reconnection.  Here, the will is not a vehicle for discipline but the harbinger of surrender. 

Discipline can be a way to help the mind to transition from the highly controlled atmosphere of our culture to knock at the door of spirituality.   But, it isn't essential.  Spirit, after all, is looking for us.  It's call is loud enough to inspire our tired beings to engage in those things that take us closer to it.  But, we must listen.  In the end this is only discipline you'll ever need - to listen for the call of Spirit which solicits you daily.

It's not always possible for me to engage a long practice and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.  But, I'm also sure that I'm not alone in the need to take care of myself, to listen and respond intelligently to my body, mind and spirit. Below are some of the mini-practices that punctuate my busy days.  While they may not bring me to the clarity or wholeness of a more in depth practice they help me to stay in my body, keep a toe in the pool of awareness and stop me from continuing the descent into my ego's chatte.

1.  The "Dear God don't let it be morning already practice" - Anyone I've ever lived with could attest to the fact that I am not a morning person.  Most days I feel utterly assaulted by the world upon awakening - groggy, hungry and reluctant it takes a good half hour to "wake up".  I notice when I first wake up that I start to tense my body immediately to brace for the "assault" - armour ready, fight or flight mode primed - I am a mighty warrior ready to face the onslaught!  Really?  Although my toddler and cat can be a formidable force this is not necessarily the most helpful way to initiate my day. So lately, even for a minute or two, I consciously relax all the muscles in my body just to show myself it can be done!
2.  The "I've got about ten minutes before Rowan wakes up from her nap practice"  -  If I've not been practicing yoga during her nap already, I've likely been stooped over at my laptop working on my MA, digging around in my garden or (shudder) doing housework.  Sometimes the scramble to complete tasks can leave me in a slightly frantic energy so a 10 minute legs up the wall pose and deep breath is just the way to balance this and prepare me for the next part of the day.
3.  The "Everyone around me is driving me nuts practice" - it's bathroom break time.  There's no excuse for this one, there are bathrooms everywhere!  I find a stall, relax my body, get a grip on all the whirring drama in my head and move the tense spots - a wiggle here or there just to shake up the "mode" I'm in.
4.  The "I know I'm in public but don't give a damn practice" - Shameless.  We must be shameless!  Let's face it, everyone knows what yoga is now, it's on every sitcom and yoghurt commercial out there.  You're probably not going to be labelled a voodoo child for shrugging your shoulders and loosening your jaw in a line up.   I do yoga in parks while Rowan plays, when I sit down at a restaurant, when I'm camping, at the beach - whatever!  If I know that a few movements will take my from Godzilla to Godly I'm in!
5.  The "I'm feeling ungrounded and self-conscious practice"  - Spikes through my heels.  Really, one day I spontaneously imagined big ol' tent pegs extending from my heels through the earth when I felt self-conscious and scattered walking through a crowd.  Boom!  Into my legs, into the earth and out of my tormenting head.  Play with this, or other symbols for balancing your energy (if you feel heavy imagine the space between your cells; angry - put a little hoola skirt on your inner tazmanian devil and let it rip!)
6.  The "I'm going to do a mini-practice so I don't have to do a longer practice practice" - this one doesn't count. 
7.  The "I'm neurotically going to do mini-practices all day so that I can perfect my state of being and never feel ruffled, tired, tense or anything terribly human at all practice" - this one doesn't count either. 
8.  Finally the "I've forgotten that I, and everyone else around me, are outrageous miracles and I'm going to take 8 seconds to remind myself of that practice" - We are swirling energy, space and love born of the stars magically and one of my favorite mini-practices is to contemplate this - if only for a moment. 

What are some of your mini-practices!?

Over the past few weeks I have offered two workshops to my current students about developing a home yoga practice.  In both workshops, the pivotal point - the "a-ha moment" - seemed to be when we began to breakdown ideas about how a yoga practice "should" be. 

All around us we are surrounded by popular media that suggests there are quick fixes and formulas for solving any problem we might face.  People and corporations make obscene amounts of money of selling these ideas and we buy them because perhaps this product, plan or service will be the easy clear - cut, fast track way out of whatever suffering such things are said to alleviate.  These things are sold as Universal Truths and without even knowing it our mind set becomes conditioned to assume that there are black and white answers to the human condition.  We are used to seeing these black and white answers come from experts who we've come to believe know much more about living than us. They come from celebrity endorsements and research cleverly manipulated to evidence a particular agenda and they come from flat out "malarky" couched in high tech websites and catchy jingles. 

The same is true for yoga.  Each week yoga magazine's advertise the best way to do this or practice that.  A yoga persona has been constructed in popular media of a lean, mean zen machine, ever holy and impetrable by life's influences.  I was tyrannized by this image for many years and spent a great deal of time weeding through conflicting opinions about how to practice and what being a yoga practitioner meant.  Over the past decade of yoga practice I have come to realize that there is no "Way" to practice, no ultimate Right or Wrong, but instead helpful or less helpful ways to respond to your life through yoga.  Here are three things to consider about when creating or re-creating a home practice:

- Question the notion that there is a way you should practice. I know there are many books out there that purport guidelines for attaining yogic perfection but keep in mind these question:  "What is perfection?"  "Who gets to decide?"  "Can perfection really exist?  Can there be light without dark?". 
-  Once you have broken down all the shoulds of practice begin to see ancient and modern teachings as inquiries meant to be held with equal value along side your own subjective expertise and wisdom.  Test the teachings empirically through your own experience - what are the effects of this particular sequence today?  How does this pose or technique bring me into a greater experience of who I am right now?  Bring external wisdom into contact with your internal wisdom, over valuing neither. 
-  There is no magic sequence, location, temperatue or time for practicing yoga - don't let your ego use these technicalities to keep you from practicing.  You can practice awareness, little movements and breath in a line up, in your car, laying in bed or in the shower.  The point is to become conscious of where you are at, over time it will feel so good to connect to yourself and move your body that you'll find yourself being called to do it more.  Then, a more "formal" mat practice will emerge from a call from within rather than from a lashing from your inner critic!  Let the development of your practice be a meaningful process of discovery rather than another task to complete in your busy day.  

Blessings on the path!    

In a brief stolen moment while my daughter was at gramma's I meandered through a local used bookstore looking for treasures.  And what a treasure I did find! Amidst a stew of self-help books situated haphazardly on a giant bookshelf I found a book of poetry that went far beyond self-help and pierced straight into the heart of my Heart.  It is called The Breathing Field by a woman named Wyatt Townley who is a yoga teacher and poet in the U.S..  And, by the looks of it, soon going to be yet another amazing soul who's immense current will inspire my own life.  If you're out there Wyatt and ever read this, thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your yoga through poetry and for the moment of sheer awe you gave me in a sacred stolen moment yesterday. 
I share the poem Corpse Pose here, with my interpretation to follow, in hopes that all who read this will spend time letting their armour be pierced by the rest of her book.  

The Corpse Pose by Wyatt Townley

At the end of your mat at the edge 
of the beanfield, the orchard rises,
tree after tree, a door behind a door

behind the years that fling themselves
into orbit, running rings around
each other, counting the way back

to center.  We count back ourselves,
behind the children we've spun off, 
houses we built, clothes we've shed,

flesh, muscles, bone, to the river that
underlies us, solid and fluid, trunk
and sap, vertebra and cord.  Close

the eyes and lean into the current.
Slide under the scars where meteors dug
their graves in us millennia ago.  Count

back, count sheep, count your blessings,
count your silver as your mother first
counted your toes, go back before the

numbers that put us in our places
where we have held firm ever since,
row on row, to the end of the beanfield,

at the edge of your mat where you are
still lying, with everything you ever had,
to see if this breath is your last.

_______________

I interpret this poem, here, only to let it absorb more completely into my soul, to let it integrate. And, I'm happy if that does the same for you and happy if it stands alone, as it surely can, to percolate in your own pierced Heart.

The edge of the mat, the critical space between dark and light, heaven and earth, right and left brain I hover, curious, terrified, elated.  I hover here, at the edge of my egoic identity where I have been held within the rigid, stoic lines of the beanfield I have planted over a lifetime of gathering things, credentials, wounds. 

Beyond the beanfield an orchard rises, full of life, full of the fruits of the Unconscious, of Spirit, of Heaven and Hell.  At the edge of my mat, in the throes of this Corpse Pose I die a thousand times to my beanfield self and every time open another door to Freedom.  I open the doors to Freedom that lay behind years of chaotic biography, behind them, somewhere, I see the Center.  Behind and beyond my biography, beyond the seemingly rigid boundaries of my physical body, "I" fall away and become a river into which all dualities fall and dissolve.

I lean into the current, like I am leaning against the bosom of God, overwhelmed by tender trust.  This trust takes me beyond the wounds and traumas of my history and I begin to measure my sleeping gratitude with the same reverance as my mother looked upon my infant self.

I am back, now, before the things that we count ever counted, and with all my heart I remain present, watching in awe the Life that lives me NOW.




 

I have always had a deep respect for Mr. Iyengar's teaching.  Like him, I believe that asana is a path to liberation and the en-lightenment of our lives.  I was particularly struck recently by his description of the five stages of creating asana.  Below is a re-working of this description through my own interpretation. 

It is obvious to anyone who has practiced a moderate amount of yoga with various teachers that there are differences from yoga class to yoga class.  I have been curious about these differences for a number of years but have not been able to articulate them.  Mr. Iyengar does just this in his book The Tree of Yoga.  Here, he is careful to identify that asana is more than just moving the body.  In fact, he says, this is merely the first stage of five in the creation of a truly yogic asana. 

In this first stage there is conative action.  This simply moving the body, almost reflexively, into a pose based on instruction.  In Warrior II, for example, the conative stage of the asana is to move the gross level body parts into an approximation of the pose:  legs wide, front foot turned out and knee bends, arms up at shoulder height.  Mr. Iyengar suggests that this is the level at which most yoga classes are taught.  But, he urges, there is more.

In the second stage we recognize our body in a posture.  This is a shift of attention to real time - the here and now.   Often, instruction is followed while the mind is preoccupied with something else.  This second stage is what brings us to the recognition of the asana, drawing us present. 

In the third stage the mind comes to see ourselves in the asana.  Like Thich Nhat Hahn's meditation "Breathing in I know that I am breathing in, breathing out I know that I am breathing out", here we don't just feel the asana but know that we are in asana and enter a relationship with the posture. 

In the fourth stage we become reflective in the pose.  Here we commune with "what is".  Beyond just recognizing the present moment we become intimate with the dynamics of the asana. This means asking a greater intelligence than our egoic monkey mind to enter the pose and become curious.  We listen and discern what is going on in the pose and then act creatively and intelligently to reposition ourselves into greater harmony and integration.  

In the final stage the physical action, the attention's movement into the present moment, the mental "seeing" the  and the intelligence's reflection unify and we have truly found YOGA, which means to unite. 

To illustrate this process try this mini-asana:

1. Draw your arms to shoulder height.  Notice how you can perform this action based on instruction and still be thinking about anything else or continue to read this line. 
2.  Now, bring your attention to the position of your arms. 
3.  Come to know that your attention is on the position of your arms, this is sometimes called awakening the Witness.  This can be a difficult step, because we can confuse attention for the Witness.  Here's another hint;  in stage two we are still clearly involved or attached to the position of the arms.  I am doing this movement, I am in this pose.  In stage three, we step back from this "I" doing the pose and observe.  Here, we are becoming detached but compassionate observers - simply Seeing.
4.  Become curious about the sensations you are feeling.  Is left different from right?  Are you extending your thumb side of the arm further than the pinky side?  Does this position evoke emotion?  Bear witness, become conscious to the dynamic within.
5. Experience all of these stages simultaneously to experience true Presence (beyond just being present).  Here, the layers of the Self are integrated and unified, yoked and Yoga-fied!

Now, please share your experience!  Your confusion!  Your bliss!  With the rest of us! 

I've just recently finished the book My Stroke of Insight by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.  In it she tells the story of a four hour stroke she experienced at the age of 37.  The stroke occurred on in the left hemisphere of her brain, the part her mind that coordinates language, speech, movement and most importantly, the stories of her life that create her sense of self or ego.  This hemisphere of the brain tends to dominate our daily lives with mind chatter, stories and beliefs, concepts and ideas that, as we know , keeps us bound in thought loops often of a destructive nature. With this part of her brain debilitated, Dr. Taylor became privy to the reality known by the right hemisphere of the brain.  She experienced this reality as a boundless pool of interconnected energy that instilled in her a deep sense of spaciousness and calm. 


Faith traditions across the world refer to this other reality as samadhi (yoga), nirvana (Buddhism), cosmic consciousness (new age) or mystical union (mystical traditions of East and West).  Invariably, in each of these traditions, techniques are employed to slow the functioning of the left hemisphere of the brain (using Dr. Taylor's explanation) so that the other reality of the right hemisphere can begin to emerge.  While we may not necessarily be graced with the depth of unity experienced by spiritual practitioners (and spontaneously by others) in rare circumstances, employing these practices can certainly lead to a slowing of the left brain monkey mind, softening of hard psychophysical patterns and increase feelings of connection and wellbeing.  In my experience, over time a greater establishment in the right brain reality can occur and it becomes more and more accessible.  In brief, spontaneous moments I have been swept into the current of the unitive experience where, as Dr. Taylor describes, my boundaries dissolved and all sense of personal identity vanished.  In these moments, all I knew is the energetic pool of reality that is one flowing, living dynamic.

This isn't important in the sense of these experiences being some kind of spiritual accolade, but rather that they have shown me that there is another way of seeing the world.  And, according to Dr. Taylor, both realities are real, valid and valuable.  Over and over again, in philosophy, religion and spirituality we hear of the fundamental paradoxes of life that must be reconciled - this is yet another example.  Yoga and spiritual practice, then, become a way of integrating the right-hemisphere reality that has been lost in our frantic, left-hemisphere, egoic striving tendencies.  But, magically, it doesn't end here.  At first, we recover the lost capacity to see a more interconnected reality of energy and beauty.  Then we get better and moving between the hemisphere's with greater ease.  But, at some point we are invited to hold the two realities as one.  Where the tension between "being" and "doing" are suspended in the light of awareness and something else can show itself.  Here our human/divine potential gives birth to something beyond this duality. 

Everyday I am truly astounded by this spiritual process.  What a gift to have a neuroscientist share her journey and give a different language to the journey that has been poetically expressed for millenia by the faith traditions around the globe.

Sometimes a personal yoga practice can feel like a daunting task.  Simplify it -  every time you step onto your yoga mat simply till the soil of your being...    

With the deep wish for new life as your Gardener, let the sunlight of your awareness shine evenly across the whole of your inner landscape.  Just as sunlight never judges the soil on which it falls, release all judgement.  Just as the soil never tries to impress the sun, release all efforting. Let your asana become gentle movements that kick up the crusted soil of hardened physical and emotional patterns in your muscles.  Let new blood flow in the clumped, knotted areas of your body, let your muscles relax and be irrigated.

Breathe deeply into this movement and become aerated, spacious and ready to receive the seed of the next moment. Be unearthed.  What is surfacing as you dig into the dirt?  Seedlings of hope, peace?  Long buried skeletons?  As you stay with the soil and all that it has to teach you can you hear the call of Spirit rise to fertilize your tired body?  

Tilling your soil, and working your land you create the rich earth necessary to host the unbridled garden of your life.  Dig in my friends!

Sometimes I love to revel in how immensely practical yoga and spirituality can be.  As a very sentimental person I find myself in the throes of wild emotional forces within me daily.  For many years I had minimal ability to make space for this inner wilderness.  Instead, I would find myself angry, depressed or anxious, yet I knew intuitively there was another way to allow the forces to move in me without being towed under by them.  This way has slowed shown itself to me over time through my practices and most especially yoga.

Yoga calls us to be completely present amidst awkward and difficult sensations.  We are asked to stay with the inner experience and bear the forces that burst forth within during the challenging or sometimes boring asana.  We feel sensations arise, emotions provoked and are asked not to shut down, avoid, distract or repress but instead we are reminded to breathe and soften, over and over again.  As the circumstances of our practice change we feel that inner experience begin to dissipate, shift, change - decharge.  I love using the term decharging because it evokes the process of allowing strong inner sensations to release, spread out through the system and clear.  Aliveness emerges loudly inside, we bear it (safely), then we let it move through, softening into the next moment.  Living and dying moment by moment. 

This process has offered me so much.  I've become so much more comfortable with the charged forces within me that rise and fall.  I've learned that an emotion can feel much like the heat of a contracted muscle, the vibratory shakes of a tired limb, the soft space of a freely moving diaphragm.  Energy, forces, aliveness within me.  And in the midst of that emotion I've come to realize that I can soften around it, breath and soften, over and over allowing it to rise and then to decharge.  It's a very difficult practice. Like most of us, I'm used to "dumping" my emotions, relieving them externally or placating them through distraction.  The question is: Can I live them?  Can I get curious about them?  They rise, they move, they decharge - do I really want to miss this incredible display of life within me?  Do I really want to miss what they may be telling me about my inner landscape?  Emotions can point to so much, they can point to destructive thinking patterns, old unresolved traumas, intuitive knowings.  I've learned this only by softening to them - and I feel that I've just barely scratched the surface. 

Yoga and our spiritual practice works underground, in the deep recesses of our character.  It works slowly, honouring the tender, vulnerable nature of our humanness.   But, sometimes we catch its fruits.  When you look to the Spring day and realize that the birds sing more sweetly, the sun shines more brightly and the air smells better than you remember yoga's work shows itself in your ability to "be here" more completely.

Here's an experiment - this beautiful song is from the movie 127 Hours, as you listen to it can you let yourself feel your entire inner experience - breathing and softening around it, allowing it to live and die within:  If I Rise - Dido and A.R. Rahman

Yesterday I returned from a 4 day retreat with Sandra Sammartino, which was held at the Sylvan Lake Bahai Centre.  I've been to Sandra's retreat twice prior to this one, but this one was a totally different experience for me than I've had in the past.  The retreat content was very much the same as others I've been to.  Sandra focusses heavily on the energy body, the unconscious and past wounds that become stored in the body as armour.  This is rich, deep, extremely intense work that, in the past, has been a life saver for me.  This time was different.  Not that the teachings are less important, but they felt just slightly to the side of the channel in which my authentic life flows right now.  Sandra said a number of times in the retreat to sense where our lives are being taken.  Ironically, I felt like my life was being taken on a different path from the content of the retreat!  What a gift I was given.  The retreat, for me, served as a crucible through which I could better define my authentic self.  I bumped up against the teachings, the exercises, the content and this bumping served to sift out a still inner voice that was leading me elsewhere - I hear it still.   

I come home with some incredible gems of knowledge from Sandra and her 40 years in yoga that I can't wait to bring to my classes.  I honour these teachings deeply and Sandra will continue to be a sacred teacher for me. But even more than these wonderful tidbits of wisdom I come home having experienced a retreat within a retreat.  Within the context of the work presented by Sandra, I experience a subtext that included deepening a friendship both with myself and a long time yoga friend.  I made new friends and ate great food. I breathed in the stars that shone at night and revelled in the music of one of the yoga community's beautiful musicians.  I spent time away from home and motherhood and reawakened another dimension of my self.  And most importantly, I come home with a more clear understanding of where the "slender threads" of my Spirit are trying to guide me.  I continue to listen for their message, with great curiosity.