my philosophy of yoga
Yoga is a life coach, religion, spiritual path , release. Yoga is an energetic outlet, a path to wholeness. Yoga is medicine, and sacred wisdom.
Yoga is a gift that transcends time and place. Yoga is a system and was introduced in ancient India; passed from life to life, generation to generation, the practice became a beautiful integration of mind, body, spirit, and soul. Yoga flows into one’s consciousness through the physical body and rests within the spirit for awakening. Breathing life into your physical body awakens the spirit and supports the mind. You cannot have one without the other and yoga is the answer to unifying.
One can choose a multitude of methods to apply to the physical body to light an internal fire, perhaps vinyasa, power, hatha, ashtanga. This physical practice allows energy to move throughout the body through channels called “Nadis”. This transfer of energy is enough to quiet the mind in preparation for internal conversation because the energy is flowing flawlessly throughout the body. The internal conversation can then be transcribed in the practitioner’s journal for later reflection. In this internal conversation, the practitioner focused on breathing and remaining in the moment to make space in their mind and heart. When you have the space to process and respond like an emotionally mature adult, then you are processing your emotions in a healthy way and flourishing in this life.
Tranquility and harmony are within our reach if we just step aside and allow our ego to quietly pass by and step out of the way.
The answers that human beings seek are out there. The sages, saints, truth seekers, and practitioners of times before us have presented the answers to all our questions. However, if you do not open the space inside of your mind and your heart for this information, you might as well be studying the foundations of tennis. You can read the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita a thousand times with sincere memorization. However, if you are not prepared to incorporate those teachings into your life, and deeply into your life, you are wasting your time. Reading the Yoga Sutras is not just something you seek to read for “enhancement of understanding”; to understand the sutras, you must live them. To understand what it means to “rise above” a situation, you must do that work. Yoga is a path to follow that will allow you to do that work.
Yoga teachers or students who become devotees’, study and understand that the physical components of yoga are only a fraction of the entire equation. If this is true, then why do we teach and take physical asana classes? If the physical postures of yoga were intended to prepare the body for meditation, why doesn’t every single class develop as such?
The original intent of physical asana was to complement the bigger spiritual yoga, which leads to enlightenment and reality of self (Lee, 2016). Ram Daas says the key to peace is “quieting the mind, opening the heart” and this is accomplished through meditating. Participating in a physical asana class encourages students to connect to their inner self through the vehicle of the physical body.
To achieve comfort and stillness for meditation and spiritual teaching, we participate in teacher guided flowy movement (Hatha yoga). Moving the physical body in this way will dissolve tension in the body as well as increase a student’s confidence and strength. The intention is to invite students to subtly connect to their physical body and breath in the practice and there are multiple ways to achieve that.
The average yoga all-levels vinyasa (flow) will most likely begin with a warmup. Circulating blood and oxygen and moving the joints, prepares the body for the heat building portion of the practice. During the warmup, I often invite students to connect back to the lesson I introduced in the beginning of our time together. Progressing to more movement at a differing pace takes place after the warmup, usually with sun salutations and variations of such. When you move the body in the same format, repeatedly, linked with breath, as is the sun salutation, your mind is actively participating in the flow and cannot ruminate on the bucket loads of things you usually do.
Taking the students on a journey from there depends on the theme or lesson of the class. If I am encouraging growth and self-confidence, postures will include child’s pose and a warrior series. While physical movement is not the emphasis of the bigger picture, in these moments of class time, the only way to connect a student to the bigger picture is through the movement of the body.
The student establishes warrior 1 or 2. The teacher cues the student to raise their arms, grounding the feet into the mat and then invites the student to take up space; the opposite of playing small.
We are inundated constantly with reminders to move, push, be more, do more, achieve more. The only way I was able to do this was by doing LESS! When I stopped counting the ounces of water I drank, I craved water. When I allow myself to rest any time I feel fatigued, the rest became more powerful. When I stopped scrutinizing every single inch of yoga postures and celebrated myself for being strong, my practice changed.
Yoga changed everything for me.