Embrace with Grace

Your yoga mat offers a microcosm of your world. The way you meet your practice – breath-centered, daily, and with perseverance – offers an opportunity for you to prepare for uncomfortable moments off the mat.

While I am out in the world doing my very best, I make at least one mistake every day. They are usually small mistakes, and when I make one, it simply means I am living out of alignment or moving forward to quickly without taking in the present moment.

Part of my yoga and my Reiki practice means putting my best foot forward. ANOTHER big part of my practice is owning and learning from my mistakes, and moving forward with grace.

I like to think of these mistakes, or shakes, as those things that bring me away from my practice, or out of a pose. My TAPAS, or commitment to my practice, is what brings me back in.

I don’t live under the illusion that I’ll reach perfection, but I do hope that with more SVADYAYA, or self-study, combined with a commitment to my asana, pranayama, and meditation, I can continue refining the way I meet the world from a place of grace and integrity.

Satya and Saucha – Purity in Truth

I love the idea of pairing the Yamas and the Niyamas together as we explore the repurcussions of putting these concepts into imperfect practice in our daily lives.

It’s a powerful way to take your yoga practice beyond the mat and, if you’re like me, it’s something that you continually circle back to, refining and honing until the concepts crystallize and reverberate in your world.

The Yoga Sutras introduce us to these concepts of “right living,” or yamas, and “self-discipline,” or niyamas. There are 5 of each, and we began exploring two – Santosha and Aparigraha – in our last post.

The Yamas The Niyamas

Ahimsa – Non-Violence Saucha – Purification

Satya – Truthfullness Santosha – Contentment

Asteya – Not Stealing Tapas – Self-Discipline

Bramacharya – Conserving Vital Life Energy Svadyaya – Self Study

Aparigraha – Not Coveting Ishvara Pranidhana – Devotion

These concepts lay the groundwork of a yoga practice. Some even argue that their practice comes before your asana, or postural practice on the mat. I have found the yamas and the niyamas to contain layers of meaning, and when I perfect one, another reveals itself for me to work on.

Today we explore the twin concepts of Satya and Saucha –

Truthfullness and Cleanliness.

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Svādhyāya – Non Judgement

I watched a lot of Monty Python growing up, and this scene from The Life of Brian always left me laughing. And the joke, I thought, was everyone chanting in sync that they were all different while doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts.

The revelation, which I understand now that I’ve lived more life than my 13 year old self, is that we are all the same. There is no piece of the One Human Experience that any one of us is experiencing anew. We are all sparks on a journey, and if we’re lucky enough to stay on the ride, chances are that we’ll pass through several different dichotomies of the One Human Experience.

In your lifetime, you will likely experience being a friend and an enemy. Perhaps you will be the child and the parent, the student and the teacher, the innocent and the guilty. Each of these are simply two sides of the same coin. This transformation from one to the other and revelation that they (we) are one allows us to immerse in the experience of Svādhyāya, one of the Niyamas of yoga, often defined as self-study, but also encompassing Non-Judgement.
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Svadyaya

Stop Looking for a Soul Mate

…and mate with your soul.”

That’s the advice my teacher gave me as I sat down for a Vedic Astrology reading with him this time last year. I didn’t initially tell him that I had been planning a move to Central America, but as he delved into my Astrology, he said again and again that living in a foreign land was not an if, but a when. In his eerily accurate reading, he predicted that I would find spiritual fulfillment and happiness in a foreign land and with a foreign man. Continue reading “Svadyaya”

Santosha

Santosha is one of the niyamas, or self restraints, recommended by Patanjali in the yoga sutras. Mastering the yamas and niyamas is an integral part of the practice of yoga, and so far, one that I find myself continually practicing time and again. I’ve written before about Santosha, the practice of being satisfied with what one has, in my very first post. Desire, though, is not an easy monkey to remove from one’s back nor one’s mind.

“I can resist everything but temptation”
~Oscar Wild

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Wherever You Go, There You Are

I love noticing patterns in my life, and then noticing the way those patterns, or habits, affect the way I interact with other people, make healthy or unhealthy lifestyle choices, or even affect the way I breathe. Patterns are the foundations of our lives, from clearly observable patterns in the physical world to the more subtle patterns of action that create our samskaras. I welcome situations that put me face to face with my patterns and force me to recognize the effects they may be having on my life. Making such a drastic change as moving to another country has allowed me a rare opportunity to see observe the patterns I use to fill my time.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

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On Ego & Attachment

“Somewhere there is a place that will change my life. It’s physical beauty will shock me into seeing my world in a wholly new way. The lives of the people there will be so sharply different from mine that they will be a mirror to me, and in that mirror I will see all my faults and fears, and gather the courage to eradicate them. This place will be so untouched by my civilization that I will be renewed just by coming to know it. To visit it will be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, a necessary adventure of the soul…”

~ Charles Monaghan, “A South Seas Adventure.”

In an effort to reach this soft place in my heart that yearns to live in a different culture, under a warmer sun, a life with minutes that seem to pause and stretch and last a little longer than the minutes here in North America, I have spent the last few months letting go.

The release started simply enough. The clothes in my closet that didn’t get as much mileage as others, pictures in boxes that hadn’t hung on any walls for months, and jewelry and kitchenware all gathering dust. Then, I began to get a sense of my attachment to the material when it came time to release items associated with precious memories: gifts given to me by people dear to me, t-shirts and letters from old loves, souvenirs from life-changing moments. The commercial below seemed to mock my efforts, proclaiming that “you are your stuff,” so you’d better protect what you’ve got. After all, once you let go of your stuff, what identity can you claim?

In yoga, Patanjali speaks about the Yamas and Niyamas, simple rules designed to address the basic human condition, and assist us in living a happy, healthy, and holy life. I’ve often felt my life swing like a pendulum from focusing on one or two of these rules to another. Continue reading “On Ego & Attachment”