Category: Yoga

Posted on

Renew, restore, rejuvenate

When we think of “the three Rs”, what usually comes to mind is the guiding philosophy we learned to lessen our impact on the environment: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  However, I think it’s time that we also heed another three-R refrain, one that reminds us of the importance of caring for ourselves: Renew, Restore, Rejuvenate.  It is vital to our overall well-being that we take time to replenish our reserves, refresh our perspective, and revive our senses (three more Rs!), so that we can live fully each moment from a place of balance and deep connection.

Self-care can be a very personal ritual – what nourishes one person might not have the same effect on another.  Our mindfulness practice can assist in finding what works best by helping us attune to how we feel and respond to different things.  I have previously written about noticing simple joys in your daily life – the little things that light you up inside, whether it is warm clothes from the dryer, the smell of fresh baked cookies, sinking into a hot bath after a long day.  Creating a routine around our simple joys can help us cultivate a sense of calm, contentment, and ease within, a welcome respite from any stress or anxiety that may be weighing upon us.  When we reconnect with what lights us up, what gives us joy, it brings us closer to ourselves – it brings us home.

For me, my practice has taught me that in addition to welcoming simple joys into each day, what nourishes me most deeply is to explore – a new neighbourhood, a new city, a new culture, a new perspective.  Like all of us, I have my favourite routines, things I do and places I go, and while I seek to invite a beginner’s mind to all of it, there are times when I need something truly different to renew my energy, restore my faith, and rejuvenate my soul.  What I find especially nourishing is travel – it is travel that inspires me, replenishes my inner well, and connects me to my deepest self while also connecting me to the world.  What inspires you? What ignites your inner fire? What draws you out of your comfort zone and encourages you to look with new eyes?

Yoga and meditation offer us an opportunity to play with the edges of our comfort zone.  We can challenge our balance, our strength, our focus. We can try new poses and techniques with open curiosity rather than attachment to a particular outcome.  We can use the power of our practice to explore our physical body, our mental and emotional responses, our sensory experience of each movement, each breath, and each moment.  What we learn in our practice can inform how we live our lives off the mat and cushion – it can help us open our hearts and minds to explore what lies both within and beyond our comfort zone, refreshing our perspective and renewing our connection to our deepest self and to the world around us.

The process to renew, restore, and rejuvenate is a continuous one. If we cultivate a deeper awareness of how we feel physically, mentally and spiritually, we can better provide the support we need to maintain our health and well-being.  Self-care occurs every single day. Let us embrace our simple joys and the contentment they bring.  Let us welcome new perspectives as we refresh our view of the world.  Let us pause to bask in the present moment and explore all its possibilities.

Posted on

The unsung hero

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.” ~Joshua Graham

When we hear about mindfulness, its many virtues are extolled.  We are told that practicing mindfulness will make us more productive at work, improve our memory, help us sleep better, reduce our levels of stress and anxiety.  All of these things are true, and there are so many more benefits to bringing mindfulness into our daily life.  However, at the root of it all is one important benefit that I do not think gets enough mention: resilience.

When we come to our meditation practice, we sit with our present moment experience exactly as it unfolds.  That experience might include pain, anguish, sorrow, frustration, or anger.  Our mind might throw up defenses against these feelings, try to divert our attention, carry us away into dreams of the past or future, but despite its best efforts, we must eventually return to the present and whatever that moment holds for us.  The more time we spend sitting with experiences we label as unpleasant, the more familiar they become.  Rather than seeing them as something to fear and avoid, we recognise that they are part of us, part of our journey, part of the natural ebb and flow of our daily life and experience.

In the yogic tradition, resilience is embodied in the practice of Santosha, contentment.  Through Santosha we learn to accept whatever comes and whatever goes; we cultivate a sense of equanimity and seek to respond to challenges from that balanced place within us.  We grow stronger, building up our resources so that when storms lash at us from all sides, when the waves are so high we cannot see the shore, there is a well of strength deep within that keeps us buoyed until the weather clears.

Looking back at our life, we see grief and loss, joy and triumph, we climbed tall mountains and traversed dark valleys, and we survived through it all by drawing on the strength within us.  On the days when you feel the weather turning, when the skies are dark and the seas are churning, dive deep inside and ignite the fire within, let it burn brightly and guide your way through the storm.

Posted on

Sweet surrender

Savasana is one of the most challenging poses in our asana practice.  It is also one of the most rewarding, and the most necessary.  We lie down, our body relaxes, our breath slows, and our attention withdraws from the external world.  It sounds so simple, and yet this beautiful, healing repose runs counter to everything that has come to characterise modern life.  Our minds are busy and we fill our days with ever-growing to do lists.  We are constantly climbing the dizzying heights of our expectations; each time we reach a summit, we seek out the next peak and begin our climb anew.  What if, instead of always climbing to the sky, we lay down upon the earth and paused to welcome stillness?  What if, instead of always ‘doing’, we embraced the present moment and took the time to simply be?

Savasana is Sanskrit for corpse pose. Visionary teacher BKS Iyengar often ended his classes with two words of instruction: be dead.  To truly absorb and integrate all the benefits of our asana practice, we must surrender fully to stillness.  We must let go of our need to be constantly in motion, to be always thinking and doing and moving forward towards something.  In stillness lies profound beauty and healing, kindness and wisdom.  In stillness we come home to ourselves; we recharge, refocus, and remember that we are already enough exactly as we are.

Savasana is one of the extraordinary gifts of our yoga practice, and it is one that we should invite off the mat and into our daily life.  As autumn arrives, the natural world around us is in transition, letting go of summer blooms and preparing for a long winter’s sleep.  Our physical and energetic bodies naturally crave this same sense of letting go and finding rest.  However, our busy minds try to divert us from this course, continuing the climb to the sky.  If we could release our attachment to those busy thoughts and let ourselves be guided by our intuition, we would find that what serves us best in fall is reconnecting to the peace and stillness of the earth.

As the temperature cools and the days grow shorter, attune to the innate wisdom that lies within you.  Relax your grip on the busyness of your mind.  Release yourself from doing and take time to simply be.  Lie down, let go, and feel the earth support your weight. Sink into that nurturing support and let yourself find the sweet surrender of Savasana.

Posted on

A lifetime of learning

This weekend I had the extraordinary privilege of studying with Father Joe Pereira. A Catholic priest for 51 years, Father Joe also studied closely with B.K.S. Iyengar for more than 40 years. He has been sharing the wisdom and healing power of Iyengar yoga around the world, while harnessing its therapeutic benefits to treat addiction and manage HIV/AIDS at the 69 treatment centres run by Kripa Foundation, which he founded in 1981 (http://www.kripafoundation.org/).

For those who are unfamiliar, B.K.S. Iyengar is widely known in the West as the father of modern yoga. The form of Hatha yoga he introduced is firmly rooted in the eight-limbed path set out for us by the sage Patanjali around 400 CE.  Iyengar yoga is often thought of as alignment-based asana, but it is so much more than a physical alignment practice – guided by the moral and ethical compass of the Yamas and Niyamas, it seeks to align the external body with the internal environment; it enables us to forge a union of body, mind and spirit, and from that place of union we can discover our connection to the Universe, to the God of our understanding, to that which is greater than ourselves.  We come to realise that we are not separate from one another; this existence is shared, and we must live it together with compassion and lovingkindness.

To me, the importance of lifelong learning cannot be overstated.  Our minds and bodies thrive when we are learning something new.  Though I am a teacher of yoga and meditation, I will always be first and foremost a student.  I try to approach each day with an open heart and an open mind, receptive to whatever lessons that day may bring.  When I take a class, a workshop, or training, I invite a beginner’s mind as I explore with wonder all that is being shared.  In the presence of someone with such depth and breadth of knowledge like Father Joe, who is extraordinarily wise, compassionate, humble, and kind, I am filled with gratitude for his teachings; like a sponge I absorb all of the wisdom he shares and welcome it deep within my bones, deep into my heart so that it may infuse and inform my practice and my daily life on and off the mat.

There are lessons to be learned in every moment – we need only pay attention and open ourselves to the wisdom in the world around us.  When we learn something new it changes our perspective; we look at our life, or aspects of it, in a different way.  These teachings can come to us in myriad forms, through myriad channels, anytime and anywhere.  Though we can have powerful learning experiences in formal settings like courses and workshops, some of the most profound lessons come when we least expect them – in our encounters with friends and loved ones, with unfamiliar people and places, when we are communing with nature.  The common denominator between all of these learning opportunities is that we have opened ourselves to possibility, and we have done so with presence, with mindful awareness, with a willingness to release our attachment to what was and welcome something new.

For these latest teachings from Father Joe, I am deeply grateful.  When you look back upon your life, at the important lessons you have learned, who are the teachers and what are the experiences that taught you most?  For even the seemingly small lessons we can give humble thanks, for every lesson we learn informs our journey, shapes who we are, and helps us determine the next step along our path.

Posted on

Be bodacious

Each of us has the right, the possibility to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. Be bodacious enough to invent yourself.  ~Maya Angelou

A dear friend shared this quote with me recently.  The words of Maya Angelou never cease to inspire and amaze me with their insight and wisdom.  With each day comes new possibilities, new opportunities. And yet, how often do we truly explore them?  How often do we have the courage and audacity to fully embrace change, to evolve, to invent ourselves daily? I suspect that for most of us, the hurdle that lies between us and invention is our own inner critic, the judgments we lay upon ourselves over and over that limit our ability to love and accept who we are in each and every moment.

The first step on the eight-limbed yogic path is Ahimsa, non-violence.  To practice Ahimsa means to do no harm in thought, word or deed – no harm to ourselves, to others, to the world around us.  To practice Ahimsa we must truly embody compassion and lovingkindness, and this begins with ourselves.  The Dalai Lama asks: “What is love? Love is the absence of judgment.”  Through mindfulness we seek to observe each moment, each thought, emotion, and sensation, without judgment or attachment.  Our mindful awareness shines a light on our inner critic and when these judgments are exposed and identified, they begin to lose their power over us.

In my classes I often invite students to turn their gaze inward, to reflect within. Both yoga and meditation are internal practices that enable us to know our true selves, to connect with the innate wisdom and beauty that lies deep within us.  The trouble is that to reach this inner sanctum, we must slay dragons like self-doubt and fear, we must awaken from what author / meditation teacher Tara Brach calls the trance of unworthiness and fill ourselves to the brim with compassion, with lovingkindness, with acceptance of all that we are and all that we can be.  Armed with the power of self-love and true acceptance, we can connect to our intuition and plumb the depths of our wisdom to guide us on our journey, our evolution, the bodacious invention of ourselves daily.

Posted on

The nature of change

Change is inevitable. Deep down we know this to be true. Why, then, do we so often fear change, struggle against it, fight to maintain the status quo? Perhaps it’s because we are creatures of habit. We take comfort in our routines, we feel safe and secure when we are surrounded by what we know. However, when we look within, I doubt there is anyone who cannot recall a time when their routine was shattered, when the best laid plans were completely, perhaps tragically, derailed. No matter how well we plan, how far we try to gaze into the future, we will never be able to see clearly beyond the present moment, and we will never truly know what changes the next moment might bring.

When we resist change, we are grasping at threads, as what we know unravels to reveal something unfamiliar. What if rather than viewing this new tapestry with fear and suspicion, we instead explore its unfamiliar patterns, seek out the beauty in its texture and colour, weave its threads into the fabric of our life. If this life is an ever-changing and evolving tapestry, we must acknowledge that there will at times be changes that challenge even the most masterful tailor.

BKS Iyengar wisely noted, “Change is not something that we should fear. Rather it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they are meant to be.” To welcome change, we need to open our hearts and minds and learn how to accept whatever comes with grace and equanimity. This is the practice of Santosha. Through Santosha we find contentment with ourselves and the world around us, exactly as they are. We cultivate a place of balance, equanimity, and acceptance within us, and we begin to view all that arises in our life through this lens. When we can live from this balanced place within, the dizzying peaks and deep valleys along our path may seem less dramatic in their contrast, in the way they affect our daily life, and the terrain becomes easier to navigate. If we begin to acknowledge the inevitability of change and we release our fear of it, perhaps we truly can welcome change and all the possibility it brings.