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6 Do’s and 2 Don’ts for a Home Yoga Practice

12/6/2016

Why Have a Home Practice?

To go along with the five 20–30 minute gentle sequences that you can print off and do at home, this seemed like a good time to talk about the benefits of having a home practice and how to get the most out of it.

A home yoga practice is an enormously powerful tool for physical, mental, and spiritual growth. It can help you develop greater awareness of your body, build discipline and concentration, and tap into your inner wisdom.

Of course, classes are great for learning new postures and getting help refining old ones, and for that incredible experience when the consciousness of the class comes together. A home practice, on the other hand, lets you determine what to practice and how. You can take your time to begin or end with meditation. And it is the only way to really internalize the practice and make it your own.

Below are some do’s and don’ts to help you get the most from a home practice.

Do enjoy your practice.

This is your time to go within and set everything else aside. Intention makes all the difference. Consider making a ritual of it by turning off your phone and lighting a candle or incense. Set aside enough time and/or don’t try to cram too many postures into the time you have. Consciously commit to being nurturing toward yourself.

Do take time to turn inward before you begin.

The mental aspect of yoga sets it apart from other types of exercise. Even before a short sequence, slow down. Either in savasana or in a seated posture, be still for anywhere from ten breaths to five minutes or longer. Slowing down at the beginning of a practice cultivates a meditative aproach. It also helps us generate movements from the inside out, in slow motion, which prevents overstretching or holding beyond our reasonable endurance.

Do be present.

Throughout your practice let go of your thoughts about the past or future. Let go of any judgments and just observe your body and mind as you move into, hold, and come out of each posture. Do what you can to keep your awareness not just inward but also downward. Most of us spend a nearly the entire day in our heads; when on the mat, try to keep your awareness throughout the rest of your body. That will help you to be fully present right here, right now, which is the only place and time we can truly be at peace.

Don’t feel like you have to do every pose.

Yoga should never hurt. If you come across a posture that doesn’t feel good, modify it so it works for you or pass it by entirely. You want to feel a stretch and to feel your muscles working, but there should never be pain or strain.

Do hold each pose for a few breaths.

Flexibility, strength, and balance take time and patience. How long you should hold a posture depends on your body and how you feel that day. Three to six slow, easy breaths is a good average to begin with. If your breath becomes fast or jagged, take a resting pose until it returns to a calmer rhythm.

Don’t overdo.

Pictures of poses are guidelines not mandates. Remember that we practice yoga to enhance all the other aspects of our lives, not for the sake of yoga alone. So don’t let your practice to make you so tired, sore, or even injured that you can’t embrace the other parts of life.

Do savasana.

Always. If you only have time for one posture, do savasana. Set a timer so you can let go completely. Take the time to settle in and relax. Then turn your attention to your breath. When your mind wanders, notice. Then let go of that line of thought and direct your attention back to your breath. It’s normal for the mind to wander. Don’t get discouraged. The idea is not to stop thinking but to expand the space between thoughts.

Do keep at it.

Make a plan and stick to it. You don’t have to practice every day, but you might discover you want to. If you miss a day that you had planned, don’t let it get you down. We do yoga to soften that harsh voice of self-criticism, not to add to it! Be gentle with yourself. After a while, your home practice can become a sanctuary and lead to all of the benefits that yoga has to offer.

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Benefits of Yoga for Anxiety in a Nutshell

12/2/2016

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Frustration by Tanya Little. CC BY-SA 2.0

A college student recently sent me some interview questions for a paper she's working on about yoga and anxiety. One of the questions was “What are some positive effects you have seen with people who are struggling with anxiety?” I thought I’d share my answer here. If yoga has helped you, I'd love to hear about it!

People in my classes report both short term and long term benefits from yoga when it comes to anxiety. In the short term, they say having attended a yoga class makes the rest of the day easier to handle. This can stem from a combination of a number of things:

the mood-lifting effect of having taken the time to do something that is good for them and that they enjoy
rebalancing the nervous system with slow, deep breathing and savasana, and
the neurochemical effects of shifting attention to the body, which lowers stress-related hormones and neurotransmitters while simultaneously increasing those chemicals that inhibit negative thoughts and induce positive emotions.

In the long term, I think the key word is patience. Even people who don’t have anxiety have told me that yoga increased their ability to be patient in frustrating situations. Anxiety makes everything seem urgent, overwhelming, and impossible. Frustration with self and others comes on quickly. The practice of yoga builds patience through purposefully and repeatedly removing our attention from our mental chatter and placing it in the body, using the body as the object of meditative focus. With an ongoing practice, we build the brain’s tolerance for frustration by increasing both the number of neurons devoted to patience as well as the strength of their connections.

With patience comes peace. Through the practice of yoga, we are increasingly able to slow down and handle the situation in front of us with thoughtfulness and compassion. This in turn allows us to rebuild our self-confidence, to know that we can take life as it comes. Then we can stop worrying so much about the past and the future and engage whole-heartedly with the present. That's the goal anyway!

Has yoga helped you manage anxiety? If so, I'd really like to hear your story. You can post here in the comments or you can email me through the contact page or at yogatoeaseanxiety(at)gmail(dot)com.

Relaxing by Onderwijsgek. CC BY-SA 3.0

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Humility, Detachment, and Mindfulness: Connections in The Eagle’s Gift

12/1/2016

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“Relax, abandon yourself, fear nothing. Only then will the powers that guide us open the road and aid us. Only then.”

Treading with caution, I returned to my notes from Carlos Castaneda’s The Eagle’s Gift to see what time and a clearer head might reveal. What I found was an interesting set of statements that show the connection between humility, detachment, and being present to this moment, or, as some people call it, mindfulness.

Humility

Let me jump right in with our first term: humility. Castaneda repeatedly refers to the necessity of humility, but never does he get to the heart of the matter so clearly as when he is explaining the “rule of stalkers,” which he assures us “applies to everyone.”

“The first precept of the rule is that everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery."
“The second precept of the rule is that we must try to unravel these mysteries, but without ever hoping to accomplish this."
“The third, that a warrior, aware of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds him and aware of his duty to try to unravel it, takes his rightful place among mysteries and regards himself as one. Consequently, for a warrior there is no end to the mystery of being, whether being means being a pebble, or an ant, or oneself. That is a warrior’s humbleness. One is equal to everything.”

OK so, we know absolutely nothing because it is all mystery. Plus, we are no more or less special, and no more or less mysterious, than a pebble. If everything is equally part of the unfathomable whole, then no part takes precedence. Living this realization induces utter humility, and humility is necessary to gaining detachment: "[O]ne has to be utterly humble and carry nothing to defend . . . ."

Detachment and Mindfulness

Detachment, by which is meant the state of having overcome one's attachment to people, things, ideas, etc., is a fundamental aspect of Eastern spiritual paths but less prevalent, to my knowledge, in Western and tribal religions. (Though I’d love to be hear about examples from those traditions if they exist.)

Castaneda describes his capacity for detachment when he says, “I had learned to enter into a state of total quietness. I was able to turn off my internal dialogue and remain as if I were inside a cocoon, peeking out of a hole. In that state I could . . . remain passive, thoughtless, and without desires.”

In a further description of the state of detachment, he gives more detail and begins to tie it to mindfulness. “It was rather an alien feeling of aloofness, a capability of immersing myself in the moment and having no thoughts whatever about anything else. People’s actions no longer affected me, for I had no more expectations of any kind. A strange peace had become the ruling force in my life.”

What I appreciate most is Castaneda’s insight, as we see in the next quotation, that detachment is not in itself a sign of spiritual advancement. It is simply another state of consciousness we can train ourselves to hold. On its own it has benefits but it is not the goal. “[D]etachment,” he explains, “did not automatically mean wisdom, but . . . was nonetheless an advantage because it allowed the warrior to pause momentarily to reassess situations, to reconsider positions. In order to use that extra moment consistently and correctly, however, . . . a warrior had to struggle unyieldingly for a lifetime.”

To emphasize this point and the connection between detachment and mindfulness, here is another instance where Casteneda reiterates that the experience of detachment and being "immersed in the moment" is value-free: “An aspect of being detached, the capacity to become immersed in whatever one is doing, naturally extends to everything one does, including being inconsistent, and outright petty. The advantage . . . is that it allows us a moment’s pause, providing that we have the self-discipline and courage to utilize it.”

It is unclear from this book, at least to me, how we should use the pause to our best advantage.

Further Questions

Castaneda does not make it a point to delineate the connection I'm pointing out here: humility—detachment—present to the moment. It is just something that struck me as I read through my notes. What also struck me, again, was the absence of any mention of compassion. Yes, he talks about being “impeccable,” and having “a consistency of character.” But these are not the equal of what other traditions describe as ahimsa, compassion, altruism, or unconditional love.

Georg Feuerstein said detachment must be balanced by compassion. Compassion is the arrow on the moral compass that allows detachment and mindfulness to make us more human.

Perhaps that gets to the issue I have with Castaneda. His view of spiritual advancement, like so many others, is exclusively about transcendence, "losing the human form," and becoming pure energy. Maybe that is behind his literary and actual treatment of women, with our blood and birth and milk making us oh so very embodied. We represent everything that holds humanity in its animal form.

I personally don’t want to overcome being human. I want to come to peace with it, to integrate the various aspects of this existence and experience that sacred wholeness. And this opens up the discussion about the difference between transcendent and integral forms of spiritual understanding, which will have to happen on another day.

In the end, there is indeed a useful reminder here. First we must be humble, see ourselves as equal to the dirt of the earth. When we can cease to see ourselves as special and realize we are just as mysterious and as ordinary as everyone and everything else, it becomes easier to relax our grip on the relationships and attachments that tether us to the past and to the future. When we release them and becoem detached, then we can completely inhabit the present moment. That is the order: humility, detachment, mindfulness.

Further than that, Castaneda does not seem ready to go in this book. In fact, he appears to think it is enough in itself, if we gauge from this pivotal “incantation” he recites at a time when his inner world was in cataclysmic turmoil.

“I am already given to the power that rules my fate.
And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend.
I have no thoughts, so I will see.
I fear nothing, so I will remember myself.
Detached and at ease,
I will dart past the Eagle to be free.”

Do you think it is enough?

Blown Dandelion by John Liu. CC BY 2.0

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Health Update 11/2016

11/29/2016

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Surface of a Kidney Stone, by Kempf EK. CC BY-SA 3.0

Dear friends,

Turns out, I’m not going to be teaching in December. Short version: kidney stones suck. For the long version, keep reading.

Just over a week before Halloween I ended up in the ER with my third bout of kidney stones in a dozen years. They’re part of my genetic inheritance. (Thanks Dad ;-) !) This time several kidney stones formed a log jam halfway between the kidney and bladder on my left side. The path was completely blocked and my kidney was becoming increasingly swollen.

Because of the injury and inflammation already present, retrieving the stones at this point would have risked further damage, so the doc put a stent in, which in this case is like a straw that goes from the kidney to the bladder, bypassing the stone cluster. The purpose of the stent was threefold: (1) so my kidney wouldn’t explode (hooray!), (2) to allow the swelling in the ureter to heal, and (3) so that maybe the stones could pass on their own. Spoiler: they didn’t.

But they tried damn hard.

I spent the rest of October and three-quarters of November in a blur of pain, medication, and Netflix while my insides healed enough for another expedition. A week ago I went back into surgery to have the stent removed and the stones lasered into smaller pieces. Doc even went up into the kidney to zap the stones that hadn’t made their way out yet. He retrieved all of the pieces he could but expects that I’ll be passing debris through most of December.

“Passing debris” is about as fun as it sounds. While it’s nice to know it’s non-life-threatening, the pain is unpredictable, sudden, and intense; and the rest of the day is pretty much shot.

The good news is I am starting to feel like myself again. The (further) bad news is there are stones in my other kidney! But for now they appear to be staying put.

This has of course been a humbling and eye opening experience, to be laid low by a little bit of gravel! I’ve tried to take it in stride, taking the lessons it has offered in detachment; finding separation between the reality of me and my definition of myself; and working at maintaining a practice when the body can’t be called on to serve as a faithful conduit.

The hardest part has been knowing that there are people waiting for me to come back to teaching. To you guys I would say: I hope you can use this as impetus to explore other teachers and to either start or continue to build your home practice. In other words: go do your yoga!

Wishing you all peace, love, and joy,

Amy

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Looking a Gift Eagle in the Mouth

11/25/2016

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This month (November 2016) we've been reading The Eagle's Gift by Carlos Castaneda in the Modern Mystic Book Club, and I am struggling with it.

I am having a hard time with Castaneda himself. Maybe this is a generational thing since I know a lot of boomers embraced him (I'm Gen X); or maybe it’s an artifact of my academic training, not being able to see the forest for the trees (but these are some massive trees).

It’s quite likely that I’m missing information, since The Eagle’s Gift is the first of his books that I’ve read but the sixth that he wrote. However, I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching him now, and the more I do, the more uncomfortable I become. This article at Salon.com is a good summary of the events I refer to here.

I realize that what I’ve written below is harsh, and I do not mean to detract from anyone’s experience. We find doors to growth wherever they appear. I am simply putting forward my own encounter with the material and the questions that surfaced through it. I would gladly listen to alternate points of view and hope they are forthcoming.
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To begin, the experience of reading the book was not rewarding. I felt like I was slogging through miles of literary shallows to get to one piece of rehashed spiritual philosophy. When there was something new, it was often disturbing, especially those claims that advocate manipulation: statements such as stalkers are “consummate artists in bending people to their wishes.” And “a teacher must trick the disciple.”

Plus, there is this merciless attitude toward “humans” and “human-ness” throughout, as well as a division of the sexes that characterizes most of the females as crazy or lacking in intellect. Not all, but most. I get that he was talking about losing the ego when he said he and others were becoming less human, and that’s not my problem. My problem is that there’s no compassion for anyone outside of the characters in the groups, and little even for them.

The part where he implies that “don Juan” was not celibate, even though he claimed to be, smacked of revisionism of his own created mythology and led me to wonder how much of this and his other books were written with his harem and cult followers in mind, to continue to bend them to his will.
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Don Juan never existed. Castaneda’s master’s thesis, which became his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge, (as well as everything that followed and hinged on it) was at least in great part fabrication. He stitched together elements from the research of other anthropologists, as well as the philosophies of phenomenology and existentialism, to create a tapestry of beliefs and then passed them off as authentic indigenous spirituality. I find this mortifying. He purposefully misrepresented the sacred traditions of indigenous people for his own gain. (He backpedaled on the Yaqui derivation of his mythology early on and in The Eagle’s Gift as well.)

I get that many people have been deeply influenced by Castaneda’s works. They contend that there’s still merit in his books regardless of them being based on lies for profit. But because of his methodology of lifting the actual practices and philosophy from several traditions and schools, I doubt he presents anything new that we can’t find somewhere else in a more honest and encompassing way.

That he used his fame and charisma to become a manipulative cult leader only takes me past discomfort into full blown disgust. Like the imaginary don Juan, Castaneda claimed to be celibate while using his position of power to lure young women into his sphere, and then flattered and seduced them - bending them to his wishes. Not only did he have sex with them, but he dictated their appearance and created an atmosphere of jealousy and rivalry through his distribution of affection.
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Our discussion group has talked before about finding value in the message regardless of the messenger. But when does it just become too much? Should we trust an author like Castaneda when we know what we do about him?

I am reminded of the ethical dilemma that scientists faced after WWII: should we or should we not use the findings of the grotesquely horrible experiments Nazi doctors performed on concentration camp inmates? The fact that this even comes to mind says something about how repelled I am by Castaneda.

And that was science—where it is conceivable on some level to separate results of at least certain kinds of experiments from their circumstances; and where those who were experimented on may have found at least a modicum of solace had they known their suffering would benefit future generations.

But this is spirit—and we’re back to the same question: can you separate the message from the messenger? The sacred journey is an aspect of the human experience that has universally (?) held honesty and compassion as foundational. Can someone lacking those qualities be a worthy guide? (I'm open to examples of spiritual paths that disregard honesty and compassion. None come to mind, but that doesn't mean that none exist.)

I spend a lot of time in the yogasphere, where we are up against this question all the damn time. Bikram is only the loudest current example of it; for decades the people around him advocated tuning in to “the message not the man.” And during all of that time, the abuse persisted.
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There is much more to this story but for now and for the purposes of discussion here, my question to you is, what if any redeeming value is there in Castaneda’s work?

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There’s Always Less You Can Do

9/21/2016

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When I was first coming out of my agoraphobic stage, I told a friend that I felt like I was never doing enough. This woman, for whom I had mad respect, who spent her days in social activism and hands-on sustainability projects, said, “There’s always more you can do.”

Because of my irrational achievement needs, I interpreted this as an admonition, as saying “If you’re not at maximum capacity, you don’t really care.”

I realize now that she may have meant there will always be more work to do, and all we can do is our best. But I was off the deep end. I had gotten to the point where there was no such thing as down time. I believed that even reading fiction was a wasteful sin, forget about television. My entire life was striving to be a perfect version of the Earth Mother archetype.

Central to the story—this was never the role I wanted to play. I was well aware that I was living somebody else’s dream life: stay at home mom, huge raised-bed gardens full of vegetables, spending my days making beautiful vegan food and educating myself about all the atrocities modern life has wrought on the planet.

We installed a solar hot water system; composted; tried not to buy anything nonreusable; embarked on large research campaigns before all major and many minor purchases; and saved up our recycling for when we drove one county over, since our county didn’t have recycling yet.

I wrote blogs for a carbon credit organization and a vegetarian magazine, lecturing into the void about our failures as a culture from the safety of my home. Mostly I judged: I judged every single one of my own actions and most of everybody else’s by a set of completely unreasonable standards.

I was absolutely miserable. There was always more I could have been and should have been doing.

But, like I said, I knew this wasn’t my life. This was someone else’s ideal existence. I had left my path of study; of delving into the mysteries; of gathering lofty thoughts and taming them into manageable, relatable chunks. And in the process I lost my self.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve become overwhelmed with striving again, overwhelmed with the feeling that there’s always more I could be and should be doing, and it all has to do with the business of Yoga. I think there's more I should be doing: to be out there in the community, to market my books, to reach more people.

And I have to keep reminding myself, I came to Yoga to find peace. I became a teacher to make sure I maintain my practice and keep returning to that place of peace within. I love that what I do also helps other people, and I love the community I’ve become a part of. But I have to watch out for trading in one obsession for another.

So, this is the lesson from Yoga that I need to keep in mind these days –“There’s always less you can do.” As long as we are wrapped up in the ego personality, there is always something we can let go. As long as we keep holding on to the past and projecting into the future, there is something we can stop doing. Until we are at peace, present to this moment with grace and gratitude, there is always less we can do.

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Celebration Talk

9/3/2016

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Here is the little talk I prepared for the book release celebration. It's based around questions that people ask about writing a book like this (and questions I hoped they would ask :-) ).

How long did it take to write?
The question I get asked most often is “How long did it take you to write it?” And the honest answer is, I’m not sure. I started doing the research long before I knew I was writing a book.

Like a lot of us, I was attracted to mystical paths and altered states even as a teenager. I read everything I could, cobbled together a meditation practice, and studied it in college.

Fast forward to when I started the physical practices of Yoga, and I just wanted to learn everything I could about it. In a very real way, I fell in love with Yoga; it was like a mad crush. I wanted to know everything about it, to make it as much a part of my life, a part of me, as I could.

When I became a teacher, I felt like I needed to get a handle on the early texts and philosophy. So, I started studying with Georg Feuerstein.

And all along the way I’ve been fascinated by the question of how yoga went from being naked old men in the forests of India to scantily clad women in the studios and gyms of the U.S. It was a question I just kept picking at, as other people were at the same time.

Then, when Tamara asked me to do the Philosophy section for her teacher training last year (2015), I had the opportunity to put it all together, to tell the story. And this book is the expanded and polished version of my lecture notes for that training.

Short answer: I researched this book for roughly 26 years, and it took me seven months to write it.

Favorite part
The next question I really hope you want to ask, because I am going to answer it, is “What was your favorite part to research and write about?”

Oddly enough, it was what ended up going into the chapter called “Western Seekers, Eastern Lights,” that time frame from around the 1890s to the 1930s or '40s. This is when yoga really changed, and that is a fascinating story, but that wasn’t what gripped me.

Also in this time frame we have these incredibly earnest reports from Europeans who went to India as spiritual seekers and just had their socks knocked off by this thing called yoga. And these guys, these middle aged white men, these journalists and gentleman adventurers, it’s these guys who I really resonated with.

Once you get past the ethnocentrism and the outright racism, I could identify with these guys, these seekers who found what they were looking for in the consciousness-altering techniques of yoga. Their stories were captivating to me.

The yoga they describe is old school. It’s an all-encompassing commitment to shedding the attachments of the ego and seeking peace, bliss, and liberation. It’s a long, slow, painstaking journey urged on by the promise of eventual enlightenment.

It wasn’t pictured as easy or fun or comforting. It was a strictly disciplined life of single minded devotion to one end. And that end was radical freedom.

And my heart swoons for it.

Bigger picture
Which leads me into the next question I’m happy to ask for you, “What effect did writing this book have on you?”

These stories about the old ways of yoga, and my process of coming to grips with seven or eight millennia of the various mystical paths of India had a few effects, which I think I can fit into four categories:

It reminded me, constantly, day in and day out, of the true purpose of the practice. It really drove home the weight, the depth of the undertaking, giving it a sort of sense of urgency. A sense that rather than “your money or your life,” it’s “your ego attachments or your joy.” Pick now, pick in every precious moment.
At the same time, the truly epic time frame of the process was made more real to me. The results of Yoga don’t happen quickly. Even people who may have been considered to be spiritually gifted had to spend decades slogging along, if you will. So, that has given me more space, more patience with my practice.
I’ve gained a new slowness. Everything I read, just everything, pointed to this slowing down as indispensable. Especially those reports from the turn of the last century. Reading things like, “then we hold shavasana for an hour,” and “the perfection of padmasana comes when you can hold it comfortably for three hours.” So I guess I feel like holding a posture for a whole minute or even two is not that much to ask.
Another freedom I’ve found came through being led back again and again to the old trope that all these paths, these many styles of yoga, are leading up the same mountain. And that, along with feeling really secure in my practice, has given me a freedom to investigate the paths of other traditions, other types of mysticism, from other religions.

Overall, I’d say the impact this book had on me was to drive home the gravity of the yogic endeavor. This is serious business, so serious that it was kept secret for hundreds of years. It was kept secret until it was threatened with dying out.

And because it was no longer secret, it was available and able to be modified and commodified. To be candid, I have conflicted feelings about that. Without it being made available, I might not have found it. But it also would never have become the watered down caricature that it’s presented as in the mainstream today.

So I guess, in my small way, I hope that this book helps usher in the next incarnation of yoga, where we can keep what’s been great from the last hundred years and also restore its magnitude, its great vastness and depth, where we can give yoga the reverence it deserves.

Thanks again everybody for all of your love and support!

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Dynamic Tranquility

8/31/2016

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This was the quotation I used in our Yoga to Ease Anxiety class tonight. A few people asked for it, maybe a few more can find some benefit. It comes from Rudolph M. Ballentine's The Theory and Practice of Meditation, by way of Georg Feuerstein's Yoga Gems.

“Tranquility should not be confused with passivity or apathy. It is, rather, a dynamic quality of balance and harmony. As love is the outward flowing of energy in selflessness, and joy is the experience of accepting the natural divinity of all life, tranquility is the experience we have when we know and accept ourselves for who and what we are.

“We are the source of our own turmoil. The inner doubts, fears, impulses, the unconscious drives and motivations, all create an imbalance that leads to mental and physical suffering. We remain unaware of our spiritual identity and are caught in habits and patterns of the personality. The habits that make up this small self control us, and we bounce whenever and wherever the habits bounce, nearly always reacting to the world, with little capacity to consciously choose our actions in the world. When, through meditation, we come to experience directly our true spiritual identity, the personality with all its peaks and valleys no longer exerts a claim. We experience an inner calm and tranquility, a center that is secure and free of conflict. From the vantage point of this calm, unattached center, we gradually resolve our inner conflicts and unfold the subtle potentials of the deeper mind.”

Aloe Polyphylla Spiral by Just chaos CC BY 2.0

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Warrior: The Origin of Virabhadra

8/26/2016

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Shiva Dreaming, by Cornelia Kopp. CC BY 2.0

If it were up to Shiva, he would sit, meditating on Mount Kailasa all the time. It is only because of his interactions with the goddess in her many forms that Shiva takes any kind of active role in the world.

Here is the story of Shiva and Sati, and of how Virabhadra (of virabhadrasana/warrior pose fame) came to be.

The goddess Sati is the daughter of Daksha, and Daksha is the son of Brahma the Creator. Now, as children of the Creator, all of Brahma’s children also create. Daksha creates culture.

Shiva, the Destroyer, stands outside of culture, setting up a polarity between Shiva and Daksha. And indeed, there are many stories that set Shiva and Daksha against one another. This is one of them.

Sati married Shiva against her father’s wishes. So, when Daksha held a huge fire ceremony (yajna) and invited all of the gods and goddesses and the great sages, he did not invite Shiva and Sati. When Sati heard of this, she was angry and determined to go anyway. Shiva said, “Nothing good will come of it,” but he did not stop her.

The Yajna

Daksha's Yajna, Public Domain. In the foreground Sati pleads with her father, Daksha.

When Sati arrived, the ritual was already underway and a great fire was burning. Her father was not happy to see her. When she asked why she and Shiva had not been invited, Daksha ranted. He told her that Shiva was worthless and not deserving of respect. He called Shiva names he considered disgraceful: king of the goblins, beggar, the ash-man, and the long-haired yogi.

Sati countered, “Shiva is everyone’s friend. No one but you speaks ill of him. All that you said, the gods and goddesses know and still they adore him.”

According to the custom (to the culture) of the time, when a wife heard her husband reviled, she was to either leave the place with her hands over her ears. Or, if she had the power, she should end her life.

Sati walked into the raging fire and died.

When Shiva heard the news, he was furious. In his grief and rage, he tore out one of his dreadlocks and from it created the personification of his anger – Virabhadra, a thousand-armed demon.

In Sanskrit, vira means hero and bhadra means blessed, fair, and beautiful. Just as in the renaming of Rudra, the Howler, into Shiva, the Auspicious, we see a wild and violent deity beseeched to mercy through renaming.

Virabhadra

Shiva Carrying Sati Away from the Yajna. Wall picture at Srikhanda Bhoothnath Temple in West Bengal. Photo By Sripat Srikhanda. CC BY 2.0

The description that follows of Virabhadra and the ceremony is from Tales of the Shiva Purana, compiled by H. G. Sadhana Sidh Das.

“Virabhadra shone with energy and he had thousands of mouths and eyes. His hair glistened like lightning and his hands were full of all sorts of weapons. When he spoke it was like thunder. From his body, Virabhadra created a female demon named Bhadrakali.

“’What are our orders?’ asked Virabhadra and Bhadrakali of Shiva. ‘Go and destroy Daksha’s Yajna,’ was the order. To help them in this mission, Virabhadra created several other demons from the parts of his body. All of them had a thousand arms and carried weapons. Virabhadra, Bhadrakali, and these other demons headed for Daksha’s Yajna. When they got there, they found that the sacrifice had already started and the sacred fire was burning.

“The sages were reciting hymns and the Gods were watching. Musical instruments were being played. Virabhadra roared and the sound of the roar was so loud that several of the Gods began to run away. The earth shook and there were tidal waves in the ocean.

“Daksha was frightened. But he summoned up courage and inquired who they were. ‘We are Shiva’s assistants and we have come to take part in the sacrifice,’ replied Virabhadra. Virabhadra and the other demons then proceeded to burn down the structure where the sacrifice was being held. They tied up the priests and threw all the offerings away.

“With their weapons, they attacked the Gods. Whatever resistance the Gods tried to put up was taken care of by Virabhadra’s [trident] and Bhadrakali’s spear. The Goddess Sarasvati lost her nose and the God Agni lost his arms. The sage Bhaga had his eyes gouged out and the sage Pusha lost all his teeth. Virabhadra sliced off Daksha’s head and gave it to Bhadrakali. Thousands of thousands of Gods died and the sacrifice became a battlefield.

“Vishnu tried to fight it out and he and Virabhadra shot arrows at each other. But one of Virabhadra’s arrows struck Vishnu on the chest and he fell down unconscious. Spurred on by Brahma, the Gods began to pray to Shiva. These prayers pacified Shiva and he asked Virabhadra and Bhadrakali to refrain from causing further damage. Brahma asked about the Gods who had been killed to bring them back to life.

“When Shiva calmed down, he returned the lives of the dead Gods and everyone was back to normal. But Daksha’s head could not be restored. So a goat’s head was put instead and Daksha was forgiven.”

Shiva, the long-haired yogi who lives outside of culture and is concerned only with meditation, defeats the Culture Maker whenever they come up against one another. Culture is maya, an impermanent illusion. Culture led Sati to throw herself in the fire and Shiva sent a vicious reminder that some things are more important than following the rules.

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On the Cloud of Unknowing: Medieval Mysticism from a Yogic Perspective

8/24/2016

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Dark Cloud Silver Lining, by Nareign. CC BY 3.0

The Cloud of Unknowing is a classic text of medieval Christian mysticism.* For some, this book has just too much about our “wretched sinful nature.” I completely understand. It took me some time to process my initial negative reaction. I wrote about that here. And now? I am absolutely digging The Cloud! And I want to tell you why.

In amongst all the talk of sin and the devil and our shame and guilt and puniness, there is the essence of mysticism. Check this out: after our anonymous author bids us not to be “inside yourself, outside yourself, above yourself, behind yourself, or on one side or the other” (chapter 68), he tells us spiritual work should feel as if we are doing exactly nothing.

“Continue doing that nothing, as long as you are doing it for the love of God. Do not stop. Work hard at it with a powerful desire to be with an unknowable God. . . . [C]hoose ‘nowhere’ and this ‘nothingness.’ Do not worry if you are not able to figure this out in your mind. That is the way it is supposed to be. This nothingness lies beyond your grasp. It can be felt more easily than seen. It envelopes those who contemplate it even briefly in blinding darkness. An abundance of spiritual light creates this darkness. Only our outward nature calls it ‘All.’ It teaches the essence of all things, both physical and spiritual, without giving specific attention to any one thing alone. The experience of this ‘nothing’ that happens ‘nowhere’ dramatically transforms our love” (68-69).

Do nothing; be nowhere; become transformed. That's the message of the mystics throughout the ages. Elsewhere he says, much as the Tao does, to “Think of yourself as wood in a carpenter’s hands, or as a house in which someone else lives” (34). But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Goal

A mystical path is one of seeking union with the Ultimate, and that is our author’s stated purpose. “I desire to help you tighten the spiritual knot of warm love that is between you and God, to lead you to spiritual unity with God” (47).

The method he advocates is contemplative prayer. This is not the kind of prayer I grew up with. Not “Now I lay me down to sleep” or reciting the rosary. This is not the freeform supplications of Sunday morning or even Wednesday evening preachers. To describe what he means, our nameless author says, “The essence of contemplation is a simple and direct reaching out to God. People who pray at this depth do not seek relief from pain nor do they seek increased rewards . . . ” (24). They are not praying for anything; well, not for anything other than moving closer to God.

Also super important, our author does not see God as a father-figure God, a jealous God, or any other form of God that can be described. “[Y]ou are far better off contemplating God’s pure and simple being, separated from all his divine attributes” (5). Much later he says, “We speak one way with people, and another way with God” (47). In fact in this type of prayer, “Words are rarely used” (37).

Contemplation is wordless prayer to a formless God.

The Work

Infrared Dark Cloud, NASA public domain.

Contemplative prayer isn’t easy. In fact, “Everyone finds contemplation difficult,” he says, “regardless of personal experience” (29). It is hard and constant work, as we see in these admonitions:

“Devote yourself now to a time of contemplation. Beat upon this cloud of unknowing. Rest will come later. This will be hard work, unless you receive a special grace. Let it become habitual from continual practice” (26).
“Though I highly recommend brief prayer, there is no limit on the frequency of prayer” (39).
“You do not have any freedom to practice moderation during contemplation” (41).
“Engage in it tirelessly for the rest of your life” (41).

He does not, however, advocate “vulgar straining.” Rather he beseeches the reader to “discover how to love God joyfully with a gentle and peaceful disposition of body and soul” (46).

To accomplish this “devout intention directed to God” (39) we must forget everything else: “Let modest love prompt you to lift up your heart to God. Seek only God. Think of nothing else other than God. Keep your mind free of other thoughts. Give no attention to the things of this world” (3).

This instruction to turn our thoughts away from worldly things is central to contemplative prayer, because “whatever you think about looms above you while you are thinking about it, and it stands between you and God” (5). “Whatever you think about”—we are to forget about everything, even things we might not consider worldly, things we would consider sacred—everything but God.

“Even holy work interferes with meditation. Similarly, you will find it inappropriate and cumbersome to think profound holy thoughts while working in this darkness of the cloud of unknowing” (8).
“Thinking about humility, charity, patience, abstinence, hope, faith, temperance, chastity, or voluntary poverty is counterproductive” (40).
“Forget about time, place, and body when you engage in spiritual effort” (59).
“Put distracting ideas under a cloud of forgetting. In contemplation, forget everything, including yourself and your accomplishments” (43).

Our author recognizes the difficulty of this, especially in letting go of the self. He offers a few pieces of advice that we’ll recognize as encouraging mindfulness, such as “Pay attention, then, to how you spend your time” (4), and “I want you to evaluate carefully each thought that stirs in your mind when you contemplate God” (11). At one point he entreats his reader to relax completely, realizing the impossibility of our effort, and to accept ourselves as we truly are (32). “Nothing humbles us,” he says, “more than seeing ourselves clearly” (13).

Clearing the mind of thoughts about oneself is key to clearing the mind of everything: “You can see that if you are able to destroy an awareness of your own being, all other hindrances to divine contemplation will also vanish” (44).

There is one tool that our author offers to help us control the wandering mind, and that is to choose a word and hold fast to it.

“You may wish to reach out to God with one simple word that expresses your desire. A single syllable is better than a word with two or more. ‘God’ and ‘love’ provide excellent examples of such words. Once you have selected the word you prefer, permanently bind this word to your heart. This word becomes your shield and spear in combat and in peace. Use this word to beat upon the cloudy darkness above you and to force every stray thought down under a cloud of forgetting. . . . Do not allow the word to become fragmented. If you keep it intact, I can assure you distractions will soon diminish”(7).

But earlier, you may be saying, didn't he say this type of prayer was different, wordless? The difference is in the way we use the word: “Let the word remain in a single lump, a part of yourself” (36). He is not advocating using words to ask for anything, nor is he advocating the intellectual investigation of the concept the word represents. That would be futile. Really, he’s quite persistent in reminding us that our thinking minds are unable to comprehend God:

“[W]e are incapable of thinking of God himself with our inadequate minds. Let us abandon everything within the scope of our thoughts and determine to love what is beyond comprehension. We touch and hold God by love alone” (6).

The purpose of the focal word is to turn off the thinking mind, not encourage it.

The Cloud

Campfire and Sparks, by Kallerna. CC BY-SA 3.0

Then, when we have quieted the mind, put all of our thoughts under a cloud of forgetting and set aside even our discriminative faculty, we approach the cloud of unknowing.

“God remains far beyond even our most profound spiritual understanding. We will know God when spiritual understanding fails, because God is where it breaks down. St. Denis wrote, ‘The only divine knowledge of God is that which is known by unknowing’” (70).

The experience of the cloud of unknowing, he says, consists of “a dark gazing into the pure being of God” (8).

While he tells his reader that the process is lifelong, the actual experience of union can happen in a flash.

“Genuine contemplation comes as a spontaneous, unexpected moment, a sudden springing toward God that shoots like a spark swirling up from a burning coal. . . . Any one of these sparkling moments may take on a unique quality resulting in a total detachment from the things of this world.”(4)

“Many think contemplative prayer takes a long time to achieve. On the contrary, results may be instantaneous. Only an atom of time, as we perceive it, may pass. In this fraction of a second, something profoundly significant happens. You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God. This brief moment produces the stirring that embodies the greatest work of your soul.” (4)

And that is the end to which he would have us strive: “the greatest work of your soul.” Later he amends himself, saying “Perhaps it would be better to speak of it as a sudden ‘changing’ rather than a stirring” (59).

What exactly is this “greatest work?” What is it that changes? “After God graciously transforms our soul, we begin perceiving what is ordinarily beyond our comprehension” (4). The cloud of unknowing “teaches the essence of all things, both physical and spiritual” (68). We begin to gain control of our will and may come to experience heavenly bliss (4). We find rest for our soul (26). And “Once this moment passes,” he says “prayer for others will be inclusive, caring equally for everyone.” After which he immediately assures us that,

“When I speak of the passing of the moment, I do not imply that we come down completely, but rather that we descend from the height of contemplation in order to perform activity required by love” (25).

Perception, presence, bliss, rest, seeing into the essence of things, and recognizing the equal worth of all people—those are the results of union with God.

The Cloud and Yoga

Every one of the mystical elements our author relates is also described somewhere in the Yoga tradition. The Bhagavad Gita tells us to reach toward God with love. The Yoga Sutras tells us that after we still the mind and come to reflect the Sacred, we will have a new perception of reality and control of our will.

In Yoga, some of the tools we use to overcome the self are

bhakti: devotion
tapas: discipline
svadhyaya: study of scriptures and self
pratyahara: withdrawing attention from the senses
vairagya: detachment from the world outside and from the ego
dhyana: meditation

These tools help induce samadhi (union), which results in ananda (bliss).

That is what I saw in The Cloud of Unknowing, a stunning description of the timeless human experience of touching the Sacred.

Om / Amen

Darwin River Dam, by Bidgee. CC BY 3.0.

* Link is to the modern interpretation I use throughout, edited by Bernard Bangley.

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6 Do’s and 2 Don’ts for a Home Yoga Practice

Why Have a Home Practice?

Do enjoy your practice.

Do take time to turn inward before you begin.

Do be present.

Don’t feel like you have to do every pose.

Do hold each pose for a few breaths.

Don’t overdo.

Do savasana.

Do keep at it.

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Detachment and Mindfulness

Further Questions

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There’s Always Less You Can Do

Celebration Talk

Dynamic Tranquility

Warrior: The Origin of Virabhadra

The Yajna

Virabhadra

On the Cloud of Unknowing: Medieval Mysticism from a Yogic Perspective

The Goal

The Work

The Cloud

The Cloud and Yoga

Om / Amen

Yoga Talk

Archives

Categories

​Why Have a Home Practice?

Do enjoy your practice.

​Do take time to turn inward before you begin.

​Do be present.

Don’t feel like you have to do every pose.

​Do hold each pose for a few breaths.

Don’t overdo.

Do savasana.

Do keep at it.

​​Humility

​​Detachment and Mindfulness

​​Further Questions

The Yajna

Virabhadra

The Goal

The Work

The Cloud

The Cloud and Yoga

Om / Amen

Yoga Talk

Archives

Categories

Why Have a Home Practice?

Do take time to turn inward before you begin.

Do be present.

Do hold each pose for a few breaths.

Humility

Detachment and Mindfulness

Further Questions