Cross training teaches us that we are only as fit as our weakest fitness discipline. Even if your physical training is solid, if your nutrition or rest are off, or are dealing with sub-optimal levels of physical or mental stress, then your performance will be below par. And by performance I mean life. Shakespeare told us that “life is a stage” and spirituality reminds us that our ability to be present and to act with full commitment to this moment is the only reality. This is our performance. Physical training does a whole lot more than keep our bodies healthy and happy. It teaches us to engage with our whole being. In the beginning that can mean using our legs or our hips in ways that we are unaccustomed to. Later we are asked to become aware of much more subtle aspects of embodied movement.

Our bodies are in-formed by our functions and if our only function is sitting at a desk, on a sofa, or behind a steering wheel then our sense of self diminishes. Through yoga, pilates, strength training, running, swimming, cycling, dance and tai chi we are expanding not only our range of movement but our range of expression. All the esoteric movement forms emphasize this quality yet it is just as important in the exoteric ones.

Observe how the majority of people are running along the seawall. Chances are you will see a lot of people who look heavy in their bodies and chances are they feel that way too. They’re running because they believe that they need to get into shape. They are performing the action for some future reward. With this approach often the reward never comes and when it does it likely will not satisfy as one was expecting. “I ran the seawall every day for a year and all I got were fallen arches and tight hamstrings.” Yet stay long enough on your bench and you will likely see someone moving along with grace and flow. They look light regardless of their physical mass and they also look like they’re having much more fun. It’s astonishing how often we all can fall into this trap. A friend catches us with a sorrowful expression on our faces when we are absent, or our brow knits severely while performing an action. Mental stress can rob our bodies of their vitality. Conversely any movement performed with a clear, relaxed mind will not only be more fun but it will be more efficient. My young nieces have explosive, unlimited energy for fun, yet coerce them into a linear walk or any other activity where their instincts for exploration are suppressed and they fall into lethargy and demand piggy-backs.

The upshot of this is to really listen. Listen with your body, heart and soul. Take breaks, feel the movement or the stillness of whatever you are engaged in, even if it’s working at your desk. Nineteen times out of twenty when you don’t want to make your workout or your yoga classes if you drag yourself to class you will feel much better for it. However one time in twenty (or so) the best thing you can do is honour the body-mind system’s need for rest or change. Last year I had an important workout scheduled and when I awoke from my kitchen window I could see the mountains covered in fresh snow. My spirit leapt and demanded that we go snowshoeing that day. My mind resisted and reminded my spirit of the Plan, of the Schedule. So of course, I blew off that workout, spent the day running in the hills, and the next day, sore and tired, surpassed my expectations for the workout.

We use these linear plans of movement and training as a tool to develop expressiveness. To expand our sense of self. Yet there is a dance around the most defined of movements and training schedules. There is play and breath and feeling. Without these things we would revert into a very false, mechanical view of ourselves. With them we find unlimited resources right at the edge of our experience, we find incredible resiliency in the body, and we find a joy in life that can only astonish and keep astonishing.

I was in discussion recently with a colleague who felt that the practice of yin yoga was dangerous because it involved completely collapsing into one’s skeleton and connective tissue. And certainly some interpretations of yin yoga seem to suggest this approach. Thinking about it further I noted that Paul Grilley, one of the founders of yin yoga, has a background in weight lifting and I suspect that this may be why some of his verbiage can be taken in this way. I got into weight lifting, or as I prefer to call it, strength training, when I was practicing and teaching so much yoga that I found my joints came to feel a bit lose. I would go to the gym and do squats and other exercises to tighten up and it felt good. I noticed following this that I carried with me a bit of extra tension, that, on a reasonably flexible person like myself, felt quite good. This meant that I could relax a little bit deeper into the poses without “collapsing” and damaging my joints. People who practice strength training are some of the best candidates for yin yoga or for restorative yoga because these practices give their bodies everything that they are missing (with the exception of some cardio perhaps).

Collapsing needs to be differentiated from “yielding” which I’ve heard defined as “resting in contact with awareness.” When one collapses one turns off, and disconnects and doesn’t feel. Yet when one fully feels and is fully aware, even if they are resting, quite passive or as I prefer to say quite “receptive” there is no collapse. That is there is a subtle current of support that comes with awareness. You can take this principle into everything you do. Trying to sit with “good posture” in a car for instance is nearly impossible. You lower back is rounded and often the seats make your shoulders hunch forward. Yet bringing awareness to this “pose” brings with it a form of support. Simply feeling how you sit will turn on subtle core support for not only your skeleton but also your organs.

Thus I think that of all the qualities we might bring to our yoga practice, and to our lives, poise is the greatest one. Feeling your body’s full weight and yet sensing a quality of levity within it. Connect this feeling to that of your breath and you will likely find a quality of grow within your body. Nothing here is collapsed, unconscious or static. It is yielding, full of awareness and dynamic.

Huh? How, you are potentially wondering, could something as benign as meditation, with its supposedly universal benefits to intelligence, health, and world peace, possibly be dangerous? Even meditation’s detractors would only suggest that it is a waste of time, surely?

Dr. Lorin Roche summarizes, indeed pioneers the research into this little known field of “meditation injuries.” When I first encountered the information on his web site I was stunned. I had experienced some of these same things before, on ashrams, in meditation circles, and yet never had I heard anyone give voice to this aspect. It is possible to over-meditate and meditate in the “wrong way.” It’s possible to un-wire some of the basic (and healthy) framework of yourself.

Lorin brings humility, humanity, a tremendous sense of humour, passion, and a zest for life as well as nearly 50 years of experience in meditation and working with meditators of all sorts. I only wish I’d encountered his teachings years ago and I would have saved myself more than a few headaches (literally and figuratively) as well as knee aches and back pains.

He will be in Vancouver Feb. 5-6 to lead a workshop called Deepening and Expanding: the Art of Teaching Meditation through Soul Spring Wellness. This workshop will be of interest to anyone teaching yoga or meditation as well as to anyone simply interesting in thoroughly (and healthily) understanding meditation practice.

Someone complimented me for riding my bike to class today. The suggestion being that I somehow do this out of self-sacrifice. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I am blessed to be a cyclist, a driver, and a pedestrian. I find that being comfortable doing all three gives me a healthy perspective for each. For one, being a driver makes me much more aware as a cyclist. It reminds me that drivers don’t have nearly the awareness or reaction time that cyclists do and to take a wide berth when riding in traffic. Being a cyclist makes me a much more aware driver. I am aware of the limitations of my senses when I’m in a car and know that cyclists can suddenly appear when least expected. As a pedestrian I recognize the natural self-assurance that comes with walking. The walker moves the slowest of them all and often has the sense of “what’s the rush?” when observing the movements of both drivers and cyclists.

Yet with all these choices, even the midst of winter, I choose to ride my bike the vast majority of the time. And it has little or nothing to do with my carbon footprint. I ride because I like riding. While I do enjoy a leisurely drive up the Sea to Sky highway when there is little traffic within the city I find driving for the most part stressful and stuffy. A quick ten to twenty minute bike ride can get me pretty much anywhere in town feeling refreshed and energized. I honestly cannot imagine what it must be like to spend an hour or two of each day behind the wheel of a car.

I am hosting Body Meditations on Sundays at 2:45pm at Inner Space Yoga in Gastown. These are experiential, interactive meditations done both sitting and lying down. I tuned into this type of meditation about two years ago after becoming disillusioned by other styles of meditation that attempt to use force to make the body still or the mind quiet. This latter type of practice, in my opinion can injure the bodymind relationship as well as divorce us from our passions and our intuitions and instincts. I find that Body Meditation takes you deeper than any other style I have tried. Come try it. The classes are about an hour long and offered by donation. The donations (and no donation here is too small) are all given to the Pacific Wild Salmon Foundation, a charitable research organization that does amazing work for the health of B.C. coasts.

I was riding my bike the other day – really hauling – and working my breath. That is, I was allowing the breath to drive the movement, as we do in yoga class. Here I was taking deep powerful breaths in through the nose and exhaling forcibly through the mouth. It felt like my legs were directly hooked up to my lungs and that each pump of air would send the pedals spinning. It felt great.

All exercise can be about the breath if you allow it to be. A friend recently recommended power cleans as “the most cardiovascularly intense exercise you will ever do.” And he was right. An initial set of five repetitions turned quickly into five sets of one. And that was a lot of fun. Remember strength training is not about the weight. It’s about using the resistance of the weight to encourage the body to move energy in a certain way. The yardstick is not the numbers on the plates; it’s the feeling of intensity that is run through your body.

Similarly, meditation can be thought of as the stillness behind everything. All our joys, all our sorrows, all our experiences are held here lovingly. It’s from this space that we learn to be more present, not just to sitting around on the floor, but to our friends, our loved ones, ourselves, and our experiences. It is the ground from which life emerges.

Restorative Yoga is fast becoming my favourite style of yoga. Coming out of a great class recently I caught myself remarking to a friend that it is “better than meditation” which is surprising as I generally regard meditation as the purest form of yoga. But Restorative Yoga readily pulls even the most inexperienced meditator into a deep state of relaxation and awareness.

Restorative is great for people with injuries and for older people as is often assumed. But that’s not all. Some of my most passionate Restorative Yoga students are bodybuilders. Why? Because anyone engaged in a regular athletic practice of any kind knows, deep in their body, that the limiting factor in their training quickly becomes getting adequate rest. Quality rest is a rare commodity in our over-worked, over-stressed times. Even if you’re not a bodybuilder or a powerlifter or an athlete of any kind, likely your nervous system is taxed beyond its limit. Even if you do get a full night’s sleep it’s not always the quality rest we require and night time movements and the mental activity of the brain can be far from restful.

Restorative Yoga is active relaxation. By bringing conscious attention to the relaxation process we can go much deeper. In the case of bodybuilders and powerlifters, people who are actively involved in rewiring their nervous systems through Strength Training they can feel this process. Their bodies are predictably, physically sore and the response from this soreness is measurable. They have an extreme and obvious response to the practice.

So am I recommending Strength Training? Absolutely. Using the principles of yoga, alignment and listening to your body, you can turn “working out in the gym” into a beautiful experience where great amounts of energy are mindfully sent coursing through your body. The rush after a significant deadlift can be as deep as the deepest savasana after a really great class.

The key is to practice mindfully. Start very light and slowly progress with the weights. The point is not how much you lift but your experience lifting. In this you are challenging your connective tissue and stimulating the production of growth hormone. Both these have a tremendous rejuvenating effect on your whole body and your immune system.

I love handstands. In Sanskrit we call them adho mukha vrksasana which translates literally as “downward facing tree pose” and it is just that. Your hands are shoulder width apart and you are looking straight down at your hands as you straighten your legs and your whole body above you. What you are doing here is sending the tree’s roots down through straight arms into and through open hands. The hands are there to draw energy up from the earth and into your body. Think about this as you practice handstand. It’s a lot of energy! And the hands and arms, unlike the feet and the legs are not used to that much energy. That’s why it feels hard. Nor is the body accustomed to holding so much energy upside down. Often when the body is inverted it can go slack, like when you are handing by your legs from a tree branch or being hung upside down by your feet. And think of when the last time you did either of these!

Allow the body to get accustomed to feeling this orientation of force. Hands on the floor, straight arms, play with kicking your feet up against a wall behind you and hold yourself there. Simply getting used to supporting yourself in this way; finding the balance between strength (arms straight, tummy and buttocks firm) and yielding to the feelings in the pose (relax your face and your heart.) I like to set up with my hands a few inches from the wall and then after I kick up to find balance first by pressing the top of my head against the wall: it adds a third point of support and allows the body to orientate itself around this. Once you are comfortable there you can remove the support of your head. Alternatively you can work with a spotter you will hold your feet or legs once you are up. Either way stay for as long as is comfortable for you, breathe deeply and come down when you are ready. This is one of the most energizing poses there is.

I’ve just started a new class at Exhale Studio in Yaletown. We’re calling it Yin Yoga on the schedule because Yin Restorative Slow Flow Hatha doesn’t quite fit. This somewhat lengthy title translates into “taking it slow and going deep by any means necessary.” So far some classes have been all restorative while others have been more Yin with a little bit of movement in between. Not sure the difference between Yin and Restorative? Come on down and find out! It’s from 8:30-9:45 to accommodate people being out later on these hot, summer days. Your first class at the studio is free so please drop by and check it out.

I had the tremendous pleasure of meeting Orland Bishop earlier this year and listening to some of his very important thoughts. Recently I encountered this video of him on the web site for the Global Oneness Project and wanted to share it with you.

You should come close to me tonight wayfarer
For I will be celebrating you.

Your beauty still causes me madness,
Keeps the neighbours complaining
When I start shouting in the middle of the night.
Because I can’t bear all this joy.

I will be giving birth to suns.
I will be holding forests upside down
Gently shaking soft animals from trees and burrows
Into my lap.

What you conceive as imagination
Does not exist for me.

Whatever you can do in dream
Or on your mind-canvas

My hands can pull-alive-from my coat pocket.

But let’s not talk about my divine world,

For what I most want to know
Tonight is:

All about
You.

~ text by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
~ photo by Rolf Gibbs

Sitting by the shore
Massaged by the sound of waves
Your mind is cast into the tumult of clouds
Allow yourself to be taken by vastness

Next week I am heading down to Esalen in Big Sur, California for a workshop with Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine called Luminous Being: Embodying the Radiance Sutras. The Radiance Sutra is a contemporary translation of a very ancient yogic text called the Vijana Bhairava Tantra. I was on the beach in Thailand when I discovered this text and the sensuous meditations contained therein and I was immediately transported into a luscious, expansive world. A friend describes these sutras as “acupuncture needles for the spirit.”

I made this poster last night and I think it captures the essence, or an essence, of these writings that truly bring the cells of one’s body into a state of “suspended animation.” There are times when we slow down the pace of our lives that we are no longer distracted by the big, attention-getting moves of life. Times when we slow our mental chatter and suddenly notice the sound of a nearby stream or the wind or the beating of our hearts. When we slow down further there is a tremendous sense of aliveness in and through the body. It is in this space that thoughts, feelings, ambitions and desires can dissolve and alchemically transform.

Have a look at Lorin’s website www.lorinroche.com. There are days and days worth of brilliant, insightful writings on meditation that are incredibly unique and valuable. If you’ve got the next weekend free (January 15-17) check out Esalen’s website at www.esalen.org for registration information. See you there!

Often yoga classes begin with what is called “centering.” This usually involves sitting comfortably and relatively still, closing the eyes and observing body and breath. If we take it a little further we are bringing ourselves both into the center of the body and the center of the mind.

Physically we balance ourselves from left to right and from front to back. Life often draws us to one side or the other, we reach for things, leaning to one side, and often collapse through the center. Though simple sitting may not seem like much of a balancing pose there is most definitely a subtle, balancing component to it. Whenever we sit unconsciously there is a tendency to let the weight shift to one side or the other and more noticeably a tendency to lean forward or, more commonly, slouch backward. Bringing ourselves physically to the center allows for movement into the third dimension: extension upward. If you sit comfortably, with a reasonably straight spine you will begin to notice a tendency for the spine to lengthen. This is a natural upward response to the downward pull of gravity. With this upward movement there is also an expansion outward which can activate arms and legs (left and right) and front and back bodies, without losing connection to the center.

Similarly, life is perpetually drawing us mentally off center, out of the present moment. We dream of something in the future or think about something that happened in the past. Or we watch television or read a book and for a while we are completely physically disconnected from our bodies and where we are. So in meditation we are bringing our awareness back into the center. Leaving the distractions aside we feel ourselves consciously center and in the same manner this allows for movement in a third direction. Upward movement in consciousness as well as an expansion in consciousness. Yogic literature abounds with descriptions of “withdrawal of the senses” which connotes a negative tone of life and sense denial. In centering there is an opportunity to simply balance and “elevate the senses.” We are not denying or disconnecting from anything in life but finding balance and harmony within it to allow for greater awareness of the senses, greater awareness of the body and an expansive consciousness.

A key principle here is that there is nothing static about this balance: it is dynamic. We rely on the movements of the breath and all the subtle movements of the body to bring us into this expansion. Like a top spinning, it can only maintain its balance with harmonized movement. Try to stop it (or suppress it) and it just falls over.

I am not a yoga master. I know few people who claim to be and fewer still who truly are. But I have found some tricks and techniques along the way that have worked, at least for me. And these I feel pleased to be able to share.

Meditation is one of them. Many people will tell you what meditation is and is not, and how to do it. Some say that how you sit, which foot is placed in front of which, is crucial. Others say that what you are looking at with your eyes is important. Still others will recommend a mantra or a mental activity to repeat or a particular mental focus to maintain.

Having experimented with most of these techniques I have found them all to be effective and have pared them down to a simple practice that I follow. Some would say that what I practice is not meditation at all. And I would agree. What I practice is doing nothing.

Why practice doing nothing? Because our consciousness is suffocated with thought. Because the constant schedule which we run our lives on is stifling and because the view that time is an absolute, Newtonian parameter which exists outside of us and which we are dependent on, is false.

Time is brought about by consciousness. Time changes as consciousness changes. If you’re bored time can seem to stand still. If you are involved in an engaging activity time can fly by or even disappear.

And so it is, I think, only healthy to take a break from our perception of time. To sit down and stop doing whatever we are doing, and stop thinking all the thoughts that seem so important.

I find that the best place to do this is outside, in nature. It may be a forest or it may be your balcony but the fresh air and the sense of being outside your created environment already disconnects us from some of our habituated thought patterns.

I like to sit still for about half an hour like this and just hold empty space in my consciousness. Daniel Odier refers to meditation as “silently guarding the empty temple” and I resonate deeply with this metaphor. I disagree with the rigidity taught in some zen schools. I like to sit comfortably on the ground or in a chair, scratch and occasionally look around and not be too concerned with getting caught up in the structure of what I am doing. The point is to not think, or not allow thoughts to develop momentum. If you find you are following a train of thought just let it go and come back to the empty mind.

You will find that this “empty mind” is anything but empty. Our thoughts are but the crudest models of the world we know. As such they misrepresent it grossly. When we dispel the illusion of thought (it is a useful tool when skillfully and judiciously applied) we find a richness of consciousness not a derth.

I feel that the progressive removal of people from nature (into routines, into white boxes and straight roads, and onto the virtual “realities” of various flatscreen repeating images) moves us into decreasingly complex world-views. As objects lose their idiosyncrasies so do people. Our world becomes made of repeating types, brands. Sense becomes just a trigger rather than a texture. Ultimately I think this leads to insanity on a cultural or individual level. The complex beauty of the mind broken from its mirror in the complex beauty of the natural world begins to create its own complexity in illusion and neurosis and paranoia.

That said it doesn’t take a whole lot of nature to reverse the process. A plant, gazed at fondly, a cloud-view, awareness of one’s own body. These can awaken this deeper, richer consciousness that is within us at all times. If these in-sights appear profound it can only be because we have disconnected from our natural state of awareness. In the tantric view of yoga we are not seeking states of consciousness that lie outside of us, rather we are deepening our awareness of those quiet, profound states, or more accurately, processes, of consciousness that have always been with us.

How simple is that? Well, it can be pretty challenging in a world where many people have been convinced that food and drink must be packaged and branded. Indeed, for the wise yogi (and conscious consumer) we do just the opposite. Consider that packaged food and beverages have such a long shelf life. In nature food must be consumed quite quickly or it goes bad. This capacity of “going bad” has a direct relationship to the nutritive value of the food itself. Food that cannot go bad most likely contains very little prana or life-force. Boxes, cans, cartons and bottles must all be avoided. Certainly we can indulge in the sense-pleasure of a sweet drink or tasty snack food once in a while but as our bodies tune to what we are eating we realize that the majority of people’s diets contain very little nutrition. Sure high-fructose corn syrup and trans fatty acids will pack some weight on you…but so will melamine the toxic, industrial protein-like substance found in all sorts of dairy-like products from China. This is because these substances are not properly processed by the body and instead stored in fatty tissues contributing to obesity, much like the body would with any toxic, foreign substance.

So what to do? Eat fresh fruits, vegetables, meats (if you like meat), eggs and dairy. Stuff that will go bad so you at least know that it’s good when you start!

Drink water. How in the world water has been flavoured, packaged, marketed, shipped around the world and then sold back to us at considerable expense is beyond me. I recall as a soda pop addicted teenager how I first heard the news describe my favourite beverage as “flavoured water.” The floor fell out from under me at that moment. I realized that I didn’t need flavouring for my water. Up until then I believed that pop was some sort of magical “other” substance. The same is true of fruit juices. Most of these (even the “fresh-squeezed” variety) have been processed beyond belief to obtain that long shelf-life required for Big Food. Basically you get some water, some unneeded sugar, a little vitamin C, and some flavouring. Bottom line: drink water, from the tap or your Brita and if you want it to taste even better (and be even healthier) squeeze a little fresh lemon in it (from a lemon not a bottle).

One exception to this is of course tea (or coffee if you like coffee). Tea does contain a lot of healthy compounds and is best brewed at home. Get the real stuff, no tea bags, and put it in a dedicated french press or similar device. Green teas, black teas, herbal teas all taste much better, cost less, and don’t waste paper and bleach as do their tea-bagged cousins.

Fitness, like Conscious Living, needs to be come at from many different angles. In Steve Ilg’s book “Total Body Transformation” he writes that the word ‘fitness’ comes from a Norse word meaning to knit together. Thus, we have the notion that we are bringing elements of ourselves together in order to strengthen the overall ‘weave’. If we stay within our comfort zones then the areas we are not exploring become major limitations to allowing Energy, Wellness and Life to flow through us. Thus we need to challenge ourselves regularly in diverse ways. In fitness this means practicing yoga, strength training and cardio. In Ilg’s system of Wholistic Fitness (tm) he adds two more disciplines of meditation and nutrition turning it into not only a system of fitness but of holistic, spiritual living. Why challenge ourselves so? I remember a few years ago when I discovered Ashtanga Yoga, in the tradition of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. I was practicing this vigourous style of sweaty, acrobatic yoga 6 days a week. to the exclusion of any other forms of physical activity. My heart would pump, I would sweat, my muscles would shake. I thought at the time that I was getting a complete workout. Then one weekend I went to hike up a mountain with some friends who, while they hiked occasionally, weren’t in great shape. I was sure that I would fly past them and I didn’t. I realized that I just didn’t have the cardio stamina. That’s when I began diversifying my practice. Around the same time I went water skiing and pulled the muscles of my lower back. Somehow here I intuitively knew that if I had trained in the gym lightly, even once a week, that this wouldn’t have happened. The yoga in this seems to be the gel that smoothes out the aches and pains, softens the sharp edges left by running, cycling, and strength training, and encourages a degree of mindfulness to all of our activities. Just as it feels so challenging to get out and strengthen our weaknesses, there is a synergetic effect to this practice that, once we get a little momentum going, super-charges everything we do.

Note: Having suffered for a day from allergies this spring I was cured within 24 hours, drug-free, by applying the below technique.

Typically in the practice of Yoga we are asked to breathe through the nose. This slows down and makes even the breath as well as filtering and warming the air, thus making it more palatable for the lungs. I have many students who find it difficult to breathe entirely through their nostrils. For them especially, but also for anyone who wants to breathe more clearly and fully the practice of neti is recommended. Here warm, saline water is passed through the nostrils, cleaning them and the sinuses as well.

For this purpose, typically a neti pot is used. This can be a small teapot or a vessel specifically designed for neti. Clean, filtered water is used, mixed with boiled water to reach a comfortable temperature. The water must be no warmer or cooler than body temperature to start. Cooler or warmer can be painful so be careful. Equally important is that the salinity of the water be increased with the addition of approximately 1 tsp of non-iodized salt (preferably sea salt) per 500mL of water. Play around with this. If the water is not salty enough it will be uncomfortable to pass it through your nose, feeling much like getting water up your nose in a pool did when you were a child. If it is too salty it will seem really salty and also be uncomfortable.

Then you simply put the spout of the teapot or neti pot against one nostril and tilt the pot and the head to one side to allow the water to pass through and into a sink beneath you. Halfway through change sides. A great way to do this is in the shower where the steam will have already opened up your nasal passages and the water will flow more freely.

Afterwards fold forward at the waist (and stretch your arms behind your back) and allow any water that didn’t make it out to release. You may feel your sinuses fill up with water and as you come up it will drain. Do this a couple of more times.

This practice can be done everyday by people who are quite stuffed up or who have allergies or as infrequently as once a week. It is excellent to do neti before practicing pranayama and meditation. As well I use it every time I’m heading up into the mountains so that I can really take advantage of the fresh air and huge amounts of prana.

Please note: in my experience it is not a good idea to practice neti if you are developing or in the midst of a full blown cold. In this situation the “stuffed up” feeling is part of your body’s way of combating the cold so allow it to run it’s course first or you will risk sinus infection.

While there are a multitude of different yogic pranayama (breathing exercises) the highest is also the simplest: savour the breath. It is quite easy, if one pays attention for a short while, to become aware of the subtle nuances of the breath. This naturally encourages a deeper, more steady breathing, without the use of force. In this breath there is a richness that in turn feeds consciousness: the process of becoming aware postively feeds back on itself. Begin to notice the brief pauses between the inhale and exhale. The moment of stillness in fullness at the top of the inhale and the moment of stillness in emptiness – a touching on the creative void – at the bottom of the exhale. Hang onto none of these states but allowing your awareness to pass freely through the full range of experience, growing deeper and richer with each passing breath. When you feel you have connected with the breath sufficiently, rather than absent-mindedly falling off into unconscious breathing or thoughts, choose to take three last full breaths before consciously returning to your ordinary awareness and activities.

One of the things that yoga is doing is expanding our limited sense of self: increasing what we are conscious of and what we identify with. When we identify only with a limited person in a limited function in the world then we create a very severe and untenable illusion. As we expand this awareness one of the largest and most apparent fields of energy we come into contact with is that of the Earth. We can feel it and see it all around us. It is as much a part of our awareness and our “self” as this physical body and all the experiences it appears to have undergone. As one taps into this awareness one feels tremendously supported. One also feels a greater responsibility to one’s actions. It is impossible to truly practice yoga and not feel concern and involvement in the overall state of the Earth. For this reason yoga and its principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, introduce us directly to the conservation of our planet and the wildness, or non-human, aspect of it. This is not to say one uncritically accepts all that is being touted as “green” or “eco-friendly” these days. There is still a lot of snake oil on the market and this is why the practice of yoga is necessarily wrought through first-hand experience and not through dogma or belief. Tune into that instinct in yourself and observe what actions are necessary and in harmony with the greater world around you. You will find that they are also in harmony with your highest good as well.

There is a sense, in some people, that in hurrying through the present moment, in rushing past things of significance, all for some perceived higher good, we can somehow repay ourselves this lost time and experience. This is not true. This is our moment, and while it may not kill you to hurry through life, the payback will not be there, at least not in any significant way to compensate what has been lost. This is not to say that we follow the most trivial of whims at all times, but rather that we attend to what we are doing and how and why. Even if we seem to be working, only if we attend to the method and means can we hope for profit. This type of compensation is immediate and secure and it is the only one.

Very often in our hectic lives we hear voices in our heads. Sometimes our own voice, or those of people we know, or often annoying catches of pop music or television commercials. Are these really OUR thoughts? I don’t believe so. Thoughts appear to come and go. When they come, due to their proximity and their intimacy we tend to indentify with them. We think that we ARE those thoughts. Introspection reveals this to be untrue. So what is the yogi, who seeks to come to the essence of Self and Existence, supposed to do? One option is to repeat a mantra, or series of sacred sounds, to oneself. To simply chant “OM” to oneself is believed to cleanse and uplift one’s mind. Another option is to let the little nagging voices or pieces of music be a reminder to come fully present into your environment. To listen actively to the entire soundscape you find yourself immersed in. There is a potency to simply being present. So doing, we can use our distractions to help bring us more fully into the present moment.

I recall walking into a yoga studio filled with buddha statues and
thinking “Why so many Buddhas? I know the people that run this studio
and they are not Buddhists so what does this mean?” I then had a flash
of inspiration: this seated, serene figure with an enigmatic smile
does not necessarily represent Siddhartha Gautama, it represents the
Master. Who is the Master? He is the One Who Has Gone Before.

Think of it this way. If you were endeavouring to climb a steep and
potentially treacherous path in total darkness without any assurance
that it was even possible would you do it? While some might, a lot of
us would not. But if there is a light ahead of you, a voice in the
darkness, saying “This is possible. This has been done. You can do it”
then the whole thing becomes a lot more likely. Without that light few
of us would have the courage to shed the herd and begin the Great
Work.

With his enigmatic smile, the Master is telling us that, not only is
this work possible, it is in fact the only thing worthwhile. As we
watch the cycles of impermance before us, even the most materialistic
person comes to catch on. There is nothing you can hang on to. There
is no bank who will honestly reward your investment. Save one.

The identity of the Master, your relationship to him, and the temper
and grade of your passage will all be unique to you. Honour this.

Traditionally morality is applied from a higher authority. There are
good arguments along the lines that if you are following a moral code
of behaviour to simply save your own skin (or soul) you are not really
behaving in a moral manner.

If we look a little closer, through the process of introspection, we
see that behaving in a moral manner is of the highest import to
spirituality. This doesn’t necessarily mean accepting a hand-me-down
code of behaviour rather examining one’s thoughts, words, and actions
and determining from what place in oneself they originate and what
part of oneself they are feeding. If we continue to nourish the small,
petty parts of ourselves then we will never be free of them. They will
dominate our greater spirit in this life and so keep it veiled.

Yoga can be looked at in two parts, I will call them the Greater and the Lesser vehicles. The Lesser vehicle of Yoga is what we do on the mat, in the studio. We start by bringing our attention to our bodies and our minds, by feeling what is happening as we relax into stillness. We just sit still for a few moments, following our breath, and allow the body and the mind to relax. We become aware of consciousness beneath thought: physical sensations, an overall “feeling-tone” Erich Schiffman calls it. Then we begin to move slowly into the postures. Each pose brings different sensations into the body. As you move into a stretch we feel the stretch, you feel more tension along the lines of the pose. You also bring a lot of extraneous tensions in. Just about anything we do, we do this, mostly without realizing it. We tense the face, the jaw, the shoulders, we may clench the buttocks or other areas that are not actually required for what we are doing. So once in the posture we begin to relax. Again, remaining still and watching the breath and scanning through the body for where these tensions lie. Relaxing everything we consciously can as we become aware of it and then acknowledging and accepting those tensions that arose but we do not seem able to release. If a large muscle group is engaged in a particular posture, as we spend time in it we may start to notice the subtle details of how that group is supporting us. We may find that only a subset of those muscles are required. Thus, the group overall relaxes. As this happens it is easier to support the muscles that are required. Both with our attention as well as physically. It becomes easier for fresh blood and oxygen to supply the muscles with energy. The pose feels easier. Our minds relax as well.

The Greater vehicle of Yoga is what occurs, for the most part, off the mat, outside of the studio. Here we begin as relaxed as we can be, sitting, standing, walking, and we move slowly into different life situations. We encounter a person and notice the “feeling-tone” of the body and mind change. Our mind, and often our hearts, speed up or slow down. Various tensions enter the body at different places. Like the postures, the tensions are ostensibly there to protect us. However, we have become over-protected and this has begun to harm us, to cut us off from the world and from a large part of ourselves. And so in these life situations we also use breath and awareness of body and breath to relax and ask ourselves what tensions are really necessary. If the person is physically attacking you then some of the physical tensions will be required, unless you are adept at juijitsu or tai ji. If they are mentally attacking you then perhaps some of the mental tensions will be required. Again a sort of mental jiujitsu or tai ji can be performed here where the attacks pass through you without harm. But in many situations you are not being attacked and yet some form of tension remains. So we watch these tensions and as we become aware of them we allow ourselves to release them. Again, we feel as we release that we are more supported. We have more energy to be present, to relax further, and the vicious cycle of fears relaxes and slowly unwinds.

Yoga is the process of becoming whole. It starts with the physical process of opening up tight muscles and strengthening and encouraging movement through the body and then goes much deeper. It connects not only the physical parts of ourselves, making the body more unified and graceful, but also brings us greater awareness of our minds and our emotions and how these influence, and are influenced by, the functioning of our bodies.

Yoga begins right where you are sitting now. Beginning students often feel that they are somehow disconnected from the practice because they are stiff or inflexible and that the postures as they imagine them to be are not possible. Yet this is exactly where we must be if we wish to pursue this goal, that of wholeness and self-knowledge. Simply being in the postures, for a few moments, a few deep breaths, initiates a deep process in the body. Tensions our minds wish not to recognize are brought to the surface, a humbling experience for all of us, yet simultaneously our body begins to let go. This takes time and patience and so the real challenge of yoga is to quiet the restless mind and simply let the process happen. Almost immediately we begin to receive some assistance: as the muscles relax we begin to feel the mind and the emotions relax and so the whole cycle supports itself. Yoga becomes easy.

It is appropriately ironic that the stiffest, most inflexible people are often the ones who benefit most from a regular yoga practice. Likewise, people experiencing a high degree of mental stress in their day-to-day life find tremendous calm and serenity by giving themselves permission to slow down for an hour or so each day. Time spent in active relaxation is rewarded by increased mental clarity and efficacy, and by a deeper, more satisfying sleep. The practice of physical yoga seeds a return to wholeness that spirals out into the rest of one’s life, encouraging harmony, balance, and insight. It is to consciously choose the highest path in one’s life.