We’re supposed to blog about the Gunas. Here it goes:
There are three “Gunas” in yoga--considered the three energies that govern anything happening in the physical plane. “Rajas” is forward-backward, dynamic, insistent movement. “Tamas” is upward-downward, heavy, low-vitality movement. “Sattva” is the balanced, light, graceful, stillness movement. Extremes and then the middle. It seems that that is constantly the battle I am in. Trying to find the Sattva as I fall into Rajas or Tamas. And that is what yoga is about. Playing with and exploring all the energies and finding them all in their time. So I wonder if I’m putting too much pressure on myself in trying to find the Sattva when I can just trust exploring the other energies and know that they will lead me to Sattva when it is the right time. Hm. www.gobodhiyoga.com
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2/26/2015 0 Comments Yoga Post #3: Yoking and Breath In our first weekend training, we talked a lot about what yoga is and how it came to be. Yoga means to yoke. To connect the body mind and spirit. I'm sure this means something different for everyone, but this is what it means to me. My body is important. One of the main purposes of coming to earth is to experience a body. It's not something to deal with, or put up with-- it's something to yoke. It’s something to integrate with my spirit so that I am a more powerful Divine Being. I've been studying this for years, importance of understanding and being in tune with my body so that I am more in tune with my spirit, and it's interesting to hear the yogi perspective. From what I understand breath is what helps it connect. Breath is the tool through which the yoking occurs. We can live for weeks without food or water, but we can't live for more than a few minutes without air and breath.
This blows my mind. How much do I not understand the power of my breath and how I can use it to connect, integrate, and heal. I started the yoga training at the end january, focusing on the throat chakra started in February, and I know that breath has a lot to do with me being grounded and speaking my truth. It all seems to be coming together. At the end of January, I knew that my focus for February needed to be breathing. Just being and breathing and understanding how my breath connects to my body and my spirit and it integrates the two. I learned during that first weekend that I really needed to understand what my own personal yoga practice looks like. Whether or not I ended up teaching, seemed very much secondary to the importance of what I was being taught about developing my own personal practice. AndI knew that this month my personal practice would be a lot of breath work. And as I’ve explored that this past month I can't really describe what I've learned very well. I've learned how to open my body and allow for breath. That you allow it to go places in your body that I didn't realise breath could even go. I explored and experimented with different poses, and how they affected my breath naturally going into different places in my body. I would want to stay there and just breath for hours. And allowing myself to do that allowed me to be more truthful with me and how I represented myself to other people. Maybe coming to know my own breath allows me to come to know myself. At the very beginning of January I went to a Kundalini yoga and meditation retreat. My friend Amber and I went to see what it was all about and understand it more. (And basically to check out the vibes, to see if it was a good Christ-centered thing.) It was, and that kept us going on this hippie meditation yoga track. We laugh about it to ourselves and with other people, but it feels right, so what can we do? For the last couple of years I've realized that my throat is an emotional holding place. I've stifled a lot of my emotions for a lot of my life and as I finally started to become in touch with them they would get stuck in my throat because I didn't know how to communicate them. I would often get aching in my throat and I know that it had an emotional base. Kundalini meditation consists of chanting out loud, and I really connected with that. I've been drawn to Buddhism for that very reason and so it was a nice tool to add to my spirituality toolbox. BodhiYoga has been going through the chakras. Every month is focused on a new chakra starting from the root up to the crown and February was going to be the throat chakra. I was pretty excited for that. Every month, as I've been participating with the other chakras, breakthroughs have happened in those areas, and I knew this throat chakra was a big one for me. As I started to study through this yoga teacher training, & I worked on the meditation mantras, & I learned about speaking and rejoicing in truth (oh the synchronicity in my life) the tension started to go away in my throat. I started to be more honest and truthful and when I felt emotions I would allow them to be, instead of trying to hold them back, even if I didn't know the purpose for expressing them. Often this would result in pretty vulnerable experiences, but I would leave those experiences feeling so whole and right and cleared.
I'm grateful for the gift of my body and that it communicates with me about my emotional needs. What a wonder! Now I know and have practiced the power of recognizing when I'm holding something back and the importance of expressing it, as well as the power behind the ancient tradition of chanting. The crazy thing is my voice’s resonance has naturally become a tad deeper and I notice that when I'm grounded and and breathing and speaking truth better, it stays in that place. 2/26/2015 0 Comments Yoga Post #1: Me and YogaLast year at Christmas time I had a pretty distinct impression that I was supposed to do yoga a lot more. I kind of got into it after Christmas break but didn't really allow myself the time. 6 months later I get in a pretty bad car wreck. Before the wreck I've been trying to slow down but it hadn’t been going very well. I pretty much had a “CrossFit life.” I've learned that for right now at least, God wants me to have a “Yoga life.” The car wreck slowed me down a lot and I started to go to yoga more, in hopes that it would help my back heal. It did help me feel a lot better and I started to become more and touch with my body. It's always been on my bucket list to become a yoga instructor, but it’d been pushed low on my priority list. The studio I felt really drawn to in Provo was BodhiYoga. I heard that they're having another yoga teacher training at there, and the thought had come to me to do it, but I didn’t have the money and didn't know if that would be the right thing for my time. Months passed and it kept coming up in my mind every once in a while. Finally I thought “If there is one spot left, I'll do it. I'll find the money and I'll do it.” After class that day, I talked to Syl (the owner) and found out that there was one spot still left. So I really started to work to find the money. I prayed hard and told God that if this is how he wants me to spend his money, I'll do it. The money came and I signed up. Little did I realize how transformational this process would begin to be for me.
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anna
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