~ Gravity : Power : Yoga ~

Posts Tagged ‘Asana’

My final research topic for teacher training was a paper on one of ~15 topics.  Being close to my heart I chose “Yoga & Christianity”.  Seems like an interesting topic, right?   I mean I’ve been doing yoga for 7 years and have never once felt like I needed to pray to a Hindu god, or felt like it was contrary to a Christian based faith system, yet have this constant query by Christian friends about “isn’t yoga anti-Christian?”  What I found as I dug deeper really interested me, enough that I thought I’d share some of it.

As I dug into it I found that while the Hindu philosophy of religion is about communing with the Lord, it is very open to the different God figures and believes that all paths lead to the same God.  Christianity seems to be much more threatened by this, is driven by the unified belief that there is ONE God and that all other religions and their followings will go to hell because they do not believe exactly what the Christian church believes.  This seems a little drastic I must say.

This is where I stray from my Christian upbringing, let’s take a Buddhist monk for example, they live their lives in selfless devotion to others and spending spiritual time with God.   Am I to believe that this person is evil and going to hell because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God?  I cannot, this is where I stray, and at the same time where I find piece in the yogic school of though about spirituality.   The practice of physical asana is designed to prepare the mind and body for meditation (read spiritual time).  How I choose to spend that time, the god that I pray to or commune with is a choice of my heart and not something that is (or should be) taught in a modern yoga class in the U.S.

The Key Topics or findings that bring me to my conclusion are:

• Hinduism is about becoming closer to God
• Christianity is about becoming closer to God (thru Jesus)
• The practice of yoga is meant (in all forms) to bring the practitioner  closer to God (with no specification on who’s God this refers to).

The Arguments:

• One main argument by the Christian church is that yoga teaches that each person is God, indeed we greet each other with the term “Namaste” which roughly translates to “the light in me solutes the light in you” and the belief that we all carry a piece of God within us.   This is a problem for Christianity, but why?  Christianity believes that the “Holy Spirit” lives within us, is this not the same thing?
• The Catholic church is threatened by the idea of people being able to commune with God without their help, and has stated that practices such as meditation and yoga can lead to the devil entering the mind.  Yet this same church encourages its followers to pray on a daily basis and in these same declarations states that tools from other religions can be beneficial to the Christian practice of fellowship if used in those terms.
• B.K.S. Iyengar’s “Light on Yoga” has been proclaimed as “The Bible of Modern Yoga”…   In this text Iyengar Describes Yoga as the “union or communion.  It is the true union of our will with the will of God”…

My Conclusion:

That while yoga originated deep in Indian culture and has ties to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, what is practiced today is a physical practice in line with the Hatha yoga tradition.  The ultimate goal of practice is to prepare the yogi for spiritual time and bring them closer to God.   As a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, etc… the definition of God is left to the practitioner.  The original idea being based in the Hindu belief that all God’s are the same God, just with different names and different paths to the same place.

“Yoga is the science of God-realization and Peace, it accepts that “truth is One, Paths are Many.”

I hope this helps somebody on their spiritual journey, researching it and writing it has certainly helped me on mine!

~ Namaste

I often give little thought to the Chakras as I practice, and now teach, yoga. This was for sure the case on Saturday night when we did a 2 1/2 hour Chakra meditation an practice in our TT class, in fact, I found it damn near impossible to stay awake. But that was last night, that is in the past now. Fast forward to Sunday night, it had been a long weekend o TT and my mind and body wer FRIED!!!!

Then the music started, it wasnt that zen Yani crap that makes me want to go deeper into my nappy place, it was rockin hiphop and all sorts of other lively tunes. I decided it was time to give every last bit of anything I could muster, time to leave it ALL on the mat (so to speak).

I want to share what I found in all of this, my 6th Chakra, of all things! By the time I hit svasana i felt like my brain was being electrified, like something had changed in my body and mind. One classmate commented that she thought it was the 3 minute inversion, I have no idea, but well find out!!!

in the wise words of Tina Fay
I want to go to there

I ask because I now know for sure, I like teaching power!  It’s that simple, while I love my friends who I have taught beginner flow to, I have to say the challenge of building a sequence that both challenges the power yogi (or yogini) and encompasses all the core strength and stretches is WAY more fun!

So I want to give a special thanks to my newest friend, SG, for giving me the challenge, and bringing the talent to make it fun!  What could be more fun than finding a way to sneak in half a dozen inversions, arm balances, and core work!

But just as important, the lesson I learned about myself.  As part of my training I am required to teach, but teaching beginning yoga to people that have never practiced yoga is a challenge that I just don’t enjoy.  Sure, I can do it, but it seems to require far more effort, and provide far less pleasure than throwing together a power challenge for an advanced practitioner.

Thank you to all of the great power teachers that I learned from, what I teach my students today is simply mocking the great lessons I have learned from you over the years!

~ Namaste

Since my introduction into yoga in 2003, I have found that the best way for me to enjoy the unity of body and mind is to give my self a good butt kicking.  Six months ago I would have argued that for me to have any piece of mind that I would need to be drenched in sweat and on the brink of fainting to achieve that drishti…  Fast forward to June 1 2009, with the birth of my new baby girl, a full time job, the desire to start a new yoga related business, and I don’t know if it’s that I’m just too tired or that I have moved into a new phase of my practice.

Today, IF I get to the mat it will be because I feel it calling, but also because I feel guilty for not visiting with it.  I can honestly tell you that I would rather be laying down on it taking a nap than practicing any type of vinyasa practice.  So what does this mean for the GPY dude?    I keep telling myself “just one good night of sleep and I’ll be back on the mat” but is that all it’s gonna take, can I really make it back from here?

Do people really recover and go back to their old practices, or does practice change forever?   I’m off for some svanasana, catch you later!!!

~ Namaste

Or not… As somebody who has practiced faithfully three to five times a week for the last 2 1/2 years, right up to the point of surgery.  I’m now paying the price for being out of practice for six weeks. While I know deep down in my heart that if any health & wellness program is perfect for surgical recover it would be yoga, I still find my mind pushing to go harder and faster than my body should.  How do I separate the soreness from starting back to a normal asana practice from the potential pain of angering the surgical site?

I have a plan!  I’ll let you all know if it works in a few weeks, for me a little bit of a “mind body exercise”, so to speak.

Let me first say that it has been six weeks since my appendectomy and I have clearance from my docs to get back to it (slowly as they say).

The plan is simple, to satisfy my need to move and practice while still building in extra time for the recovery of my body.  
- Days 1,3,5,7 I will practice a fairly normal asana practice (some power, some just good flow).  
- Days 2,4,6 I will practice something more in the restorative realm or Yin yoga realm.

That’s it, simple right, heal the body, satiate the mind!

Well, that’s the plan at least, check back here to find out how it worked.