Respect and Permission in Yoga—Yamas and Niyamas

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

The first two of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs are the Yamas and the Niyamas. Together, they set the stage for yoga practice. They form a comprehensive set of principles that govern moral and ethical action in relation to all spheres of life. An honest look at these all-encompassing precepts is enough to stop any thoughtful person in their tracks. Taken literally, they are unforgiving. To practice them requires great focus and is demanding on every level.

Are we actually being called upon to do and be these things? Yes, we are and as teachers or any kind of leader, it is even more critical that we take these precepts to heart.

At first glance, the Yamas and Niyamas are simple—and obviously challenging to live. As we explore and allow ourselves to inquire with depth and precision, they have the power to transform our personalities. They regulate our very thinking. They are checks on impulses and sculptors of right-action. They speak to containing the purpose and direction of our lives. They encourage—demand—that we stay true to the course of pursuing greater knowledge and clarity, and that we never cede to egoic desires for personal accomplishment and gain. These principles don’t lose importance, no matter how much or how long we practice. If anything, the yamas and niyamas increase in significance as our awareness broadens.

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As Teachers

The yamas go right to the heart of what is necessary to approach serious practice. Can we manage this? The niyamas add to the tall order, letting us know clearly the challenges ahead. They provide no outs.

Can we work together as a community to cultivate this?

We, the teachers, are invited to nurture our student’s growing yoga practice. Unfortunately, what we are witnessing today is that so many of the teachers who have been held in high esteem are not worthy of their status. I feel we need to look at this, not just “famous” teachers, and not only at the most egregious of abuse, but for the ways that we are all involved; culpable in silently promoting a system that subtly denigrates some and lifts others.

Who are we all in perpetuating a system of thought where one person is allowed to have power over another? We are all in this together.

Who checks the teacher? Usually, it is only the teacher, and that’s a problem. As teachers, we are the most vulnerable to losing track of our own practice. As teachers, it is entirely on us to manage our own actions. It is our job to maintain complete respect for our students and to recognize, handle, and contain our own distorted egoic needs and unhealthy desires. We all have issues. They will come up. Expect them and prepare for them. Personal integrity is first and foremost for teachers.

Do no harm. Basic.

When we don’t actively embrace a willingness to take full responsibility for our inner challenges and our outer actions we are on the precipice of doing harm. There are no excuses whatsoever for physical and sexual abuse. It is completely unacceptable in all situations. And…we all need to be careful not to succumb to the minor abuses of power that are so seductive whenever we—even we the normal everyday yoga teachers—are looked up to because we are thought to have some greater spiritual connection and knowledge.

It’s true. This does happen.

The stronger the leader, the more important the Yamas and Niyamas.

As awareness expands, our reach increases. People tend to see something in their teachers they wish they themselves had. They inevitably project their hopes and dreams onto them. They may see the teacher as wise, intelligent, or to have perceptual abilities that are beyond their own. Whether any of these projections are true or not is not the point. They often lead to a perceived power differential between the teacher and the student that almost always involves the student feeling lesser than the teacher.

As teachers and leaders, when we notice this phenomenon forming in our student/teacher relationships, we responsibly return to the yamas and niyamas. We are called upon by circumstances to go even deeper into our own practice and unearth the threads of egoic delight in power that are still embedded deep within our psyches.

This is a positive stimulus for the teacher. In the best of conditions, it helps to ripen the teacher’s wisdom. Seeing this phenomenon for what it is, is critical to our own, and our student’s well being.

Egos are tricky. We all know that much. We need to check our ego’s underlying rumblings and screams for attention. As teachers, it is our job to take our own practice seriously, and we know what that means. Importantly, it means returning over and over again to see how we are doing in reference to the yamas and niyamas. In the same ways that our practice is particularly challenging in our personal relationships, it is challenging with our adoring students as well. We all need to take the very real dynamics of student/teacher relationships seriously and attend to them carefully. As we have witnessed so often, not all teachers return to the yamas and niyamas as their power sphere grows. We cannot change what others have done, but we can take responsibility for ourselves now.

Permission and Touch—No Precedes Yes

The conversation about permission and touch in yoga is finally here. I think we are all relieved to have this discussion out of the shadows and into the open. The consent cards now available in studios are wonderful tools for students and teachers. I have found that I much prefer having them.

Of course, we have to ask permission and be respectful about where, how, and if we touch. Consent cards are an important step in offering power to the students. But there are layers and mitigators to consent. As wise teachers, we need to recognize that even if we are given permission, permission may be granted out of the student’s own misunderstanding about when “no” is appropriate. Encourage your students to say no sometimes. Encourage them to look inside to see if they really do want you, the teacher, to touch or assist them on that day. They may be surprised by their own feelings and let them know that you really actually will not take it personally. Then you have to make sure you don’t.

As a teacher, how do you feel when your student declines touch? Of course, you respect your student’s wishes, but do you ever take it personally? Do you think it is about you in some way? Are your feelings even hurt? Do you think perhaps it means you are not a good enough yoga teacher? Maybe you feel none of this. Maybe you feel all of it. It doesn’t matter what you feel. Just accept it. Do the personal work on your thoughts and feelings, and be sure not to make it your student’s problem.

Keep this in mind: When a student is able to say no to you you are offering them a true experience of personal power. They may or may not be willing or able to say no in their lives. That they can say no to you without being rejected by you can be a powerfully bonding experience.

No precedes yes. If you want something new you have to be able to say no to where you are. Without a clear no, there can be no clear yes. Being able to say no in yoga class is profoundly important for all of us. Being able to accept no is a learning and a deepening for yoga teachers.

Mutuality of Respect Breeds Deepening Respect

No one who is in form—has a body and takes a breath—is impervious to abusing power. Let’s resist being drawn into even the subtle projections of others. Know who you are. We can do this together. Continual questioning of ourselves is our ongoing duty. This is our practice.

Let us initiate the respect relationship. Our true respect for others is seen and felt by our students. They respect us back. Respect deepens on all sides. This is teaching.

Let’s allow and enjoy appropriate respect from our students and actively disavow other’s projections. Let’s respect our own teachers and the teachings of yoga. It is fine to let our students know, that yes, we have practiced long and consistently. And perhaps, if it is true, your practice continues to bear fruit. Let’s not even allow a glimmer of erroneous projection. Let’s happily accept the respect that is due and is appropriate to our dharmic endeavor. Respect is a beautiful and true offering…when it is earned and warranted.

Let’s accept the invitation to be leaders and guides.

May we become increasingly intelligent and careful observers of life.

May we endeavor to grow in our perceptual abilities and continue to share our deepening vision.

Let’s point the way and lead.

We can do this.

Let’s do this together.

26Aug2019

The Teacher’s Responsibility—Abuse, Power, and Respect in the Yoga Community

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

PRACTICE IS FUNDAMENTAL

Yoga is practice and it is process. It involves fearless and determined inquiry into the nature of life. It involves deep commitment and willingness to observe yourself more clearly. Yoga requires true bravery to not know—no matter how much you think you know.

We all need teachers. As teachers, we need to have teachers and it is incumbent upon us to question and to choose wisely. Delving into the process of discriminating the personal from the universal and weaving it back together into the whole cloth of life is a delicate process. It takes continuity of inquiry and wisdom. Chose a direction wisely. Choose your teachers wisely.

RESPONSIBILITY OF TEACHERS

In teaching yoga, we lead people right to the heart of their deepest yearnings and difficult self-concepts. We help them clear a path to a fuller understanding of all layers of life. We help them to open their hearts and minds and gain access to self-acceptance, spontaneous joy, and a richer experience of love and life. This is tender work and we take it seriously. It is a sacred responsibility to hold the position of guiding people toward a more holistic and even enlightened view of life and self.

“That which has most Truth lasts longest.”

Much of what we see currently in western yoga has not stood the test of time at all. We are babies in this. There is a lot to learn.

Currently, nearly daily, we are witnessing revelations about the ways blind trust of teachers and lineages has been detrimental to ourselves and our students.

It is the natural tendency of serious students to trust their teachers. Of course it is. The student is looking for answers and help with life’s difficult questions. In choosing a teacher, the serious student comes to you in a vulnerable state. They want to know. They want to be led in a real direction toward relief of pain and suffering. They want to learn.

When a student accepts someone as their teacher, it is entirely the teacher’s responsibility to be respectful of the student in every way.

We teach our students the underlying principles of yoga. We guide them on what may arguably be the most important journey of their life. We do this with kindness and the utmost regard for our student’s process.

The teacher’s job is to guide and lead. Much of what we teach, we teach by example. As human beings, we are inherently susceptible to the praise and admiration we receive from our students. It is a challenging proposition to identify and tame our own desire for recognition and praise. No one who is alive is immune to being led astray by other people’s respect and adulation for them.

That is why it is so important that teachers have their own serious and dedicated practice. As teachers, we need to check ourselves constantly to make sure that we are still adhering to the eight limbs of yoga. The eight limbs grow in importance as we grow in our process.

As we have seen, some highly regarded teachers have been revealed to be abusers.

The image of a person who claims—even implicitly—to be more highly evolved carries a lot of power in spiritual circles. Who wouldn’t want to surrender to a higher power that is right in front of you every day? Who wouldn’t want simple answers to life’s perplexing questions? Who wouldn’t give themselves over to a person who claims to know the answers?

There are no supreme teachers, only people—some of whom have genuine channels to universal intelligence. However, as human beings, all of us are susceptible to the insidiously destructive effects of having power over others. Power is very difficult for humans to handle in the best of circumstances. But when psychologically immature people are held up to be spiritually mature—many of the gurus about whom we read—it is a prescription for emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse.

As teachers, we must cultivate our own wisdom and apply it first and foremost to ourselves. This is called practice.

The wise teacher must resist any tendency to take advantage of the excessive attention and praise that is offered them. Teachers need to be strong and clear within themselves. They need to be wise enough to recognize their own underlying desires for power and be brave enough not to act on their own impulses and neediness. It is reasonable enough to ask our yoga teachers and spiritual leaders to act with the highest integrity.

Being a respected yoga teacher comes with serious responsibilities. People adoring and deferring their own wisdom to yours is a very seductive business for the ego-mind. Having power over people is the breeding ground of abuse. Only a mature and wise teacher can resist the adulation and power that comes with the projections our students may send our way.

We have seen many gurus fall—as they should. They were never super human and hopefully we are all learning to understand this. Only that clarity will free us from being vulnerable to the abuses of power that have been surfacing on a nearly daily basis.

Any ego is vulnerable to self-aggrandizing—especially when people are fawning over them. Fame and adoration are particularly hard to give up. If the teacher starts to believe their students, their own self-importance is in danger of inflating.

In this dynamic, all the responsibility lies squarely with the teacher.

If a teacher’s self-image becomes inflated or overblown it is always detrimental to their students. It is super easy, even for the most enlightened, to be enticed by self-importance. Diligent teachers understand this. They figure out ways to limit their self-aggrandizing thoughts. They use techniques to protect themselves from this tendency. They offer thanks and praise back to their own teachers and the lineages from which they come. They avoid taking credit for their inspiration and knowledge, by reminding themselves and their students that the truth is no one person’s domain. Truth and expanded awareness are equally available to everyone.

The teacher has the trickiest role of all and the highest of responsibilities.

This is not just for the teachers on the larger stage. It is for all of us. How we educate our beginning students shapes how they will observe and respond to other teachers as the years go by. We need to let our students know about power dynamics, especially within the spiritual and yogic communities.

Damage has been done. Now it is time to clarify and to act.

As teachers and guides, it is our responsibility to look our personal demons in the eye. If we yield to our ego’s tricks and desires—to the detriment of our student’s well-being—we abdicate our precious responsibility to nourish our students in selfless ways. We must do more to build our own discernment and intelligent questioning. We must pass the same discerning awareness onto our students. And we must never take more credit than we are due.

Personal agency is central in determining how we navigate our own spiritual process. Without questioning, we can become subject to illusions of grandeur, susceptible to someone else’s power, or both. Personal agency and critical thinking are important assurances of safety in a tricky world. As teachers, it is even more important for us to look these issues in the eye. Stare them down. We are responsible to educate our students and take heed ourselves.

Let’s recognize our own complicity. Because we are complicit.

We are intelligent beings and we need to remember to use our discrimination in all the choices we make. In learning to protect ourselves from our own delusions we become more capable of helping others.

Learn to embody all that you are with humility and grace. Learn to respect yourself for the diligence you have brought to your practice. Learn not to perceive yourself as better or worse than anyone else. Be a guiding light to others.

HOW WE THINK ABOUT IT MATTERS

Danger lies within the hierarchical thinking so many people bring to yoga. Hierarchical systems organize people above or below one another based on status and authority. They often involve situations where a single person holds power over the actions and lives of others. This is particularly true in many religious organizations.

Spiritual systems of all kinds consistently raise people to positions of power over others. This is risky business. In embracing this principle in our yoga communities we encourage the tendency for students to think the teacher is better than they are. The yoga community at large runs the danger of perpetuating a hierarchical structure that is ripe for abuse. Power does corrupt. It is the teacher’s job to clarify the misconception.

In our unspoken acceptance of hierarchy, we become complicit in a structure that breeds the abuse we have seen in the yoga community.

We must unearth and excavate, bringing to the light of day our complicity in a system that consistently raises people to positions of power over others.

Organic structures are not hierarchically formed. We are organic structures with every cell awake, alive, and self-aware. That means we are all in this together and need to take conscious responsibility for who we are, what we teach with our actions and words, and who we consciously take ourselves to be.

When a student lets you know how great they think you are, tell them they are looking at themselves. Tell them you are just like them, equally flawed and equally spectacular. Let them see who you are, for their sake—and for your own.

Respect your students. Respect yourself. Embody the possibility.

Let’s learn together to respect ourselves for who we are and not who we think we should be. Let’s respect ourselves for our ongoing and concerted commitment to practice. Let’s own the knowledge we have gained from our diligence, and yes, allow our students to respect us. Let’s happily and generously offer guidance when it is requested. Encourage them to inquire and to read, to think for themselves, to study, and to delve into what is truth and what is fiction.

May we all continue to think very carefully about what is of value, what is useful, and what is not. As our student’s guides, we need to be beacons of strong practice and resolve. That includes all of the eight limbs. It includes every breath we take, every word, and every action.

It is an incredible gift to be able to be a yoga teacher and we mustn’t take it lightly. When we don’t do the work, the whole work, and nothing but the work, we lessen the integrity of the path we walk and the philosophy we teach.

Let’s allow our students to question us freely. Let’s resist the temptation to step onto the pedestal that is offered.

May we all work together to assure we do not—even unconsciously—enable or become the perpetrators of emotional, psychological, spiritual, or physical abuse.

Ever.

5Aug2018

Who am I? — Yoga’s Call to Action

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

WHO AM I?
Who am I? is considered to be one of the core inquiries in yoga practice. Am I composed of divine radiance manifesting into form or am I primarily this compilation of qualities and traits that feel to be thick, dark, and dense? Why is radiance obscured from my vision? If I am divine, why do I still suffer?

Who am I in this? Am I universal awareness, individual consciousness, or both?

From which layer of conscious awareness do I choose to perceive? Do I have choice in this? What does my choice have to do with how I experience life?

If the divine radiance propels manifestation in the first place, why does it mire the personal into the depths of form so that the universal source is missed by the individual’s perception?

Why even in serious and committed practice do we need to aspire so constantly to witness the source of who we are? Why is it not immediately evident to all? Variations on these questions have led many to deny the existence of God and completely denounce spiritual practice altogether.

NEVER NOT BROKEN—AND ALWAYS WHOLE
What if the universal design is just not what we think? What if the design is to create a seemingly chaotic explosion of structure and events in order to play? What if the design is for the vastness of universal creativity and intelligence to play and enjoy its own ability to create and manifest? Wouldn’t a nearly limitless intelligence want to throw the pieces asunder in order to challenge and entertain herself? What if, like a creative and intelligent child with a huge bin of Legos, the divine radiance has joyfully dumped them out on the floor, and with focus, determination, and love, is assembling them together into rich and varied forms? What if that is the game?

Would it be alright to simply be one of the disjointed pieces, that when woven together can make a whole?

The manifest world, as we experience it through our intelligence and perceptual abilities, is an intricately woven field of awareness and form. It is always fragmented and broken, and it is always whole. Nearly infinite creative possibilities are inherent in the pieces, and the pieces are always in flux. Everything that is alive is moving. If it is moving it is infused with prana, and prana is the creative partner and vehicle for divine awareness. Continue reading →

29May2018

Developing a Personal Practice — Active Relationship with the Yoga Sutra

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

yogasutra1-14

The Yoga Sutra, the preeminent text on yoga consists of four padas—or sections—each containing a number of individual sutras. In his Yoga Sutra, the sage Patanjali sheds light onto the workings of the human mind, the specific and particular brands of suffering that we unwittingly impose upon ourselves, and the full picture of healing and resolution for our suffering. Patanjali has offered a codification and thorough description of the practice of yoga, and the means for relieving the inevitable suffering of the human mind that is not aware of its inherent depth of intelligence and power—Pure Unmanifest Awareness. Patanjali provides us with a precise outline for practice.

I. Samadhi Pada defines yoga and puts the practice in perspective. We are introduced to the ways that our individual minds cloud our experience of the true nature of life.

II. Sadhana Pada covers the yamas, niyamas, asana, and pranayama. It provides the necessary framework for effective practice. Pranayama is the gateway to the inner world.

III. Vibhuti Pada takes over where Sadhana Pads leaves off, honing in on the more subtle aspects of practice. Beginning with pratyahara, it addresses the ways to continue to refine our awareness, addressing, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. This pada moves into the realm of samyama—the integration of the three.

IV. Kaivalya Pada: In the final Pada, Patanjali brings together many of the more esoteric and sometimes difficult to understand teachings of the practicality of practice. Although it may read as densely philosophical, it is rich with subtle practices of inquiry. Patanjali invites us in even deeper. When awareness has been mostly cleared these inquiries can bear fruitful knowledge and the inquiry itself continues to refine and hone the individual consciousness—making it a more and more radiant and open receptacle of Divine Light.

At the beginning of the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali lays out the context for practice. He encapsulates his entire message in the first three sutras, immediately addressing the need for practice, what the process requires, and the goal. If the first three sutras are intriguing enough, one will practice. If they are not, there will be little motivation to continue.

Sutra 1:1
atha yoganuśhāsanam
Now begins the instruction on the practice of yoga.

Atha communicates the auspicious nature of the teachings that are about to be elucidated. Most commonly translated as “now”, atha is also the expression of the self-luminous guiding Intelligence that resides within the heart and mind of every human being. By using the term atah to initiate his treatise on yoga, Patanjali sets the stage for the comprehensive message that will follow: we are all radiant beings, our very nature is manifesting into form with brilliance and power, and it is possible to recognize this directly. The meaning of “now” is in itself auspicious. Now is the present moment, the place of no future, no past, only this exact unmoving place of presence and radiance. Now describes the unified state of mind. In the first sutra, Patanjali has created an inclusive container for all the teachings that are to come.

He continues to say that “now”, perhaps you may be open to undertaking the inquiry that will reveal the core of being to your conscious awareness. The implication is that now one may actually be ready to practice yoga. One has tried everything else, and finally understands the futility of looking for satisfaction within the arena of the solely personal field of individual mind. Having seen and tried every machination of effort to gain contentment in a life perceived through the most superficial layers of consciousness, one is now ready to seriously embark on the study of yoga.

With the term anuśhāsanam, Patanjali is stating emphatically that yoga means practice. Patanjali lets us know right away that the Yoga Sutra is not simply a philosophical text. Patanjali is stating right at the start that yoga requires practice and the strong implication is that practice will require commitment and fortitude. Continue reading →

16Feb2017

A Life of Inquiry through the Kleshas—Journey to Clarity and Freedom

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

Ganesha—the Great Remover of Obstacles

The kleshas are the tendencies of individual consciousness, that when left unchecked, form serious obstacles to our evolving awareness. In his Yoga Sutra, Patanjali has encapsulated the basic patterns of mind that cause the most trouble for us in our embodied existence. The Yoga Sutra is very clear that all of these issues arise from the primary problem of lack of correct knowledge, lack of spiritual understanding of who and what we actually are. The Yoga Sutra is crystal clear that our main problem is, “Mistaking the Seer for the seen”. In this context, the Seer is the permanent and unchanging field of Awareness, and the seen is everything that exists in the field of form. Awareness and form are bound together to form all that exists in nature. This includes the personal ego, and all aspects of mind and body. We make a big mistake when we allow our individual ego-mind to take on the role of the ultimate perceiver.

Continue reading →

10Jan2017

God’s Body by Matthew Andrews

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Matthew Andrews

“I am the path and the goal, the upholder, the master, the witness, the abode and the refuge, the loving friend, the origin, the foundation and the dissolution, the resting place and the imperishable seed of all…I am immortality and also death, and the existent and the non-existent am I, O Arjuna.” Bhagavad Gita 9.18

Embodyoga offers us a unique opportunity to experience God in our bodies. Much has been said about the body/mind split, and much healing has happened in recent years as we awaken to the reality that body and mind are one whole, integrated through and through. We know that health and healing require the re-integration and re-partnering of body and mind, rather than viewing them as individual systems to be “worked on” individually and separately.

But we also have historically created and experienced a false split between matter and God. Not just science, which in its modern dogma of fundamental materialism often denies God altogether, but religions and spiritual traditions throughout history have put God up, up, and away, out in the cosmos somewhere far away from us. Even many yoga traditions have spoken of God as an abstraction, an idea, a story, a myth, and union with God something that happens by transcending and escaping this world through meditation or other methods.

God is not far away. God is intimately near. Every atom, every molecule, every living cell on Earth is made of God. God is the Oneness that gives birth to life, and life lives in everything, even material that we often speak of as ‘dead’. Even in dead matter, protons and electrons are swirling, life and mind are involuted but dancing, sleeping but waiting to awaken. And this life is God’s breath, God’s life, God’s being. This mind is the mind of God.

Continue reading →

11May2016

Embodyoga® Overcoming Otherness —by Matthew Andrews

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Matthew Andrews

dancing-shiva
In our modern “Western” culture, perhaps more so than in any other culture in history, we’re taught to see and relate to surfaces. Even when we dissect or disassemble things, we find within them more surfaces. Atom, nucleus, electron, quark…on and on through layers of surfaces. Underlying qualities and interconnections evade us, retreating from the spade as we dig deeper and deeper into the soil of matter.

We can cut through the trunk of a tree, observe the rings and grain, name the tangible processes through which it derives nourishment from earth and sky, but what does this tree know? How does it feel? What is its inner, subjective, experience of the world, and how does it relate to and communicate with the forest? We learn from a young age that these questions are inherently silly, childish. We learn to dismiss an investigation into the mind of a tree or the subjective experience of a forest as unscientific and unreal. And yet when we create a world in which only humans’ subjective experience is real, we become dead to the complex, living web of intelligence that surrounds and infuses our ecosystems, our bodies, and our minds. The illusion of aloneness is at best painful, and at worst the driving force behind Earth’s next mass extinction.

Continue reading →

19Apr2016

Tantra, Cellular Awakening, and Embodyoga®

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

Tantra and Embodyoga®
Tantric thought arose about 1000 years after the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali were codified. Whereas the Yoga Sutras of Classical Yoga address the objective of overcoming the obstacles presented by being in an embodied form, Tantra is the yoga of engagement and relationship. Tantra sees the body and the world as the foundations of yogic practice, far from obstacles that need to be overcome, as is so often the perspective in Classical Yoga. In contrast, Tantra focuses directly on the body. Tantric philosophy includes a direct study of the human body-mind-energetic system with the goal of recognizing the Unity of all of life and engaging in the play of a life lived fully. A person who lives life in fullness accepts and incorporates all aspects of the human experience and celebrates our embodied form as nothing more or less than an expression of the Divine. Tantra recognizes the value of experiencing the universal wholeness (of which we are all a part), while enjoying the play of differentiation and individuality, which we embody as human beings. By viewing each individual body-mind system as a miniature replica of the structure of the universe, Tantra teaches that by studying our selves and our relationships—through all the levels of our personal manifestation—we open to the Universal Reality that is equally within as well as without. The practices of Hatha Yoga derive from Tantra and are designed to assist each person in the process of recognizing the abundance of life force that plays out before our eyes at every moment. Embodied Anatomy™ follows the same techniques that are outlined in the Yoga Sutras.

Embodied Anatomy™ takes us on a journey into the varying textures and densities of our form and structure. We consciously inhabit and become intimate with the family of cells and functions that support our very existence. In this process we begin to recognize the intelligence and awareness that is at the basis of each and every part of our body. Through Embodied Anatomy™ we actively explore ourselves in space from our densest structures to the most ethereal and spiritual.

Continue reading →

5Apr2016

Shraddha In Embodyoga®—by Matthew Andrews

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry by Matthew Andrews

“[Shraddha] is literally “that which is placed in the heart”: all the beliefs we hold so deeply that we never think to question them. It is the set of values, axioms, prejudices, and prepossessions that colors our perceptions, governs our thinking, dictates our responses, and shapes our lives, generally without our even being aware of its presence and power.”

–Eknath Easwaran, Introduction to his translation of the Bhagavad Gita

We all have shraddha. We are made of it. Our system, or structure of beliefs literally creates the multi-dimensional beings that we are. And like breath, we exhale our shraddha, our foundational beliefs, into the space around us. They swirl through space, permeating the atmosphere, and are absorbed into the fabric of our lives. Then we inhale, and we take in the collective shraddha, the beliefs that silently pervade our culture, subliminally, under the radar of waking consciousness.

Below the mental hierarchy of beliefs, with the most fixed and solid at the bottom and the most fluid and loosely held at the top, our emotional being has its own shraddha. Less linear but more intransigent. It wells up through your constructed mental reality like mud between your toes, or like an unstoppable volcano of molten stories – self-reinforcing and too blazing hot to approach, too fused to disentangle. Deeper still lies the shraddha of the sense mind. The rules and laws of material reality filter into us and stamp our consciousness with rigidity, impossibility, death.

Embodied inquiry means facing these layers of shraddha.

Continue reading →

15Mar2016

Spine and Core in Yoga Anatomy

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Spine is core, and as such, has many layers of reality, from the most subtle expression of empty radiance, through all the colors and manifestations of individuality. When we take on an exploration and inquiry into spine in Hatha Yoga, we are seriously embarking on a journey into deeper and deeper layers of core. All of our layers are evident in the spine, and since spine is the home of both the subtle and anatomical nervous system Hatha Yoga has pointed us directly toward this inquiry.

koshas1

Kosas
The inquiry and exploration of embodiment that we use in Embodyoga® is modeled on the kosas – the sheaths of awareness manifesting from the most subtle to the most obvious, or gross. The kosas are our layers of manifestation from the most subtle to the most obvious and dense. In Embodyoga® we continue to inquire through all of the layers – always knowing that deeper truth is just awaiting our realization.

Atmamaya Kosa – pure unmanifest awareness – no element – no form
Chittamaya Kosa – individual awareness – no element – no form
Anandamaya Kosa – blissful awareness – space
Vijyanamaya Kosa – wisdom and heart, Buddhi mind – air
Manomaya Kosa – intellect, thinking mind – fire
Pranamaya Kosa – emotion, feeling – water
Anamaya Kosa – the anatomical structural sheath – earth

We understand that each of these kosas exists in every particle and space within us. Everywhere. Always. It is from this basis that we explore and navigate inward to recognize our fullness, our humanity and our divinity, and how it is manifesting through us.

The structure of spine and what it means in the body-mind.
Spine is a multi layered core structure with many levels from the subtlest to the grossest. Since Hatha Yoga is a spinal based practice it is important to consider the spine thoroughly. Our vertebral column is core in relation to the rest of our skeletal structure in that it is our central axis. It’s obvious that in yoga the spine is more than just the vertebral column. It is home to the central nervous system, which of course, is continuous with the brain. It also houses the three main nadis – ida, pingala, and sushumna. Sushumna nadi is our personal conduit and connection to Universal Awareness and can definitely be considered to be the core of the spine, or the core of core.

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30Jan2016

What is Embodyoga®?

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Embodyoga® is a radical and inclusive approach to the ancient science of yoga. It is an evolving tapestry woven from the deeply healing, therapeutic, and spiritual essence of yoga and cutting edge studies in the field of body-mind-consciousness. Embodyoga® fuses the emergent wisdom of Body-Mind Centering®, which was developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, with Hatha Yoga practices and Tantric Yoga philosophy.

Embodyoga® begins with the premise that our entire personal self—body, heart, and mind— is a sea of vibrating creative awareness. Practitioners of Embodyoga® recognize that each aspect of our physical, and energetic form is an expression of awareness manifesting through, and as, individual qualities and traits. We experience these aspects of self as gradations of awareness, all made of the same stuff, all having equal value and importance, and all interwoven to form a system that is perfectly equipped and primed for self-realization. In other words, through the gift of human consciousness we are able to witness our very nature as it is: creative, bright, alive, and self-aware.

When we practice Embodyoga®, we harness the powerful forces of curiosity and desire to guide our exploration of the body-mind system. Our inquiry initiates and leads the journey. Whatever route this inward journey takes, it leads to the revelation of the unity that underlies all form. Even as we are obviously individuals with our personal qualities and traits, we are also universal in that all that we are is awareness at its source.

Embodyoga® practice provides us with a direct experience of unity – the unity of recognizing the universal and the personal as one integrated and inseparable system. This perception of the inseparability of the universal and the personal, remains with us on and off the yoga mat, manifesting through our relationships with self and others.
When we have had a direct and profound encounter with our inner, true self, we can then effortlessly share this experience as an offering in all our interactions. A sense of love and responsibility for the wellbeing of all humanity expands outward from our self, through our family, friends, community, and beyond. This outward expansion results directly from our ability to perceive our essential self more deeply.

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13Nov2015

What is Mulabandha?

Posted in Breathing, Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Jen Nugent – photo by Paul B. Goode

The Pit-of-the-Belly—Engagement, Relationship, and Freedom

Mulabandha maintains life-force (prana) in the body at our root. Much more than a set of specific physical actions, mulabandha holds part of the key to full embodiment. Usually described as an energetic seal, its techniques include articulating and activating the muscles at the center of the pelvic floor, with an action of drawing both the muscles and the life-force upward, into our core, and toward the lower belly region. Mulabandha seals prana into the body at our root. It assists the preservation and maintenance of vitality. It contains. But it is also more.

Mulabandha calls upon and creates a willingness of spirit to fully inhabit our lives. As much as mulabandha seals life force at the root, it also and equally, draws life force into us. It literally pulls us down into our bodies, into the energetic hub of the central lower navel region, the same region that is recognized as the gravitational center and hub of power in all traditions. It is the tan-tien, the hara, and in yoga it is right at the root of the kanda.

Mulabandha offers the form around which we cultivate a coalescing of aspiration, surrender, and inner sensing and feeling, with the actions and shapes that draw and sustain life-force into the body-mind system. The gifts of a full, soft and resilient mulabandha are very rich. In order to open to these levels of awareness and sensation one needs to approach mulabandha from an inclusive and receptive state of mind. It involves a profound set of mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual actions.

Looking deeply into the layers of sensation and consciousness that are part and parcel of mulabandha can be very helpful for gaining a wider and deeper perspective on our personal lives and our interrelationships with everything else. Mulabandha can be a significant tool for exploring and using the embodiment of the individual-self as a platform for inquiring into the deeper aspects of relationship and meaning. This involves a profound willingness to accept ourselves as we are, and to continue to go deeper into perception and understanding. This kind of exploration into our core is an excellent and fully embodied way to ask some of the important questions about who we are in relationship to our lives and our yoga practices. Are you willing to ask the question, “Why am I here?” without resorting to grandiosity or self-loathing? What would a purposeful existence feel like? Would it be enough to simply be yourself, do your work, and be useful? Is it okay to be a perfectly ordinary and divine human…just like 7 billion others? Can you accept the ordinary, and the extraordinary, importance of your personal dharma?

Mulabandha is a call to action – a commitment to embodied existence. Its clarity and purpose draws us into this life, to embody it fully, and be useful, useful in our own evolution as people, taking responsibility for our own lives, useful in our families, our communities, and beyond.

ENGAGEMENT AND RELATIONSHIP
A full mulabandha generates and requires a profound acceptance and dedication to doing ones part, to acting in a way that is in accordance with personal and universal evolution, a moving into greater clarity and cultivating a wider vision of who and what we are on every level, from the Pure Radiant Source of Everything, all the way through the manifest planes of existence that are both beautiful… and seriously flawed. Flawed, just like you are… Admitting and embracing the depth of your personal-and-perfectly-flawed-self is crucial to being able to recognize the full range of your beauty and radiance.

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20Oct2015

Dharma—Engagement and Wholesome Action

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

Universal dharma — That which gives order to the Universe and underlies the very structure of existence.
Individual dharma—How we act in the world and take personal responsibility for coming into alignment with the Universal.

Dharma is an immensely important and finely nuanced subject. It requires thorough consideration and contemplation to gain a deep understanding. Gaining increased perspective on dharma has the power to assist us in contextualizing how we choose to act and how we take our place in our individual lives, as part of – and in relationship to – the Universal. We can all think about this.

A key vantage point for approaching the subject of dharma can be found in examining the profoundly relational qualities of the world in which we live. We are in relationship on all levels of our being at all times. There is no end or beginning to the field of relationship. In the microcosm of our bodies we are intricately relating to ourselves at all times: cell to cell, fluids to membranes to fascia, glands and organs, time and space, movement and stillness, and all of the transformation and creativity that is continuously taking place. We are in relationship to the environment outside of our personal skin-membrane. We have our closest people, nature and the world around us. Our individual intelligence is wrapped and permeated with the Universal. Every breath we take, every thought and movement is happening within the field of relationship. From our tiniest essence to the Universal Everything, we are relationship.

How do we act in this field? How do we, as individual people, take responsibility for our place within this moving, breathing and undulating life? Are we actively involved? Have we committed to attending to this life with full participation and engagement? Or, do we perhaps unconsciously, abdicate our personal agency and simply submit to the influences around us? Are we in the game?

Questions like these underlie the inquiry into dharma. What is our place here? How do we choose to engage? How do we recognize our thoughts and actions to be wholesome and life supporting, or not? Do we really know the answer to that question? How does one discern one’s life’s direction?

Our perspective is important, and our perspective is yoga and its practice. Yoga is the process of discerning and clarifying what is real and lasting from what is constantly changing. Then, and importantly, we can open to the recognition of the actual unity and sameness of the changing and the non-changing. In Embodyoga® we value equally the changing and sustaining aspects of creation. We really are not that interested in valuing what is so called “Pure” (un-changing) and better, from what is “impure” (changing) and not quite as good. We are not at all interested in denying or overcoming our human experience. We are interested in experiencing all layers of our selves and our lives, from the most-subtle reality all the way through the most gross and messy aspects of personality. The weave is what interests us. How do we take our places within this weave of Awareness and form with grace and dignity? Can we do our best to witness the majesty of this life that we are given?

The fact that we are here on this planet shows that, to some degree, we have already said, “yes” to life. Questioning the meaning of saying yes to life can be one way of beginning a serious inquiry into dharma. What is our personal and Universal role in this? Sincerely asking these questions leads us the larger question: “What is the source of this…this life…this awareness?”

If we want to be effective at looking into the nature of who we are, we can’t just simply jump to a philosophical framework that we think we already know. Thinking that we already know something is a great hindrance to learning anything new. However, based on what we know from yoga philosophy in this case, we can proceed with our investigation and explore directly and personally what the sages and great teachers of all time have been pointing to.

First, we need to take responsibility for our personal perceptions. Then we can begin to investigate the possibility of having direct experience of the nature of life. Direct perception of the Vastness of Awareness and its universal flow becomes profound support for personal right action – dharma – in the world. Can we perceive a Universal Order and direction that is supporting and including all that we experience – neutral, pleasurable, or painful? Can we then put our personal ordinary-and-extraordinary lives into the perspective of a larger dharma – Universal dharma — the movement of all of life toward greater fulfillment and satisfaction?

Full engagement in life solves the problem of personal isolation and suffering. That is true. But, full engagement is deeper than we often think. Being fully engaged means more than simply inhabiting the manifest aspects of yourself and the world. Full engagement is engagement with life on all levels. That means that one is in active contact and relationship with the source of life as well as its manifestation. That means coming into direct relationship with the Vastness in such a way that it has a tangible presence in every waking, sleeping, dreaming, and transcendental moment. All the time.

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16Aug2015

Essential Practices—Aspiration and Surrender

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

Aspiration and surrender are two important aspects of yoga and spiritual practice. They support and balance one another, are different and complimentary. Aspiration is something that can be “done” whereas surrender cannot be done. Aspiration is action and driven by individual awareness. Surrender is a different process altogether.

As we grow and develop in our yoga practice our desire for a deeper and more inclusive awareness continues to develop and refine. The more we practice the clearer it becomes that our own discrete individual sphere of awareness is only a very small part of a larger whole. Healthy practice spontaneously opens our consciousness to the bigger picture – the picture that puts our individuality into the perspective of the vastness of universal awareness. As we begin to recognize our personal lives to be like the swirling eddies at the edges of a giant river that is flowing, we cannot help but become interested in understanding and experiencing the power of the river – the source and support of all that we are as individual beings. We aspire to see more clearly.

Aspiration breeds action. It gets us moving. We “do” things. It is about obtaining something or getting somewhere. We want to be better in some way. We aspire to widen our vision. Fulfilling aspiration requires dedication and effort. We practice yoga regularly, and we follow the yamas and the niyamas. We become disciplined. We practice pranayama and meditation and choose to work and act in ways that are mostly beneficial to others, ourselves, and are in accordance with our beliefs.

However, there is a limit to the effectiveness of aspiration. Aspiration – passionately desiring to recognize life as it actually is – is the foundation of practice. Without aspiration many of us would do nothing. We might live out our lives without ever seriously questioning who and what we really are.

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10Jul2015

Layers of Self by Matthew Andrews

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Matthew Andrews

In order to fully understand ourselves, we need an understanding of the layers that comprise our existence. And true understanding comes not from theorizing or thinking, but from direct experiential inquiry. Without this kind of inquiry we can have some ideas about who we are, but they will be based on flimsy assumptions and mental models, rather than a solid and tested foundation. Many have trod this path before us, and we can use their gleanings and discoveries as a basis, or even a kind of map to guide our own exploration, as long as we don’t confuse the map with the terrain and lose ourselves in the abstract. The Upanishads offer such a map, and the Taittiriya in particular paints a fascinating picture of the layers of self.

The Taiitiriya Upanishad describes the layers of our being as sheaths, each successive sheath contained within the others. It speaks of life as the inner being or soul of matter, mind as the soul of life, and wisdom (or gnosis) as the soul of mind. And the Upanishad also describes the most fundamental layer of manifestation, the soul of wisdom and therefor the soul of mind, life, and matter as well, as Ananda: bliss, comfort, delight.

So as we seek to understand ourselves, we can inquire into the nature and qualities of these layers, seeking direct, experiential understanding. The Upanishad gives us a clue in its articulation of the sheaths, and then we need to track down the prize through a deep, persistent inquiry. We can stand back from our habitual self-identification with mind, and stare into the frantic pulsing mental web, watching its workings and limitations, noting how it takes in sensory information, filters it through a sieve of past experience and rigid models, and feeds it to our faculty of discernment, which sorts and dissects and deduces. The mind is an incredible tool, allowing us to make sense of our environment, plan for the future, build beautiful and terrible devices for engaging with and controlling the world around us. But remains only a tool, a faculty, a limiting power of division that be its very nature removes us from our environment and places us outside of it, alone encased within our skin. If we take the mind for who we are completely, then we commit ourselves to a cage with impenetrable bars. But if we take it as a faculty, a layer of ourself, then we can benefit from its gifts but transcend them.

From our customary perch within the mind itself, we can look above and notice the downward pour of intuition that illuminates the mental cave with flashes, and then watch the mind grasp and grapple and reduce the flashes into a substance it can manipulate. Climbing up we can enter directly into a more expansive way of knowing, a wisdom that exceeds the mind’s escapades, vast and fluid, where a subjective knowing of the world around us becomes possible. What was ‘other’ becomes known as ‘self’, division becomes simply differentiation, our aloneness dissolves into an empathic experience of unity. Or we can peek up further still, squinting in the light of pure, unobstructed Delight of being. Being infused and inseparable with consciousness/force and joy – Satchitananda.

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27May2015

Is Embodyoga® Intellectual? By Matthew Andrews

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Matthew Andrews

In our modern ‘Western’ culture, perhaps more so than in any other culture in history, we’re taught to see and relate to surfaces. Even when we dissect or disassemble things, we find within them more surfaces. Atom, nucleus, electron, quark…on and on through layers of surfaces. Underlying qualities and interconnections evade us, retreating from the spade as we dig deeper and deeper into the soil of matter.

We learn from a young age that these questions are inherently silly, childish. We learn to dismiss an investigation into the mind of a tree or the subjective experience of a forest as unscientific and unreal. And yet when we create a world in which only humans subjective experience is real, we become dead to the complex, living web of intelligence that surrounds and infuses our ecosystems, our bodies, and our minds. The illusion of aloneness is at best painful, and at worst the driving force behind Earth’s next mass extinction.

Confined to this philosophical rubric we become incapable of knowing except through abstraction – by identifying something as ‘other’ and examining its otherness and relationships to other ‘others’. This ‘othering’ extends even to the space and substance within our own bodies. My bones, my muscles, my organs, my glands, all appear as objects taking up space inside my skin. My heart beats, my lungs breath, my blood flows, but all of these processes seem to have little to do with me as I experience myself – captain of the ship, observing the world from my perch up in and around my skull.

Embodyoga® invites us to step down from this perch and directly into life, starting with a very accessible place – our own bodies. Instead of taking the body apart and examining the surfaces of its contents, objectifying our very selves, we go inside to discover the essential qualities of our physical structure. The objective becomes subjective as we touch the consciousness that pervades all layers of self, from the most solidly material to the most etherial and formless.

We begin by focusing our attention on the more abstract idea of bone, or muscle, or organ, or gland. We then use imagination and sensation to explore and observe this ‘other’ with our awareness until suddenly, effortlessly, often surprisingly, we enter into a kind of communion with it. Breaking through the perceptual bubble of the ego-mind, pouring into a subjective experience of gnosis, or knowledge through identity. I know my liver because I am my liver. The miracle of human subjective awareness, with its capacities for meta-cognition, infuses into the pre-rational self-awareness that pervades the body.

This shift is a spiritual breakthrough with vast implications, and the essential opposite of theoretical, abstract, or disembodied. It opens the door to a gnostic experience of the entire ecology around us. Everything in the world can be communed with similarly. We can know our surroundings, each other, the earth, the cosmos subjectively – by identity. I know the tree because I am the tree, the sea because I am the see, and I know you because I am you. This ancient spiritual concept becomes accessible through simple embodiment practices. And when all is experienced as the self, who is there to oppose, to fight, to fear?

Yes, Embodyoga® is intellectually stimulating interesting, engaging. But if it’s only that and no more, then I’d argue that we’ve missed the heart of it. And so while it may speak to the intellect, it is not an “intellectual” approach. Its primary gift is not to the intellect nor via the intellect. The gift is release from the alienated and abstracted state from which we see all as other. The invitation is into a direct and unmediated experience of the intricate fabric that underlies and interweaves every aspect of reality – from flickering quark to swirling galaxy.Is Embodyoga®

13May2015

Are You Using Discrimination in Your Yoga Practice?

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

Yoga is an elegant and well-verified system for refining body, mind and awareness. Yoga assists us in finding ways to expand the field of our consciousness and experience life more fully. It offers a prescription for easing the dominance of a fragmentary mind. It helps us not to get too caught up in the, “I, me, mine” cycle of thinking. Yoga provides tools and practices for discriminating what is really core to our being and what are the more superficial and transitory aspects of our lives. Through skillful practice we can increase our comfort in life and gain a larger perspective, putting our day-to-day trials and tribulations into the perspective of the vast radiance of Universal Awareness. It’s a big promise and yoga tells us that we can do this.

Yoga doesn’t require belief in anything at all in order to begin, and yet, it suggests that there is so much more to life than we commonly experience. It promises more than a theoretical understanding or philosophy. We are told that all we need to do is practice and see for ourselves. Yoga requires us to take responsibility for who and what we are on every level. For the dedicated practitioner it promises direct experience of the source of life –possibly answering so many questions – even as it doesn’t require belief in anything. The prospect is appealing.

The methods for practicing are clearly outlined, making the whole thing even more attractive. Yoga presents a comprehensible and basically uncomplicated methodology for subduing the clutter of our minds enough to witness the radiance of creative intelligence manifesting into form. Ancient texts offer detailed and specific maps for navigating the territory of our embodied existence.

All we need to do is practice. Practice will work, awareness will broaden spontaneously, and we will witness our place in the universal design. It all sounds pretty good. But there are some serious pitfalls along the way. It’s not enough to just get on board and ride. Discrimination and individual intelligence are necessary to keep us on track. It’s too easy to lose our way and be seduced into thinking that we are just soaring along when actually we have been tricked, once again, by ego-mind. Individual-ego-mind can be helpful…or not. Our egos can easily delude us into thinking we are proceeding intelligently when we may very well be under the sway of ego-mind, bolstering its own self-concepts in ways that are not helpful. It just depends on how diligent we remain in practice, what our goals are, and how we use the various aspects of mind to keep us on track.

How we use all aspects of our minds in our spiritual journey toward the recognition of Unity is really important. We need to harness clear and intelligent thinking along with wisdom and intuition. Ego is not a bad thing but we do need to be careful with it. Remember, ego – sense of individual self – likes to be in control of things. Ego is pretty convinced that it is the center of the universe and that getting what it wants is of the highest importance. Individual awareness is an important part of being useful and active in the world. But exclusivity of individually-focused-thinking is a good way to obstruct our personal experience of the larger picture. A skillful use of our individual mind is to set it on the track of refining itself. In this way we harness our mind to be helpful. This is where discrimination becomes so important.

ASANA
In our culture, asana is usually the gateway yoga practice. Asana is one of the eight limbs of Classical Yoga and is important in Tantra, as well. Asana is pretty wonderful stuff. When used intelligently, it is an amazing tool for integrating all aspects of practice into one moving meditation. The fact that we are moving and breathing consciously makes asana an ideal arena for cultivating meditative awareness within the field of action – the world in which we live. In asana we are moving. In that way it can be an effective method for learning to maintain deeper awareness while being engaged in life. And there’s more. Asana is physically cleansing and enlivening. It feels wonderful, increases vitality and over all health by freeing the flow of life force within. Asana is a major boon to all of us.

But, are we using asana well and to its full potential? It’s interesting that nowhere in the ancient texts is there anything like the focus on asana that we are now witnessing in the West today. That doesn’t mean that focusing on asana is definitely not a good idea. Let’s say that it is. Maybe due to the specific stresses and elements of life in the twenty-first century a larger focus on asana is helpful. We can make an argument that the situation in which we now live requires more asana to balance out the effects of the life we have created for ourselves. I’m willing to go that far. But importantly, are we actively using our discriminative minds to figure out what asana practice – and how much – is appropriate and good for each of us? Are we putting too much emphasis on the outer form and missing the more subtle gifts it has to offer? Are we using asana as a method for harnessing our busy minds and turning inward, or have we fallen into the trap of allowing our cultural proclivities and tendencies to dictate how we practice? In other words, is the yogic process of inner inquiry directing our use of asana, or have we allowed ourselves to be seduced into using it as just another way to affirm and define our individuality – ego.

We need to be careful here. It can be useful to ask these questions seriously even if your immediate response is that none of this applies to you. We need to harness discrimination and clarity in our thinking. We need to maintain vigilance with our ego-minds. It’s not always easy. Our culture nurtures and values acquisition and achievement in every area of life. We know this kind of thinking has no place in yoga and can only hinder our process. However, we are all to some degree affected by the world in which we live. A mind-set built around accomplishment is definitely problematic for deep practice. And it is hard to give up – especially if you don’t recognize it. Remember, ego-mind is tricky. Ego will do everything to try to convince you that it knows what it’s doing and if your ego is at all attached to what you do in asana, you may be in a difficult situation regarding the depth of your personal practice.

I know this from personal experience. Years ago I practiced a very vigorous style of asana that I thought was in some way an ultimate practice for me. I gladly gave myself over to it and practiced with dedication and joy. But one day, seated on my bedroom floor having just finished practice I had the clear realization that what I was doing wasn’t working for me anymore in the way that it had. I thought about the ramifications of letting the practice go. It sounded pretty bad. I would probably get fat (which at that point felt like the worst possible thing that could happen to me). I might lose some of my (false) sense of superiority. I would definitely lose the admiration of the yoga community. People would think I was “letting myself go”. And…what if there was nothing more? What if the practice I was doing was required for enlightenment and I gave it up? That wouldn’t be good. In fact, none of the above would be good at all. So, I didn’t listen to my instincts.

Nothing terrible happened. I really have never had any serious yoga injuries (knock on wood) so that wasn’t stopping me. But the inner feeling that I was off track didn’t go away. About seven years went by before I became brave enough to take the leap. I knew that my attachment to my advanced looking yoga practice was limiting my deeper understanding. I really didn’t know where I was going at all. I just had to make the move. I decided to give up limiting my asana practice in the way I had been and vowed to go deeper.

It was hard for me! I did gain weight and I did feel fat. I was sure people thought I had just become lazy or something. I didn’t allow myself to boast that I was giving up strong asana because my ego was too attached to it and I knew it wasn’t right for me anymore. I couldn’t tell them my reasons for changing my practice because that would, once again, be serving my ego. I felt my desire to imply some spiritual superiority! Bragging about my bravery would be counter-productive given my reasons for changing in the first place.

As it turned out, it wasn’t just my attachment to “being good” at asana or the adulation I received from others that was restricting my growth. As it turned out, letting go of asana as I knew it, opened a Pandora’s box of difficult issues that required even more clarity of attention than I had bargained for. The journey wasn’t always easy but what was the alternative? Continuing on a path that I knew was not helping me anymore? For me, the alternative was worse than the growing pains that arose from choosing a more skillful practice.

DISCRIMINATION AND PROFOUND SELF-ACCEPTANCE
Yoga works. And yoga is working beautifully for so many people in our society. At the Yoga Center Amherst in Massachusetts where I teach we see hundreds of people each week who are just so grateful to have found yoga and use it as a simple tool to feel better in their lives in every way. It is beautiful to observe this and to be a part of the personal and universal transformation that it taking place in our communities.

But beware! Discrimination is one of the most important pillars of an effective yoga practice.
We need to remain diligent…especially as yoga teachers. Asana is everywhere now and some of the practices are grounded in good knowledge and some of them are not. In fact, asana in the West includes so many different practices that an interested person could spend altogether way too much time and energy attempting to perfect or “become good” at it. How much asana is enough? What kind of asana is right for you…for your students? Is your practice really serving you? These are simple questions that are worth asking. We need to continue to ask questions and inquire deeply into what is right for the honing of awareness – not the ego satisfaction of feeling good at something, or on the other hand, not feeling good at something.

23Feb2015

Kundalini—The Evolution of Awareness and Spreading of Prana-Shakti

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Rest and Meditation by Patty Townsend

KUNDALINI AWAKENING IN THE SPINE

Kundalini awakening is highly regarded and almost equally feared by yoga practitioners. Kundalini awakening may offer the yoga aspirant a first glimpse of the potential depth of human awareness. Its movement clears and widens our perceptual vision to include the radiance of Awareness as the fundamental reality of existence. Kundalini is inherently a benevolent force of evolution and in a well-toned and receptive body-mind its awakening is a gift, the grace received from diligent, wise, and skillful practice.

Kundalini Shakti, as this movement of life-force through sushumna is called, is the most powerful of the prana flows. The latent power of kundalini usually remains dormant at the base of the spine until the aspirant is fully prepared to handle the radiance of healing and vitality that kundalini’s movement provides. The life force of kundalini is so strong that as it rises it begins to wash away—or jar away, as the case may be—many of the obstacles to clear perception that it encounters on its way. Kundalini’s force can feel natural or harsh. It depends on the practitioner’s readiness and balance of tone in the subtle nervous system. Individual experiences vary tremendously. The opening of the channel and kundalini’s rising can be radical and ferocious, comfortable, sweet, and satisfying, or anything in between. In an unprepared practitioner, if the opening is abrupt, kundalini’s movement can definitely wreak some havoc. In an unprepared body-mind the physical effects and increased vision that kundalini ignites can be genuinely overwhelming to the individual.

However, it is also important to know that kundalini awakening is a natural part of personal evolution. For most people the awakening of kundalini is gradual and mostly pleasant, accompanied by insight and an awareness of increasing depth of vision. The initial rising of kundalini may be the most noticeable part of the process. As the pathway through which kundalini flows—the sushumna nadi—is cleansed, it remains open for longer and longer periods. The periods of open sushumna and flowing kundalini are times of inspiration and clarity, a natural part of the evolution of personal consciousness. When kundalini is freed, the lucky practitioner is more likely to feel connected to his or her dharma, and becomes generally much more effective in life and work. The rising of kundalini opens the door to greater ease and satisfaction in life—an ongoing sense of knowingness and contentment. As the channel remains open, the aspirant continues to grow and develop along his or her personal life’s path toward full clarity and freedom.

By far the most comfortable awakening of kundalini takes place over a long period of time. Time and regular practice of all aspects of yoga assist in making the transition to a full awakening a tender and manageable process. If one maintains a sincere and regular practice of the yamas, niyamas, asana, pranayama, and meditation, kundalini rising can be a gentle and rewarding process. Those who are patient and allow kundalini to be freed in her own sweet time will reap the rewards of their practice.

THE SPREADING OF KUNDALINI AND THE EMBODIMENT OF SUSHUMNA

Sushumna nadi is the channel and kundalini is the life force that flows within it. When the channel is open, kundalini can flow. Healthy kundalini awakening is a process that continues long after the initial experiences have died down. Once sushumna is clear and kundalini is flowing, the pace of personal evolution picks up speed. It becomes a matter of infusion. Kundalini’s life force spreads.

In the beginning, kundalini is located right inside the spinal cord. It is a clear and narrow path flowing up from the lower spine and flooding into the region of the brain. In my experience the sensation of kundalini rising was very pleasant and interesting. At first I felt afraid, but the knowledge that I had gained through reading and practice allowed me to know that I was likely safe and that this was a natural part of my personal evolution.

Initially the sound of the rising force was extremely loud. I resisted the experience. Realizing what was happening I decided to yield to the movement. The feeling and the sound were both very powerful as the life force reached and flooded though my brain. The feeling was comfortable enough, a crescendo of sound and sensation, a rhythmic surging, and a washing. As time went on I grew to appreciate and enjoy the experience. The surge would then pull my personal consciousness into a small point and then into complete dissolution. The individual “I” would reemerge only to be pulled back in, and so on, until the process seemed to be finished. My individual awareness resurfaced, and noticing what had happened, I would realize that my meditation for the day was finished.

This experience happened fairly regularly for a number of years. I believe that the cleansing and opening of the channel was simply taking its time. I was comfortable in my life because the opening was not too fast. It was consistent and gentle, lasting over a good long period of time. My hatha yoga practice and my meditation definitely helped to open the channel and to smooth out the effects of kundalini rising. Asana practice seems to be the best way to soften what sometimes can be the agitating effects of the powerful healing and cleansing of stressful patterns that have been lodged in the nervous system for most of a lifetime.

THE RADIANCE PHASE

At first I was still attached to a concept of kundalini leading to a certain kind of disembodied state. I was interested mostly in the transcendental qualities of the experience, still attached to the idea of moving beyond this “earthly” existence and into a pure experience of Only Awareness. But what actually happened was that I found myself more engaged in my life. I began to feel a sense of usefulness and a desire to work and to be active in the world. This was confusing to me. I had always expected to let go of my “attachments” to life and gain a sense of freedom form the trials and tribulations that are so obviously present in all of our lives. The joke was that instead of leaving this plane I entered it more fully. Feelings became more intense. Love began to dawn into my being, but also more sadness and a resonating with the suffering as well as the joy of being alive. I really hadn’t expected this and thought that maybe something had gone awry!

As time went on I began to notice something else. Growing within me I began to experience a thick tube of light occupying my entire central body from my pelvic floor to my brain. The light in the core body is the same as what is pouring through the spine. While in the spinal cord it is narrow, in the central body it is wide—the exact shape of the Shiva Lingum, an important symbol in Trantric Yoga. This reality has only continued to become a clearer and clearer awareness in daily life.

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There seem to be two distinct phases or aspects to kundalini opening. One is the initial cleansing and flowing within the sushumna nadi and the central nervous system. The second is a clearly felt and embodied experience of light, deep within the core of the body. Where the first one is a definite rising, the second is more a spontaneous containment that is more whole body—not reserved for the spinal cord, but fully diffused through the central body structures. There is an inherent commitment and acceptance of responsibility for containing the radiance that also grows spontaneously. There’s joy in the commitment, the joy of Shakti as she shepherds the field of form. And, as with Shiva and Shakti, one does not exist without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.

In Embodyoga®, we have called this experience the “embodiment of sushumna”. Kundalini’s life force infuses every aspect of the physical and the subtle bodies and spreads through the entire personal being. It is the radiance, the Shakti, that is present in every cell—awake and bright within the core of the body.

ATTACHMENT AND NON-ATTACHMENT

The embodiment of kundalini flowing in the personal body-mind is not a release from life. It offers and brings a full engagement in life. The question of “attachment” becomes a very interesting one indeed. It turns out that one can be fully engaged, love life, feel its sorrows and its joys without the same “attachment”. Non-attachment doesn’t mean non-involvement. Non-attachment means simply that one sees the bigger picture along with the personal.

This feels like a life lived in fullness; recognition of the essence and source of life that is continuously present along with all that a personal existence brings. Pain…yes. Sadness…yes. Joy, love, spontaneity, and sorrow…all yes. Actual suffering? Not really. How can one really suffer when the radiance of life is genuinely witnessed in all of it and the continuity of Awareness is the basis of all that we perceive?

PRACTICAL AND NECESSARY SUPPORTS FOR KUNDALINI AWAKENING

A deep and thorough commitment to doing all that is necessary to recognizing life as it is. (Practice of the Eight Limbs).
Faith and trust that healing can happen and there is more to life that what we commonly perceive.
Meditation and embodied-inquiry into the nature of body-mind-spirit.
Wise practice of yoga techniques that are appropriate to one’s personal body-mind.
Deep resting practices that allow the body-mind to release chronically held patterns and stresses: meditation, savasana, yoga nidra.
Hope and love based on faith and increasing direct experience.
Kundalini awakening techniques that are gentle and persistent.
Patience and perseverance.

TIBETAN SUSHUMNA CHANNEL

The Axis Mundi of the yogic body, the Sushumna Nadi — known in Taoist parlance as the Penetrating Vessel — is arguably the most important of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, which together represent the human body’s deepest, most primordial level of energetic functioning.

In relation to the physical form, the sushumna flows slightly anterior and parallel to the spinal column, from the pelvic floor to the crown of the head.

In relation to the energetic matrix within which the physical form appears, the Sushumna is the central portion of a torus-shaped energy-body, which encapsulates the physical in a way similar to how a womb contains an embryo.

The fountain-like flow of energy up the central channel of the Sushumna expands at the crown of the head — before cascading down (in a 360-degree arc) to join once again at the root of the channel (the pelvic floor), where the cycle continues.

Whereas the twelve main meridians are conduits for life-force energy (qi/chi) associated with our everyday dualistic space/time experience, the Sushumna Nadi carries the non-dual energy of Primordial Consciousness: a more refined, purified and primordial (or “prenatal”) form of qi.

In the Tibetan yogic tradition, the light or energy that flows through the central channel is known as “wisdom air” — and is believed to correspond to the very subtle mind which transcends space/time, i.e. is non-dual & non-conceptual.

Hindu Yoga Correlations: Shiva Lingham, Dancing Shiva, and Mount Meru

31Dec2014

Yoga, Ethics, and Abuse—Who are We in This?

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

It really does seem that the sexual scandals in the yoga world just get worse and worse. I have been one all along to ask, “Why are we surprised by this?” And yet, truthfully I am a little surprised this time too. It’s as if to say, “Okay, you are not yet horrified, look at this. This one will get you.”

The latest revelations go right to the heart of one of the most internationally respected traditions. This time children are involved. Painful. And yet, once again, “Why do we continue to be surprised?” I think it’s because we are innately so hopeful and loving inside. We really want our elders and our teachers to be wise and have the answers that we ourselves are looking for. Of course we do. We are still immature in our personal development. That’s not a negative assessment of the situation at all. We are evolving humans and as humans grow they look to their elders and spiritual teachers for guidance. It’s natural, and good teachers do help us to put one foot in front of the other and wend our way through what can be a treacherous, but hopefully an ultimately rewarding journey.

There are good people in the world. There are yogis who sincerely practice the yamas and the niyamas and are more successful in their efforts than many of the famous gurus who have fallen so hard. You, the reader are likely sincere and devoted. But please, let’s stop stop equating having some degree of insight into the nature of reality with being a good person. It would be great if they automatically went together – Insight and Goodness – but clearly they don’t.

The ways that people have been seriously victimized by these unscrupulous teachers is horrible. The latest horror, involving children! may finally be enough for us to be forced to look very deeply into this problem and pull out its roots…within ourselves. Because, yes, you did not abuse anyone. But you do have qualities and feelings and very difficult thoughts sometimes.

These very sad events have had devastating effects on the victims. As responsible members of the yoga community we need to inquire into who we all are. We can help ourselves to grow from this and we can help shed light on the situation so that it doesn’t have to continue to happen.

When we raise our teachers onto a pedestal we project way too much on them. We give them too much power, and much worse, they ACCEPT the power. We see this over and over again; power – especially when we imbue it with imagined spirituality – is extremely dangerous. Even those of us who consider ourselves to be pretty savvy about all this continue to have little twinges of surprise when the next big guru falls. Come on, you do too…

What we need to do is realize that having cravings, qualities that are less than comfortable, thoughts that make us feel uneasy, desires that feel unwholesome is all part of being a human being and that every human being has these waves within. As long as we think another human being may be free from this – being human thing – we will be willing to think that we are less than he or she. This is how we give them too much power.

There is great personal responsibility in this. This isn’t the easy path. It can be difficult for you to fully admit all that you are, and still call yourself a yogi. But not only are you a yogi but your honesty is part of the depth of your awareness. You are a human-yogi. Perfect. Rise Up! Take Action! Take personal responsibility!

(See: Idealization, Yoga, and the Guru Problem and Yoga Teachers – Time to Take Off Your Masks)

29Dec2014

Why Do We Make New Year’s Resolutions?

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

Quan Yin in her Glorious Imperfect Beauty

What is the nature of a resolution? What does it do for us? Do resolutions prove to be effective? Do New Year’s resolutions assist our growth and evolution in the way that we hope?

Usually resolutions are designed to help us improve in one way or another – to assist us in cultivating healthier patterns and habits. We often resolve to quit something or take-up something new, something we think will benefit us. Commonly, the subject of resolutions have to do with simple changes in behavior. We resolve to eat more healthfully, stop being so impatient, or late to appointments. We resolve to exercise more, do more yoga asana, meditate regularly, start a pranayama practice, or maybe, quit drinking coffee. You get the point.

Why do we do this? Is it helpful to look into the past and the future to plan our moment to moment behavior? Somewhat, yes. We do learn about how our actions in the world affect our experience of it. However, obviously, because these resolutions never hold, there is an inherent problem with them.

The problem is that all of the behaviors that we would like to alter, actually take place in one moment after another and involve some kind of outside-in control. “Don’t do that” or “Do this”, we say to ourselves until around January 20th by which time we have totally let go of our plan.

By then we have added the extra- great bonus of feeling bad about ourselves when we don’t succeed with our endeavor. Perfect set up for increasing the suffering around our own recognized unwholesome patterns.

Try this: NO RESOLUTIONS

Start where you are in each moment. Pause for a few seconds to recognize the vibrating mix of awareness and life-force that you are sitting in. Let that be the field from which you make a decision…in that exact moment about what action to take. Then do what you want.

You may be surprised by what you “want” to do.

Try it.

10Dec2014

How Meditation Works—Thinking is Not a Problem

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation by Patty Townsend

Meditation is directed toward seeing life as it is. Regular practice can help us to experience directly the fundamental nature of life. It is about developing choice; choice to see and experience all the layers of our personal and universal existence. It is about seeing the fullness. Becoming able to witness the underlying support of the divine along with the beauty and richness of our human form.

Meditation effectively clears the obstacles to our accurate perception of the nature of life. The obstacles are the habitual patterns of perception and response that we explored in the previous article. (See Meditation is Natural). When we are locked into these habitual patterns our vision of life is basically limited to continually viewing our own thoughts and feelings – over and over again. When we become curious about the nature of our perceptions, question whether we can trust them fully, and what is actually going on – we are ready to meditate.

Meditation works because Awareness itself is already clear and Awareness itself is the foundation of the thinking mind. Follow any thought to its source and you find Awareness – Awareness without a thought, just Pure Awareness. Awareness is intelligence itself and nearly infinite potential. The natural movement of this Self-Aware-Intelligence is to express and create. The natural expression of Creative Intelligence through the human mind is to think.

Thinking is the healthy and automatic expression of intelligent and creative life force in our human form. Thinking is the wholesome function of the mind. It would be futile to try to stop the mind from thinking for more than a brief time. As long as we are alive our mind will be churning out thoughts, like our body will be churning out feelings. There is no problem in this! It is part of our design. We do, however, want to be able to put our thoughts into the perspective of their source. This will spontaneously support the most effective and useful action in the world.

Harnessing the Mind’s Inherent Curiosity and Intelligence.

Since the mind is highly intelligent at its source and is always thinking, skillful practice would be to harness the mind’s natural curiosity to experience its own nature. Since the subtle levels of our individual awareness are tinged with the qualities of the subtle nature of who and what we are all made of – sat-chit-ananda – awareness-consciousness-bliss, when we begin to follow any thought or feeling to its source we get closer to experiencing the deep comfort that is always emanating from our core. Bliss is the subtle nature of thought and feeling. Because this level of bliss – ananda – is so comfortable, when we use skillful means in meditation we are naturally drawn in to this deep feeling of comfort.

This is a completely natural and automatic movement of the mind because the mind does seek greater happiness and comfort. When left to its natural function the mind will turn toward what it prefers. Often the mind gets caught on the surface levels of awareness and doesn’t remember its source.

When the body-mind system is tense the mind tends to get caught on the surface. The mind literally ruminates over the stresses and strains of experience. The superficial layers of thought are just not as satisfying, or deeply comfortable, as the deeper layers. And when our mind is restricted to the surface layers of experience, through tension and repetitive thought patterns, it becomes dissatisfied. It’s own intuition tells it that there must be something more than this.

Often the mind needs a little help to start the journey inward and let go of the tension that is holding it on the surface.

INNER GRAVITY OF TRUTH – THE INWARD AND THE OUTWARD STROKES OF MEDITATION

Pure Awareness has an inner gravity – a strong force – that pulls our individual consciousness to it. A good technique will allow us to become swept up in the pull toward the comfortable emanations of Pure Awareness. It is pleasurable. We like it. We release into it and saturate in the healing qualities of clarity, rest, and rejuvenation. Intuitively, we all know this is our source, and yet we often can’t even imagine that it can be touched, experienced, and that it can be expanded into our conscious awareness.

It is actually easy once you know how to do it! It’s easy because it is satisfying… it feels good and it is the natural direction of the evolution of consciousness. All we have to do is get out of our own way! In order to get out of our own way we use skillfully chosen techniques that assist the mind in relaxing for a moment, so that the deeper fields of Pure Being can draw it in. As the mind moves effortlessly inward it enjoys the release and thereby finds it easier to relax. The process continues based on the increased comfort and relaxation and the mind dives deeper. Eventually it forgets itself, even if just for a moment. This process is extremely healing and restful for the entire body-mind-nervous system complex. This is the inward stroke of meditation.

The inward stroke – the diving in through the layers of consciousness to the deepest experiences of comfort and even bliss – creates profound rest in all layers of our being. It has the effect of releasing deep stress from the system. Interestingly, the release of stress causes an upward flowing of the mind, back toward the surface layers, in the form of thinking. In the process of stress releasing, thinking increases. This is the outward stroke of meditation.

Together, the inward and the outward strokes, provide a process of healing that is resonant with all of nature’s healing rhythms. Nature evolves in cycles of rest and activity. We see this in so many areas of life: life and death, day and night, summer and winter, spring and fall. We live by cycles of rest and activity. We sleep every night and we are active during the day. We are born and we are young and we cycle into old age and we die. We inhale…and then we exhale.

Stress that is wound up inside cannot be released without an action. The action is a kind of unwinding of nervous system tension that has wrapped around itself and created a kind of knot. As the knot releases, it is expressed in thought. It can be a single thought, or a long dreamy series of thoughts. Thinking is an integral and important part of meditation! It is the outward stroke, so to speak. It is the result of deep experience and it clears the field of personal consciousness from the very stresses that block our clear vision of life as it is.

It is the nature of intelligence to be clear. It is the nature of your very essence to not be deceived by the convoluted workings of your mind. We sometimes think of the thinking mind as a young child, busy with the task of individuating from its parents and arguing for its separate existence. As the good parent we respect this process of individuation and enjoy it as a natural part of development but also know that the child is not in charge. The parent is the container for the child, keeping it safe. Left to its own devices a young child would have no frame of reference, no container for its development. Children need loving parents. Let the deepest layers of awareness become your container, your frame of reference for all that you perceive.

Meditate.

14Oct2014

If You Can Think, You Can Meditate

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation by Patty Townsend

Meditation is a completely natural function of the human mind. We are inherently intelligent and curious beings. It is part of being human to wonder about ourselves and about life. All cultures have engaged in meditation and there are many methods of practice. Some are very precise and technique oriented and others are intentionally less precise. So many of the techniques are excellent. Different techniques resonate with different people. In this piece, I am writing more about the dynamics of meditation than about any specific technique. Meditations of all kinds work because they all arise out of the same body-mind-spirit system. They all need to rely on the natural tendencies of the body and mind to experience deeper comfort, happiness, and joy.

The secret of meditation is that when we can get out of our own way we can allow the deepest inner comfort to simply pull us in. It is natural. It is actually harder to resist than it is to do, but we have to understand the situation in order to free ourselves from our own crippling restrictions and inhibitions. Comfort is waiting, even bliss. There is nothing to believe in this at all – no belief is necessary. The only thing necessary is the burning desire to know. It has to be a burning desire because if it isn’t strong enough you simply won’t do it. For most of us, meditation is not effective when not done regularly. And regularly means every day… for many years. You probably do have plenty of time so now is a good time to start.

DEVELOPING CLARITY OF MIND AND GAINING CHOICE IN HOW WE PERCEIVE
Our minds have two basic directions available for movement at all times. We can look outward and focus on the outer environment, or we can move our awareness inwardly and focus on our inner environment. As we explore these realms, we learn more about them. Our experiences of the outer world build impressions, concepts, and ideas that we store within. These perceptions are colored by our inherent personality. Our personality is an intermingling of our genetic and karmic makeup, and the stored impressions of our life experiences. The blending of perception and judgments that we make about perception, creates another level of inner consciousness. We think about things. We feel things. We make decisions – consciously or not – and we act. We perform functions in the world. We relate, interact, learn more, store more, and color it with more of our own story. We build a life based upon our interactions and perceptions, the decisions we have made about them, and our ongoing experiences and relationships.

The key to successfully navigating this process is cultivating choice about how we perceive. We develop choice through inquiry into our perceptual faculties and discovering how they are informing all that we think and feel. Without choice we are simply at the mercy of our personality and our environment. Left unchecked, our stored impressions will color our experiences so thoroughly that we cannot differentiate what is actually present in any immediate event from the qualities and feelings that we are essentially applying to the experience from our own storehouse of impressions, images, and held-to-be-true concepts about life and self.

Worse, we don’t even recognize that it is actually our own impressions and previously made decisions that we are witnessing when we think we are experiencing something new! We tend to believe our perceptions without too much attention to whether they are accurate or not, when often what we are perceiving says a lot more about our inner state than it does about our environment, and importantly, about our relationships with others. This limited and usually inaccurate method of perceiving breeds suffering and confusion.

So often we essentially affirm our previous perceptions and decisions, in order to make quick sense of whatever is happening at the moment. This is an important agility that our mind has. It helps us to respond quickly to danger and ensures that we can take care of ourselves in urgent situations. But in terms of seeing the world as it actually is, making rapid decisions about each experience can block our access to some of the deeper gifts that our awareness offers. When we are so immediately sure that our perceptions and decisions about them are correct – and just in case they are not – we become locked into a response pattern that may or may not be the most useful for us anymore.

Often these immediate responses were important and useful when they first manifested. They were a function of health in that they likely did protect us from an emotional or physical danger. Our immediate reactions to danger can keep us alive through extremely difficult situations. Some of these very difficult situations can continue to persist for years and we need to remain vigilant in our own defense. But later on, in times of safety, our ways of managing these painful situations can actually be inhibiting our active involvement and enjoyment of our lives.

Again, the question is of choice. Do we have “choice” about how we perceive and how we respond to our perceptions? How fully can we trust our perceptions? Can we be sure that we are accurately recognizing what is being presented in a current situation? Or, are we coloring it so quickly with our own expectations that we are actually experiencing our own feelings about the event more fully that the truth of what is happening?

FINDING DEEP COMFORT AND SUPPORT—AWARENESS AND ANANDA
This can be so very tricky to navigate. We need a frame of reference and philosophy in which to contain this investigation. We also need inner comfort and support to nurture us through the process of determining what is true from what is not. Without an inkling that increasing levels of inner comfort may be the fruit of this endeavor, we would certainly not embark on it.

The very reason that this process of investigation ultimately bears fruit is that deep comfort is the nature of the “stuff” that supports the mind. The support of the mind – its True Nature – like the nature of absolutely everything else, is Awareness; Awareness without any object of perception – just vibrating Creative Intelligence.
Pure Awareness manifests. It joins with the stuff – the nature of things – and infuses it fully with its intelligence.

Awareness manifests constantly into the field of manifestation (us) — in waves of bliss. Bliss, or ananda – as the yogis call it – needs some serious definition. Ananda can all too easily be misunderstood to mean some sort of happiness as we normally think of “happiness”. Ananda really has nothing particular to do with happiness. Ananda is better understood as complete and total comfort. There are many ways to expand upon this definition of ananda as comfort but it is important to realize that it is very different from what most of us imagine when we think of “bliss”. Ananda is the deepest embodied experience of profound contentment, the sense of being completely at home.

Using the meditative techniques of serious inquiry, unwavering self-acceptance, and keen discrimination (embodied-inquiry, santosha, and viveka) we begin to recognize for ourselves the subtlest levels of who we are. We come into direct contact with the process of Pure Awareness moving into form… through waves of tangible bliss.

The ancient yogic texts have provided a powerful and all-inclusive statement about the nature of life. They tell us that the nature of the mind is bliss: sat-chit-ananda or truth-consciousness-bliss. It is very important to note that there is no denial of human suffering in this statement. The statement does say that even the worst suffering has the same nature, because all of creation emanates from the same Source – sat-chit-ananda. The implication is actually profoundly inclusive in that it does not hold bliss to be an experience reserved for the lucky. Rather it is saying that no matter who you are, or what your experience has been, there is hope for finding deep inner comfort because it is who you actually are.

Ananda is underneath and supportive of our entire body-mind-spirit system. Ananda and awareness are woven into varying densities and vibrating at various speeds to create our energetic, mental, emotional and physical selves. Awareness and ananda are often veiled at the surface levels of our consciousness. It isn’t that ananda and awareness aren’t present in our structural selves. They are! It is that we have a strong tendency to perceive our thinking processes, our feelings, and all of the matter and the structural stuff of life to be the whole story.
If we were to inquire more thoroughly we would soon notice the underlying nature of all that we are. We would see, touch, taste, and feel, the Essential Blissful Awareness that is constantly present. Honestly, it is a simple matter of attention. Pay attention. No really…pay close attention.

Meditate.

7May2014

The Kosas — Subtle Anatomy — Layers of Self

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Teaching by Patty Townsend

The most important aspect of our practice is a willingness to see what is without resistance. This is the yogic principle of Santosha – acceptance and contentment with what is, without inferring non-action. We don’t have to like it. Neither do we have to not like it. We simply need to make a commitment to witnessing anything that arises within us without judgement. This is a very powerful technique. When we cease resisting noticing anything about ourselves, the very issues that our resistance is attempting to keep out of our awareness simply dissolve. They dissolve because we witness them without resistance. So simple. They dissolve because the field of awareness from which we are witnessing them is simply more powerful.

The most powerful force in the universe is the evolutionary movement toward Unity. We see what we are able to accommodate based on the level of comfort that is increasingly present as we travel into the deepest levels of awareness – of which we are made. The movement is always toward more inner comfort. Eventually we begin to trust this movement fully. We trust it because we experience the increasing satisfaction and sense of being at home that contacting these deep levels offers, not because it is a philosophical idea that we like.

The system of the kosas is the perfect template for yoga study. You start where you are – as you are – and inquire deeply. The deepest layers of you are profoundly comfortable in nature. When we can get out of our own way, these deeply comfortable layers of inner awareness and bliss will draw us in. Experience of this deep comfort fascilitates the release of stress and obstruction in the nervous system. Obstacles to clarity melt away and we begin to approach the recognition of our very nature: sat-chit-ananda / awareness-consiousness-bliss

Whole-Body-Mind-Support-Templates
In asana practice, in movement and in stillness, we always begin from what we call whole-body-mind-support-templates. These are matrices of integration that include the whole body-mind-awareness system. They are interrelating and interpenetrating layers of support. It is important in our asana practice not to continue the fragmentary ways of self perception that we habitually use in life. By taking this approach, whole-body-mind-supports, we are already moving toward a more holistic self experience.

The Yogic system of whole-body-mind-integration is pointed to in Tantric philosophy. It is the system of the kosas. Kosas are spiralic and interwoven sheaths of awareness and manifestation – from the most subtle to the most obvious – that woven together, complete the whole cloth of our individual personhood. The kosas also relate to the elements, from the most subtle to the densest: space, air, fire, water, and earth. Each of these elements is part of the stuff that awareness mixes with to form individual qualities, traits, and characteristics. Awareness and all elements are contained within every cell. Therefore each element serves as another whole-body-mind-supporting template.

Subtle Senses
Please keep in mind: We use our senses to experience this. Senses are a very important aspect of this elegant perceiving system that we are. Each of our senses has the outer more obvious representation of itself and an inner subtle sense. We touch with our hands. We also touch internally cell to cell, tissue to tissue. Our inner touch can be further refined to feel the varying qualities of inner sensation. Remember, everything is more pleasurable the deeper we go. The senses are attracted to the inner body-mind and the subtle and yet powerful sensations of comfort, peace, and home.

Awareness — Pure and Simple—Atmamaya and Chittamaya Kosas
The first, the most subtle, or the deepest whole-body-mind-support-template is Awareness. Awareness is experienced in the body as well as the mind. It is a completely unified field and is the first template of individuality as well. Awareness perceives itself, without thought, simply as pure perception. This seems difficult to understand because “understanding” involves an object of perception and a perceiver. At the level of pure being there need be no object in order for perception to be happening. Perceiving is always happening whether there is an object or not. The field itself, perceives itself. Please remember this is not a philosophical principle to understand. This is experience experiencing. It is not something that you need to make happen. It is happening. All you and your personal self identifying structures need to do is to witness yourself from the perspective of the vastness. Remember? It’s just like turning a switch. When the light is off you cannot see where you are. When the light is switched on you can see yourself in the perspective of the room. The room was there all along. You just couldn’t see it. Nothing has actually changed except for your ability to perceive.

Bliss — Anandamaya Kosa — Space — Hearing
This is the interface point where the Vastness is beginning to move into form. As Universal Awareness moves into the individual body-mind system, its first and most subtle expression is bliss. The coming together of Vastness and individuality is experienced as waves of bliss. This bliss is not the same as happiness that is dependent upon circumstance. In fact, happiness would not be a good way to describe the yogic experience of bliss. Yogic bliss is a deeply settled inner recognition of Unity manifesting into form. It is a sense of wholeness and inseparability from all of life that gives rise to love and compassion. Most simply put, from the individual perspective, this is profound and complete comfort on every level.

No matter what the situation or the circumstances of an individual life may be, this level is always present. It is called Ananda. Its existence is not dependent upon feeling good. It isn’t lessened or increased by sorrow or pain. It is just always there. It also doesn’t deny sorrow or pain. If we inquire deeply enough, even in times of suffering, we will see that ananda is present. At the cellular level, the cell recognizes itself to be awake and alive and immediately recognizes the entire family of cells to be the same. The element here is space. It is experienced in the body-mind as a spacious expansion of comfort and relaxation, the feeling of being at home in universal awareness and within ones own skin. This experience of bliss is entirely natural and normal. You have very likely experienced this many times and at some level of your awareness you recognize it already. The only reason you perhaps haven’t noticed it is that you are usually preoccupied with something else. It is just right there! Right underneath and supportive of whatever else is going on. Best witnessed in savasana, perhaps, ananda is associated with the sense of hearing. It is at this level within, that we hear the primordial sound of Pure Awareness moving into form. Again, we hear this. The yogis call this sound Nada. The Nada is expressing from the interface point where Pure Awareness is moving into form. Ananda is a whole-body-mind-support-template. Every cell witnesses this.

Discrimination, Wisdom, and Love —Vijanamaya Kosa— Air — Touch
As Awareness continues its movement into form, the highest level of mind becomes apparent. Again, realize this is not something happening within the brain. Wisdom and discrimination are equally everywhere. They fully penetrate the entire body-mind system that is now taking form. This is the quality of Knowingness. Knowingness is not a thought, it is an immediate recognition. The element is air. Air is expandable and compressible. It is dense compared to space and yet it has a quality of lightness and mobility. The compressibility and rebound of air brings in the sense of touch. The inner touch, cell to cell, tissue to tissue, a bonding to self and family within the body. This is the level at which love begins to be felt in the cells: community within and community with others, lover, family, friends, and the larger community of the environment and the world. This is a unifying support template for the whole-body-mind also as it is felt everywhere simultaneously.

Try This:
Seated, soften your hand and then rest it on your thigh in full contact. Touch. Is your hand touching your thigh, or is your thigh touching your hand? What does this touch feel like? Where does the sensation begin and end? How far does it spread? Touch somewhere else with your soft hand.
Find a comfortable position where your belly can touch your thighs. Move your belly toward your thighs and your thighs toward your belly. Feel the touch. Might there be love in this?

Sensing, Metabolism, Thinking, and Transformation —Manomaya Kosa— Fire — Sight
Fire is the power of personal transformation. It is our Tapas, our burning desire toward personal evolution. Within our bodies, the fire element includes the processes that use heat and combustion: energy synthesis, digestion, all aspects of metabolism, and many neuroendocrine functions as well. This is also the thinking mind. Thinking and nervous system functions have a dry, light, quick, and hot, quality of fire. We sense this bright light quality of metabolism in the cells. The Greek root of metabolism means “to change”. Metabolism transforms particles within the body to make useable nutrients and to break down complex substances into waste products that can be excreted. At the level of consciousness we have the same opportunity: to break down complex substances into useable particles and/or waste products that can be excreted. Our inner metabolism, how we are able to digest and assimilate life as it is, propels our personal transformation. The sense that relates to fire is sight. There is a quality of clear definition and differentiation in our sight. We see the lines, and shapes, and depth. In our bodies this relates to the sensing of our nervous system. Sensing is dry, light, and quick. We see within.

Try this:
Feel the brightness and the clarity of your perception of the light. Feel your inner heat. Even if you feel cold, you have inner heat. Where is it? Can you feel it in the cells? What are your cells “doing”? There is a brightness to it. See it within.

Stand in Tadasana. Feel the element of fire, perhaps in your belly. How does fire move? Reach up to begin a sun salutation from the tapas, the fire.

Feeling, Emotion, and Life Force—Pranamaya Kosa — Water — Taste
Feeling is a fluid experience and takes place within the water element. Since our structural body may be as much as 70% water, there is a lot to feel here. We have blood, lymph, organs, skin, fat, and many other bodily fluids. Each has their own expression with particular qualities and traits of consciousness and form. There is a lot of emotion at the water level. We feel rushing, surging, seeping, pulsing, and wavelike movements that express the many textured levels of feeling.

When we were very young and just developing in utero our body structures were developing first through the prana flowing through fluids. The direction of the pranic movement is underneath all of our physical structures. This is both a memory and an ongoing flow that supports the continuation of health throughout our lives. When these flows are interrupted or blocked due to rigid thinking and hardened movement patterns health is compromised. We are less comfortable in body and mind.

Tapping into the underlying movement of prana within our fluid bodies we once again allow it to flow undisturbed. An unimpeded flow of life force is a great boon to our health and clarity of mind. Full and free pranic movement limits our susceptibility to disease and helps us to develop to our full potential. The natural result is a more fulfilling life that feels useful and valuable to others.

Our organs are primarily fluid in their makeup. Each one expresses specific qualities of intelligence and awareness. Together they form a symphony of support and function. Water is mobile and flows downward with gravity. Water molecules attract one another. They hold together; they bond. Can you taste within? Can you savor every moment and experience of the inner world? Feel now the quality of whole body experience that results from imagining the taste of something delightful. Don’t you feel that everywhere?

Try This:
Stand in Tadasana. Feel the flow of your blood from your heart, to the peripheral body and its seeping back again to the heart. Feel the fluid sensation in your legs and your arms. Begin to let your body move as if the inner fluid flow was directing the movement. Water moves in many spiralic ways through your body tissues. Experiment. Close your eyes and follow the fluid flow within. Allow your bodies outer movement to express the varying inner flows. Savor the movement.

Solidity —Anamaya Kosa— Earth — Smell
Earth is stable. Earth moves slowly. Earth without water is dry, particulate matter. It is our mineral body – our densest form. The particulate forms the scaffolding upon which all other elements can attach. It is the mineral content of the bone. It is the particulate and structural that is distributed throughout the body, within the cells, within the blood, and everywhere else. Our earth. Smell is the first sense to develop. As tiny babies we use it to find our mothers breast and the milk. Earth within is about being here, survival, existence in the most basic way. It is deeply, quiet, heavy, and present. It is clear and simple. We continue to feel the earth within as the basic structural materials.

Try this:
Stand in tadasana. Feel the weight transfer through your bones and into the earth. Feel the steadiness, the stillness of taking all of your awareness into exploring the qualities of your mineral body.

“How we move is who we are.” Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Movement is a quality of life. One celled organisms move. Everything that is alive moves. Life itself expresses from Source through movement. We are in constant movement within. We perceive inner movement with our inner senses. Different qualities of movement spark different perceptions. Different perceptions express in different qualities of movement. Perception, movement, and senses are intimately woven together. They’re woven in the cloth of Awareness.

Movement at each of these levels, these sheaths of awareness, has a different quality. We contain all these elements, they are moving in relationship to one another, they are perceiving themselves, and we are perceiving them. By going to the consciousness of each layer, we bring up, we enliven, its qualities in every cell. The whole body becomes unified in the sensation of an individual sheath and its expressive element. This expresses uniquely in each person based on the personal body-mind system. When this is fully recognized by the individual it can become an ecstatic celebration of life. We have witnessed this in dance perhaps, and in the extraordinary coordination and abilities of elite athletes.

Try This:
What do you perceive through your senses? As yoga practitioners we have refined our senses somewhat already. We have “sensitized” ourselves. Feel outward with each sense, into the environment. Then turn it inward. The inner touch, scent, taste, sound, and sight. Do the inner perceptions of the moment inspire any movement? Can you further integrate the outer senses with the inner? What do you notice?

After you have explored each of these elements individually let’s put it all together and notice the seamless transitions from one to the other.

Try This as a Sequence:
Earth: We can recognize earth as heavy, clear and simple. Moving from earth is slow. If you raise your arms in tadasana from the earth element there will be a dryness to it. As the arms go upward the weight is falling directly downward into gravity. Particulate, sifting through its liquid environment.

Water: Now try the same thing from the sensation of the fluid body. You may feel the surge of the water earthward and the fountain like effect of the upward reaching arms. Do you notice in both of these examples how the whole body seems to pick up the qualities of the awareness from which you are initiating the movement. Try going further with the sun salutation or some standing postures. The differences in the tone is remarkable.

Try fire: Again stand in tadasana. Let the fire begin to burn in our belly. How does this alter your awareness? Begin to move. What is the quality of movement here?

Air: Is there almost a sigh of relief in coming into the air element. Feel the arms float upward from the expansion of the air within the chest and the heart. Air is both expansive and compressible. What is the consciousness that arises with air? It is light now. There is a delicacy to the movement of air. It doesn’t surge. It doesn’t burn and it’s certainly not heavy like earth. There is a gentleness to air. Feel the air. Sense it. Move from it. Love is embedded here. Can you feel that?

Space: By moving from air to space we have an idea of how light and expansive space is. We can see and feel air. Space is where the air is. Feel the subtle expansion in the slight pause at the end of a soft exhale. There is a pulse outward there. Space is found in the effortless suspension of the breath. In tadasana again: How far do you move from space? Perhaps this is move an inner expansion than an outward movement. As you catch the inner expansion, how does your body move? What is the consciousness that is expressing here?

Penetrating Awareness: Something even lighter than space? Not perceptible through the outwardly directed senses, but Known by the inner senses.

When we prescribe a particular method of movement into, and within, our yoga postures we limit the individual expression of each person and their inherent qualities and traits. If we direct our yoga students to enter a particular posture in the same way every time we actually constrain the full expression of the form. Different yoga systems tend to have an affinity for different elements and levels of awareness. By knowing the framework of the kosas, the consciousness, and the elements of each kosa, we have a larger container from which to assist our students to feel the awareness within each form.

5Dec2013

Yoga Nidra—The Art of Blissful Relaxation

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation, Teaching by Patty Townsend

What is Yoga Nidra? 

Yoga Nidra is a direct window into the very deepest layers of our being. It is a technique for diving into the most healing levels of personal consciousness. Through Yoga Nidra practice we are able to sink into the deepest levels of relaxation available to us as human beings. We contact the finest layers of our structure and awareness. We rest in a healing mist of bliss and saturate in the deepest kind of healing. It is a simple technique of resting, feeling, and following the prompts of the teacher as she leads your through placing your awareness systematically in different parts of your body.

Yoga Nidra is a practice that derives from the Tantric tradition. Tantric philosophy offers a unified vision of creation and speaks to the weave – or the matrix – of consciousness and form that expresses as the entire manifest universe. Tantric practices include and celebrate each person’s individual body-mind-awareness system. It teaches that our personal body-mind system is a microcosm of the universal reality and that by understanding and fully inhabiting all the layers of ourselves we can experience directly, and for ourselves, the vision of the unity of all life.
The practices of Tantra are directed toward realizing, and noticing without a doubt, that Pure Being is inextricably woven through all of nature. Tantra invites us into a breathing and moving experience of Pure Being and nature as a fully embodied-experiential reality. In Tantric practice there is complete inhabitation of the body, mind, and spirit and a celebration of the individual as the microcosm of the universal whole. According to Tantra, if anything is Divine, then everything is Divine.

Cycles of Deep Rest and Activity 

All of nature nurtures and expresses itself in cycles of rest and activity. We have exhale and inhale as an uninterrupted rising and falling of restfulness and alertness that is continuous through day and night. We have sleeping and waking, the cycles of the seasons, and life and death. These cycles are apparent everywhere we look in nature. Yoga points to these rhythms as well in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjal through its incorporation of being active in the world through the yamas, niyamas, and asana and the internal practices, the resting and going inward, of shavasana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi. The resting phase in yoga is extremely important. It is often overlooked probably because our society values action over rest. The resting phase is where we learn and incorporate. It is where we dive the most deeply within and receive so much healing. In common life we are not often taught the tools for increasing our restfulness beyond sleep. It is critical for the development of a deeper range of awareness to allow our perceiving faculties to soften and expand. Sleep is not enough to balance our subtle nervous system and increase the range of consciousness.

Yoga teaches techniques for refining our nervous systems by cultivating appropriate healing cycles of deep rest to balance our engagement in an active life. In order to refine our awareness – deepen consciousness – we need to balance out these cycles and make the resting phase more effective. When life is lived in a way that does not provide deep rest for the nervous system on a regular basis, we accumulate stress. The accumulation of stress builds within when we do not have appropriate and deep means of releasing it. Yoga Nidra is the perfect technique for gaining the deepest rest of all. Normal sleep and dreaming is helpful, but it is not nearly enough to progressively cleanse and balance the human nervous system and facilitate the evolution of consciousness. By ‘nervous system’ we are referring to both the nervous system that can be recognized in its physical structure and the subtle nervous system that is experienced by yogis. The subtle nervous system balances the flow of prana in the body. Prana doesn’t only flow through the nerves but rather through every tissue, and its flow helps to determine the awareness level of the tissues as well. The experience that we often speak of in Embodyoga®: that every cell is awake, alive, and self aware, can only be supported by a clear mind and a clear nervous system. Clear means open to the full range of awareness and experience. Clear does not mean devoid of thought or absent of sensation. It does mean an ongoing experience of the full depth of the field of body-mind-awareness as an inseparable continuum of all of life, including ones personal existence, no matter what is presenting in the momentary movement within the field of relationship; knowing the human and the divine aspects of self as a tangible reality that doesn’t go away when there is pleasure or pain, happiness or sadness, or any of the other poles of opposite experiences. This awareness – embodiment of the entire field of our personal perceptual vehicle, our body-mind-awareness system – is what is necessary to recognize Unity.

Four States of Consciousness: Waking, Dreaming, Deep Sleep, and Turya–the Fourth State 

Yogis recognize a fourth state of consciousness called turya, which means fourth state. Turya is the deepest level of consciousness. It is the foundation of all the others. It is the unmanifest, or transcendent level of awareness that is the core awareness inside us all. The unmanifest is the Absolute, the pure and formless ground of being from which creation and manifestation arise. Yoga teaches us clearly that we have access to this level of our being. Accessing it, especially on a regular basis, is profoundly healing and comforting to all levels of our body-mind system including our perceptual abilities and how we make sense of what we perceive. Accessing this layer of existence provides us with the deepest healing. It spontaneously saturates our entire body-mind with Pure Being and provides a quality of restfulness that is above and beyond anything we can achieve in normal sleep or dreaming. It is the most profound level of calming, relaxing, and rejuvenating clarity and peacefulness that we have available to us.

While deep sleep is a dull state, Yoga Nidra takes us to the level of awareness that is awake and self-aware. We are drawn into the field of unmanifest creative intelligence that supports our active existence and everything else. Yoga Nidra brings us to the ultimate experience of restfulness. In terms of the gunas it is satvic, while deep sleep is tamasic, and dreaming is rajasic. In terms of the koshas, Yoga Nidra is a diving through the sheaths of awareness from the grossest to the subtlest. Yoga Nidra allows this to occur naturally due to the compelling healing and relaxing sensations of the deepest layers of our form and awareness. As we go deeper we are more comfortable, more at home. As we dive deeply we enter the realm of the spacious experience of bliss, or ananda. From there we slip quite effortlessly into the field of Pure Being.

An Elegant and Simple Practice 

By keeping the Yoga Nidra practice simple and clear we get out of our own way, so that the natural tendency of life to take us deeper can have full sway over us. Everyone wants to feel good. Everyone wants to be more comfortable, happier, and more relaxed. This picture of yoga, through a Tantric perspective, trusts that there is profound comfort available to all of us deep inside. Our thinking mind often gets so preoccupied with itself that it impedes our recognition of the space in which the mind itself is functioning. Mind is extremely adept at forming obstacles to the recognition of the full field of awareness. A spinning mind effectively keeps our awareness right on the surface. In Yoga Nidra we give the mind a simple task. It has something to do – it follows the prompts. Our body awareness has something to do as well – it unites with mind to feel what we are doing. With our body-mind easily engaged in feeling and following the prompts we are under cutting the mind’s tendency to get caught on the surface layers of consciousness. By offering the mind something to do that is simple and doesn’t require effort we effectively get it out of the way of the natural pull of the subtle layers. With the mind gently occupied, the field of blissful awareness that is underneath it and supporting it can effectively pull us in. We are effortlessly drawn in to experience the gifts of our deep inner self directly. We harness the natural tendency of mind to think, and let it do so. It’s a trick in a certain kind of way, and a good one at that. Yoga Nidra is an elegant and perfect model for going within and touching our deepest comfort. It is light, refreshing, and leaves us feeling full of Pure Awareness. It is a birthright of every human to be able to contact this. It is not dependent upon situation. It is already present, but its healing energy is often blocked by the deep stresses that we have accumulated over our lifetime, or lifetimes. It doesn’t matter whether the stress was accumulated in this life or another. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in reincarnation or not. The stress is the same and it has the same remedy: deep and profound rest. The restfulness provides the necessary support for the human nervous system to release its stored patterns.

In Yoga Nidra, as we traverse through the layers of consciousness, we are naturally pulled into the comfort of the deepest levels of existence. Because we have a place to rest the thinking mind – the voice and directions of the teacher in this case – we are able to float on the pull of Pure Being and the blissful sheath of anandamaya kosha. Because of the comfort and the natural inner desire to feel better we are completely effortlessly pulled by these deeply restful and comfortable inner sensations. As we rest so deeply, the accumulated stresses of the nervous system begin to unwind. In their release they express as thoughts, dreams, sensations. The stress release process may take us on a wild journey through thinking and feeling that is very dream like. Sometimes it goes on for quite a while. The time is determined by the amount of stress being released. Just as in a meditation technique, when we realize that we have been off on a tangent of sorts, we just effortlessly come back to the technique, which in the case of Yoga Nidra, is following the teacher’s voice. Or if you are practicing from memory, you pick up where you left off. It is not necessary, and not at all advisable to concentrate on trying to figure out the nature of the releasing stresses. We just simply go back to the technique. That’s all.

With regular practice the conscious access to this deep level of awareness increases. We begin to feel it as the basis – the very underpinnings – of all the other manifestations of consciousness. Once fully established, this restful quality permeates the other three states of consciousness. We have only to learn the tools for accessing this place on a regular basis. Yoga Nidra is one of the very best techniques that yoga offers for establishing this restfulness in our nervous systems.
The result of Yoga Nidra practice is a quality of restful-alertness that is constant in our lives. We spontaneously begin to experience directly that this underlying level of bliss – the anandamaya kosha – is always there. With unrestricted access to this reality our perceptions in our daily lives are completely changed. We progressively release more and more of the deep-seated nervous system stress. This provides us with increasing clarity. We become more joyful and also more productive when we are not so encumbered by the fluctuations of mood and mind. All fluctuations are seen to be part of this vast sea of awareness that has as its very texture and weave Pure Awareness and even bliss. This is the result of all yoga practices that include contacting directly the field of Pure Being. Yoga Nidra is definitely one of the jewels of yoga and can be practiced by everybody.

Download Free Audio—Classical Yoga Nidra—Led by Patty Townsend

25Aug2013

Embody Bliss—Ananda and Space

Posted in Breathing, Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation by Patty Townsend

Awareness is at our core, and as it begins to take form it manifests outward, into increasing levels of density. Its subtlest element (manifestation) is space. Space is the home of ananda. This is the point where the Vastness takes on physical form. As Universal Awareness moves into the individual body-mind system, its first and most subtle expression is bliss, or ananda.

What is Bliss?
The coming together of Vastness and individuality is experienced as waves of bliss. Bliss is not the same as happiness that is dependent upon circumstance. In fact, happiness would not be a good way to describe the yogic experience of bliss. Yogic bliss is a deeply settled inner recognition of Unity manifesting into form. It is a sense of wholeness and inseparability from all of life that gives rise to love and compassion. Most simply put, from an individual perspective, bliss is experienced as profound and complete comfort on every level.

Always Present
No matter what the situation or the circumstances of an individual’s life, ananda is always present. Its existence is not dependent upon feeling good, and it isn’t lessened by sorrow or pain. Ananda is just always there. If we inquire deeply enough, even in times of suffering, we will see that ananda is present. At the cellular level, the cell recognizes itself to be awake and alive and immediately recognizes the entire family of cells around it to be the same.

Ananda is experienced in the body-mind as a spacious expansion of comfort and relaxation, the feeling of being at home in Universal Awareness and within one’s own skin. The experience of bliss is entirely natural and normal. You have very likely sensed it many times, and you may be aware of it already.

Pay Attention
The only reason you perhaps haven’t consciously noticed ananda is that you are usually preoccupied with something else. It is just right there, just underneath and supporting whatever else is going on within you. Ananda is most easily recognized during savasana or meditation. In quiet practices you may hear the primordial sound of Awareness moving into form. The ancient yogis call this sound Nada. Nada is expressed from the interface point where Awareness takes on form. Ananda is a whole-body-mind-support-template experienced by every cell.

For Space — Try This:
—Stand in tadasana. See and feel the space around you. Can you hear the space? In the same way that we listen to the world externally with open attention, we listen internally. Where is the space within your body?

—Try feeling your joints. Soft joints are good places to experience space. Space is everywhere. It is within our structures, around them, and supporting them. But what is the consciousness of space?

—Recline in a well-supported and comfortable savasana. Relax deeply. Follow the sensations of relaxation. You will notice a sense of comfort and release; keep going. Inquire: where is this coming from? Allow yourself to drop more deeply into the sensation until it dissolves into space, inner space. Do you hear a sound?

Practice Yoga Nidra: The Art of Blissful Relaxation
Free Audio Download—Simple Resting Practice:

17Aug2013

Finding Contented and Useful Ordinariness —Embodying Sushumna Nadi

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Classically sushumna nadi is considered to be the empty channel at the center of the subtle nervous system through which kundalini flows heralding the dawn of self-realization. Kundalini rising is largely recognized to happen in a state of deep meditation where one is in a complete state of transcendence and loses all awareness of the physical plane. It is hinted at, but not emphasized, what ones experience might be to live in a state where sushumna is flowing freely and supporting our everyday life and perceptions.

When sushumna has opened it is the beginning of our ability to perceive how the radiance of consciousness is penetrating all layers of life. This gives a fully embodied texture to what we can experience when sushumna nadi has opened. Its radiance is felt not only in the spine itself, but also through the structural core from the perineal body to the mid brain and the crown. This is what we have referred to in Embodyoga® as the embodiment of sushumna. It correlates with the experience of the notochord. The notochord is not sushumna itself, but is one of its first tangible expressions into form. It is a sensory experience. It is not an experience of the same qualities of senses that we direct outward into the world to bring information back into us. It is an inner direction of subtle senses; subtle senses that are more refined and delicate. They are drawn inward by Awareness rather than drawn outward by objects. They feel, taste, touch, hear, and smell the beauty of life manifesting into form. This is a sensual and sensory witnessing of the nature of reality manifesting that is not reserved for deep meditation, but is available at the grocery store too.

One could argue that any embodied sensation, however subtle, cannot be sushumna because sushumna has no physical structure whatsoever. Purists may say that the radiance of awareness that emanates from sushumna cannot be experienced as a sensory event of any kind. I understand that argument. But it doesn’t correlate with my own experience.

It is well known that the sensation of kundalini shakti rising through sushumna can be felt. Why not then, when the channel is open, would we not continue to feel an evolution – or a growth – of that experience/awareness that penetrates through everything?
This way of perceiving the channel of sushumna includes two different layers of experiencing. We perceive the radiance of sushumna in our spine and in our central body core. It is not the channel so much as it is what the channel holds – Radiant Awareness – that we are actually describing.

I think it is important as embodied beings that we inquire into the possibility of feeling the radiance of Awareness in our lives, and not simply in a rare state of transcendence.

I find that relating this subtle experience of Unity in action to sushumna is useful for living. There is core radiance through our center that is related to the remnant of the notochord and contains more awareness than it does form. If we perceive sushumna as a channel that is non-perceptible it will definitely remain that way. By exploring the idea that the radiance of pure awareness is genuinely present and available to experience we open to a deeper level of reality. We stop limiting our perceptions. The notochord radiance is there and it feels like light and awareness. Let’s call it sushumna… or not. It doesn’t really matter what it is called. The trick is to notice it.

This is a very direct method for feeling the radiance of awareness as support – not just for mind – but also for body as an ongoing and direct experience. This is support for life and living. It is support for effective action and establishing ones personal dharma. It feels like a necessary process for living life in fullness. Again these are not techniques for being happy, but for being content in the knowledge that your life is what it should be. This is an important doorway for achieving satisfaction in life, in an embodied existence, in a relational world where each of us is only a small part, no more or less important than any other, and subject to the joys and sorrows of our fellow beings. This is not a path toward becoming special or great. This is a path toward contented and useful ordinariness.

11Jul2013

Embodying Meditation—Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation by Patty Townsend

The last six of the eight limbs of Classical Yoga are:

Asana – a sweet and steady posture

Pranayama – recognizing, expanding, and balancing the inner life force

Pratyahara – turning our perceptive senses inward toward subtle awareness

Dharana – collecting the flow of consciousness into a single direction

Dhyana – the spontaneous flow of consciousness in a single direction due to the compelling subtle qualities of the object

Samadhi – union, absorption, no perceptual separation between experiencer, the act of experiencing, and the object of perception

The process of embodiment is yoga. In Embodyoga® we use the practices of dharana, dhyana, and samadhi as the foundations for our inquiry into the nature of our form. We utilize the terms “inquiry”, “somatization”, and “embodiment” in order to place our meditation within our form and function. From our perspective, we focus on all aspects of body-mind as the subjects and objects of meditation. Using asana, pranayama, pratyahara, and dharana, we refine our processes of perception to experience the great gifts of yoga, dhyana and samadhi.

We explore our body-mind system to discover our innate intelligence just as we follow a thought to its source in practices of the mind. You may say, that the body is constantly changing and ultimately will dissolve and decay, and therefore it is not suitable as an object for meditation. And I will say to you, “just like mind.” Mind and body are both equally subject to decay, death, and dissolution. The nature of the perceiving awareness is empty, awake, and free of clinging. This reality is at the source of both body and mind and is fully available to experience from either starting place. Curiosity spurs our inquiry. Without curiosity nothing happens at all. Curiosity is deeply interwoven with desire in its purest form. The importance of recognizing and cultivating our natural curiosity cannot be overstated.

Dharana | Inquiry
We practice dharana — inquiry — to collect and direct our thinking, sensing, and feeling toward a chosen aspect of body-mind. We channel our inquiry in a single direction. As our experience becomes more focused, our attention begins to flow more effortlessly in the direction of our chosen object. This is dharana. Since our inner body and its functions may be unfamiliar to us, we utilize visualization, movement, and touch to stimulate our conscious awareness. As our awareness settles into our chosen resting place, a deeper experience of body-mind is revealed. When the flow of awareness becomes effortless and we are thoroughly engrossed in the process, we call it somatization.

Dhyana | Somatization
Somatization is the body’s expression of the mind’s state of dhyana or meditation. There is still a subject (I) and an object (our chosen focus). When we somaticize, we are involved in intimate communication with our object, experiencing its sensations and qualities on every level. There is clear delineation between experiencer, or subject; experiencing, or relationship; and the object of perception. This exploration can be a very satisfying process that offers tremendous insight and information about both subject and object, but it is not samadhi, and it is not embodiment. Embodiment is samadhi.

Samadhi| Embodiment
In full embodiment, there is no perceptual separation between subject, object, and the communication between them. There is only act of experiencing, which is the union of all three. Awareness of self as separate from experience or experiencing dissolves completely into the radiance of pure awareness recognizing itself. The process of yoga starts where we are. It begins and it culminates in the psycho-physical-spiritual expression of life,. It is all happening right here, right now, in this body, this mind, the immediate environment, the community, and the world.

Dharana, dhyana, and samadhi are the culminating steps in Classical Yoga. By adopting a Tantric approach to our bodies, we incorporate these practices that have been reserved for the mind into a whole-body-mind practice. We accept the fact that mind and body have exactly the same source and are of equal value for our inquiry into the nature of life.

Every one of us is absolutely good enough exactly as we are right now, and we can see life as it actually is. It is not necessary to improve, evolve, and get smarter or better in any way. As long as we are trapped in the idea that we need to change in order to find clarity, we will never settle and do the simple work of seeing what is actually true now.

14Mar2013

Mulabandha — Prana, Embryology & Core

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Embryology
At this point most of us are willing to accept that our physical structure develops and grows from some combination of intelligence, energy, and matter. Matter is the stuff of which we are made. Energy is its process of movement. Intelligence guides its growth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the embryological time.

An awe-inspiring amount of creativity and intelligence expresses in our embryological development. Each phase of development is fascinating and reveals core truths that we live with for the rest of our lives; templates of organization and connection, that may no longer be evident to the eye, but form support structures and relationships that remain with us throughout our life. Often in yoga practice we find that some of the earliest templates of organization from embryology relate very clearly to yogic principles of support and awareness. This is particularly clear when we are observing the flow of prana. Our embryology offers important clues for practice and validates some of the more advanced practices in yoga and the more esoteric descriptions of the inner world that accompany those practices.

The pranic-flows form the templates – the energetic scaffolding – upon which our structure grows. When we look to our embryology with an eye toward Tantric philosophy, we find that prana and apana were present from our earliest beginnings and that it appears/feels that they created the polarity of life force between them upon which our core – our spine and subtle spine – developed.

According to the tantric picture, apana and prana are attracting and repelling one another right from the very beginning. Their opposing energies create a dynamic force between them. It is along this axis of pranic repulsion and attraction that the primitive streak and the notochord initially develop. This is our first central channel – our first structural core.

Embryonic Disc—

In early gestation, from about nine to fourteen days after fertilization, we are nothing more than an embryonic disc. We already have a top and a bottom and a front and a back to our disc. We haven’t yet developed a visibly discernable central axis. According to the Tantric picture of development, apana vayu is already situated at the tail end of the disc and prana vayu is already situated above. The attraction and repulsion – the polarity – of prana and apana are part of the developmental process that defines our structural center for the first time.

We believe that there is awareness at this early place of development. Of course there is. It is not a differentiated sense of awareness at this point. At this very early time, awareness is still entirely one of Unity. The disc itself is undifferentiated Awareness, full of all potential and the Creative Intelligence that will create our form and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives. At this early time our experience does not include an experience of individual qualities and traits. It is not personal. It is a Universal experience of life, by life itself.

Can this be experienced directly? I feel that it can. Opening to the possibility of recognizing our undifferentiated, awake, alive, and self-aware beginnings can be profoundly transformational in terms of how we perceive ourselves now. In Embodyoga®, as in Body-Mind-Centering®, we believe that this can be experienced directly, by dropping in through the layers of our current experience to witness their deepest supports. This can be an amazingly comfortable and soothing sensation in body-mind when we remember and re-experience the profoundly centering and stabilizing support of Unity that is underneath so much complication and differentiation. It was and is our immediate and real perception. We can tune into its existence if we so desire and inquire. As Bonnie has said, “We embody ourselves in four dimensions because we include the dimension of time as a current event.”

The Primitive Streak—The embryonic disc begins to profoundly transform into a multilayered and complex structure with the arising of the primitive streak from its root end. From the center of the bottom of the disc, the primitive streak begins to grow. The source of the primitive streak is where the eventual perineal body will be. As it rises upward – perhaps being pulled by the prana above – it establishes the first bilateral symmetry in our growing anatomy. In terms of yoga, it is important to remember that primitive streak’s origination point is at what will eventually be our perineal body – the home of apana vayu and the root of mulabandha.

The primitive streak rises up only to what will be about the level of the second and third sacral vertebrae. This is the area we refer to as the pit of the belly in Embodyoga®. It is right in the center of the pelvic belly region. The primitive streak pauses at this point. Its stopping point is another structure called the primitive node or knot. The primitive node is exactly where we experience the point of the pelvic belly to be in our adult form. The rising of the primitive streak to the primitive node is the same pranic movement, even the underlying template, for mulabandha in the adult yogi’s body. It is the root of our experience of core.

The Notochord—The cells of the primitive node begin to secrete signals that correspond with further development of the central structure. Out of the primitive node grows the notochord. The notochord develops and rises upward through the center. The notochord is composed of axial mesoderm that gives the embryo solidity and creates a full symmetrical axis for the first time. It is a dense cord of mesoderm, the germ root of all connective tissue in the body. It thickens and jells into a flexible rod like structure with the consistency of a peeled grape. It sends out signals that induce the development of neuroectoderm stimulating the beginnings of our nervous system.

The notochord extends toward the cranial end of the embryo, through the entire length of what will be the future vertebral column, and reaches as far as the anterior end of the midbrain There it ends in a hook-like extremity in the region of the future dorsum sellæ of the sphenoid bone. Bonnie has said that the notochord continues up to the stalk of the pituitary. As you remember, the pituitary is seated in the sella turcica of the sphenoid bone.

As the notochord grows upward from the primitive node, the primitive streak pulls back down, again returning to what will later become the site of the perineal body. The rising notochord completes the differentiation into bilateral symmetry, with itself as the central channel. Our growing body organizes around the notochord. As center, it defines us both bilaterally and front to back. We are beginning to grow a gut tube in the front, and a nervous system at the back.

As we grow through gestation the notochord mostly dissolves. Remnants of it remain in our adult bodies within the nucleus pulposus of the intervertebral discs, as well as in some key spinal ligaments. In our yoga practice it is important to realize that these deep layers of support – that we think of as being way back in time – are actually present now, and are offering ongoing and real support throughout our lifetime. The willingness to accept past, present, and future as one current event is an important tool for honing awareness. The invitation is right here in your personal laboratory for discovery – your body-mind-awareness system. Its fullness is present. The depth of the reality of what is waiting to be perceived right here and now is often not noticed, because noticing requires strong curiosity and the development of inner sensitivity. This is just the kind of inquiry that yoga offers into the body-mind.

The notochord, which has developed between the opposing forces of prana and apana, forms our first embodiment of a central, vertical axis. Energetically, it remains as our youngest and most subtle physical expression of core. Its energy remains and is still felt in the memory and current situation of body-mind.

Notochord and Sushumna Nadi
The adult experience of notochord is available to the yogi as a tube of dense light through the center body from the perineal body to the stalk of the pituitary. In Embodyoga® we refer to this current experience of the radiance of notochord as the embodiment of sushumna nadi.

Keep in mind that sushumna nadi is a subtle nervous system structure, the pathway of kundalini, that it resides within the spinal cord, and it is an empty channel. However, what we experience in our embodied form is more multi layered. In embodiment, we can feel sushumna as the deepest core, subtle structure, of the body. The memory/ current experience of the notochord takes us very deeply into ourselves. It is quite close to the time of our initial personal creation. Way back then, the notochord was arising from the magnetic pull of the head and tail ends of our embryonic disc-self.

The experience of the notochord is one of awareness and structural integrity. It is light, glistening, and is our center in this very early and only partially formed state. We are at the edge of awareness manifesting into individual form. The radiance of the notochord expressing into form is a tangible reality to be experienced. It is through its radiance that we experience our physical, emotional, and spiritual integrity. We are in direct experiential contact, and consciously participating with Source. At this level we are in active relationship with spiritual core as it is just arising into form. Again, this is now. It is not something that happened to you long ago and is no longer true. It is present now and just waiting to be revealed so that you can gain from its support. Sushumna is the deepest experience of core for human awareness and the notochord is its corollary anatomical structure. This as an unshakable reality, when it is not just philosophy, but is front and center of our immediate perceptions. In sickness or in health, happiness or sadness, we know who we are.

Yoga and the Bandhas

In our adult form we contain the same pranic supports and patterns of movement that have supported our health and vitality from the very beginning. The energetic flows that were present and developing from our earliest moments continue to sustain and support us until death. When we learn yoga we learn first to feel prana and then to practice ways for containing and directing the flow of life force in ways that help to maintain health and refine our awareness.

Bandhas contain and direct life force. They are both physical actions and movements of intention and breath. The delicate application of the bandhas follows the shape and form of the very early templates of movement of life force from our earliest development. They harken back to our nearly undifferentiated selves when the early energetic flows of prana were choreographing their inner dance and sculpting our form. The prana and apana vayus created the polarity of a core through their magnetic communication with one another.

The use of pranayama and bandhas in yoga is to enhance, cultivate, and contain the flow of life force. Engagement of the bandhas requires a level of sensitivity to the natural movement of prana in the body so that clear and discerning intelligence can learn to experience, contain, and direct the life force for maximum efficiency and ease in body and mind. At the level of prana there should be no force. Prana is delicate and subtle. The use of excessive force in the endeavor to accomplish the bandhas is agitating and disruptive to prana flow. Sensitivity is required for effective and beneficial practice of the bandhas.

The bandhas are physical actions that we can feel in our current structural self, but obviously that is not all they are. You cannot contain and direct life force through purely physical means. You need to bring awareness to the deepest layers of action in order to make the bandhas effective. They are about cultivating and directing prana, so they need to be done from the level of prana. The templates of pranic movement are underneath and supportive of everything in yoga practice. Rather than thinking about them from the perspective of something to do, it might be more useful to explore them from the perspective of finding them; looking for them with curiosity and fascination. This method works very well. It can be extremely helpful to understand the embryological foundations of the bandhas so that you know where to look.

Mulabandha

To feel the actions and effects of the bandhas, one needs to be able to feel prana flow. We have to start somewhere. For mulabandha we start by exploring the sensations of the pelvic floor. We balance muscular tone, learn to use the pelvic floor as support for our bones, muscles, and organs. We become aware of its landmarks, including the perineal and the coccygeal bodies. We learn its language and we enter a dialogue of sensation, feeling, and consciousness. We find the perineal body, sensorially and energetically. This all helps us to tune into more subtle sensations, which inevitably leads – if we don’t give up – to feeling prana. This is how we learn to “do” the bandhas. As we do so, we also refine our awareness of what the bandhas are and learn more about prana.

In mulabandha we are retracing the pathway of the primitive streak as it rises upward from the perineal body to the pelvic belly. In stimulating the perineal body we draw it upward along the exact path of the primitive streak. The lifting of the mulabandha is like a fine silken thread from the perineum right into the pit of the belly point. The pit of the belly is the place of the former primitive node, the place from which the notochord arose. This remains a powerful place in your adult body and it is the culminating point of mulabandha.

It feels as if the pelvic belly point (the primitive node) is actually drawing the apana of the perineal body up and into itself…even that the pelvic belly point may be initiating the mulabandha. Mulabandha causes prana to collect in the pelvic belly point. This pelvic bely point, the place of the primitive node and the site from which the notochord grew upward and the primitive streak pulled back down, becomes much more sensitive and aware. We begin to recognize the power of the life force here and it builds there. This becomes a power center in the body. It becomes a profoundly integrating hub for integration and movement as we explore it more deeply in practice.

With effective application of mulabandha the pelvic belly and the perineal body are acting together to draw life force into the body. The life force that is pulled in with the inhaling breath collects in the pelvic belly as the perineal body is drawn lightly and persistently upward. In the pelvic belly, the prana settles and condenses strongly into what was, and remains, the region of the primitive node.

Mulabandha itself ends at the pelvic belly, but it is not a static end-point. From the perineum to the pit of the belly there is constant communication – a rising and drawing back down of the primitive streak, keeping life force tethered into the root of the body.

When we embody mulabandha – practice it fully, on all of our levels of awareness and structure – we experience our beginnings, all the way to the movement of life force in the embryological time. Our inquiry takes us to that experience and we witness it happening. At our very early beginnings we find a profound sense of Unity. Differentiation in body-mind had barely gotten started. When we travel back to these levels within ourselves we touch in directly to the Unity of Awareness that was present then, and we see that it is still present.

An enlivened perineal body and an effective mulabandha seals the life force at the root and draws all aspects of self into the fullness of our personal form. It is the source of all effective action in the world. When we are not tethered into the perineal body, when the perineal body is not fully awake and functional, we do not have our maximum power and personal gravitas. Our personal density at the root, grounds all of our actions into life. It gives gravity and weight to our thoughts and actions. It is an unshakable drawing into life and existence in this body-mind-system. Without it, action is less than maximally effective. With it, action is grounded, strong, and clear. Mulabandha secures our dharma. It can only be experienced when we are fully committed to being alive. It is the primary support for all that we do in the field of action.

14Mar2013

The Prana Vayus

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Prana and the Vayus

Prana is life force. It is the creative and intelligent spark of life that animates everything. It flows through channels in our subtle body and infuses our body-mind system completely. When our prana is flowing evenly and undisturbed, we are healthy; prana is balanced and calm. It is ready to respond to the needs of body-mind. It can express as light and quick, undulating, rising, heavy or expansive, inward drawing, or dispersive. All of the inner actions that animate us and keep us alive are movements of prana.

Prana spreads through us via the intricate system of the nadis (channels that contain and direct flow). These channels of flow are sometimes felt or described as rivers of light or vitality. The nadis are the pathways themselves, the banks of the river, and the prana, like liquid light, flows along and within the banks.

The vayus are the winds, or the directional forces, that propel the prana. Together the vayus support and motivate the various movements of life force that motivate different bodily functions. In other words, the vayus coordinate their movements and balance the flow of prana.

When prana flows evenly and healthfully in our body-mind we feel well. When it is obstructed, erratic, overly stimulated, or dull we feel less well. When it flows in a balanced way, prana seeps through the entire body-mind and penetrates like an even mist of vitality. We feel settled and calm. The combination of yoga asana and pranayama does a great deal to balance the flow of prana. The balancing of prana is one of the main reasons that people generally feel better after attending a yoga class.

There are said to be forty-nine vayus, ten of which are of major importance. Of the ten, five are considered to be of primary importance. Each of the five vayus has its own qualities and movement. And although, each is centered in a particular region of the body, they are also all present in every cell. Prana is the umbrella term that includes all of its discretely defined directional flows – so; the prana vayus are all movements of prana. However, it is important to understand that one of the vayus is also called prana, and the prana vayu is not to be confused with the unified prana that includes all life force.

Since there are many different descriptions of the vayus, and some are confusingly dissimilar, it seems fair to say that each serious yoga practitioner should explore the fascinating world of pranic movement for him or herself. In the descriptions below I have included material that I have read (and is easy to find in yoga texts) with my personal experiences. My hope is that this may prompt you to explore for yourself.

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8Feb2013

Yielding—Coming into Wholeness and Connection

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

Yielding — A Prescription for Relieving our Perceived Sense of Isolation
In Embodyoga®, as in Body-Mind-Centering®, we consider yielding to be a primary movement of both consciousness and the physical body. Yield means to come into an active relationship with something, with anything, that we choose. It is a psychophysical expression of willingness and readiness to enter a relationship and the initial movement into it. Yielding is an active process of personal engagement and interest in our life. It is an act inspired by the creative force of intelligence and its desire to learn, relate, and make connections. The action of yield is supported by our inherent curiosity and desire to communicate and feel part of a whole. To yield is to enter the present moment with open awareness and curiosity.

It is important to differentiate what we mean by the term yield, and what we do not mean. Yielding can be misunderstood as the relinquishment of personal power or agency. This could not be further from our definition. Yielding is an inner expression of the readiness to relate. It involves a quality of attention that happens in a clear state of mind when one is present and aware. The act of yielding opens us to a state from which we can give and receive. It is not about conscious thought, but instead it is about clear and present awareness within any relationship.

To yield does not mean to passively accept. It is not a process of giving up or surrendering to anything, or anyone. Yielding is never a relinquishing of our will, a disavowing of our strength, or an abdicating of our personal boundaries. On the contrary, from our perspective we would argue that the action of yielding to any situation makes us more effective in our actions, no matter what the quality of response required in any a given situation. Yield involves letting go of preconceptions and perceiving clearly. By yielding we place ourselves squarely in position to see what is actually happening in our environment and to determine who we are in relationship to people, things, and events.

Yielding is the most basic developmental movement and lies at the heart of our ability to receive support and comfort. It is a prerequisite to, and creates the environment for, bonding to take place. It underlies our initial bonding with our primary caretaker when we are babies and allows us to receive those first very important comforts of being held and supported. In yielding to this deep comfort, we process it through our whole body-mind. Over time, we learn that it is a reality that we can trust. Obviously, not every young baby receives the love and support that she deserves. This is sad, but it is important to note that even as adults we are still able to learn to yield and receive love and support. There is no expiration date on when we can learn to trust and refine our relationships. There is always time to learn and discover. Revisiting and exploring yielding and bonding can be helpful for many of us.

Yielding to a situation, person, or thing requires the simple process of recognizing what actually is. In recognizing what is, we enter into the present moment. This act of recognition makes us capable of responding to our environment appropriately and in a fully integrated way. It can happen in a nanosecond or can be a process of investigation and inquiry that takes place over an extended period of time.

We always have a choice about whether or not to yield to something. We also have choices about how fully to yield. Yielding, in the way that we are defining it, is the simple action of fully entering and engaging with the present moment no matter what decisions you ultimately make about how to respond. Yielding is not about the outcome; it is about the process.

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6Jan2013

Support Precedes Action–You Can’t do Anything Well Without Good Support

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Teaching by Patty Townsend

MOVING INTO WHOLENESS AND CONNECTION

“When we don’t know where our support is coming from, the first thing we do is hold.” Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

Support preceding action is a basic movement principle in Embodyoga®. We regularly refer to this in asana practice asking the question, “Where is your support coming from?” The question sets up an active inquiry within the body-mind movement and assures that we are relating to our environment, and at least looking for the tangible sensation of support for our moving bodies and ourselves.

The need for us to find support before we embark on physical or psychological movement has been thoroughly and beautifully explored and presented by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Body-Mind Centering®. It is directly from my study with Bonnie that I have learned how important this inquiry is in our yoga practice.

We feel that the principle of support preceding all integrated and wholesome action is a primary basis upon which to develop optimally in our life. Feeling supported aids our growth on all levels: our physical expression, the development of a rich inner world, and our personal evolution.

The principle of support preceding action in Embodyoga® states that if we want to feel connected and integrated in our movement, we need to know where our support is coming from before we engage in any action at all. The fullness of even the smallest movement, like releasing our weight down and into the earth under us, is based on our knowing that we will be appropriately supported in that action. When we reach our arms out and upward in a sun salutation, we are using the support of earth under us, the receptivity of the space around us, our musculoskeletal supports, as well as our desire, and our state of mind. Support is a multifaceted and multilayered moving reality in body and mind. It is based on experience and our knowing that we can trust our experience.
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10May2012

Thoughts from Vieques — 2012

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Poetry by Patty Townsend

Day 2 – Wednesday

I found the water. I had forgotten. I was in it yesterday but I was just “in it”. Today I found it again. I live for this. Really. I submerge and exhale. Exhaling in the water is different because of the pressure. It slows my breath. The bubbles. The sensations. This water is perfect. Perfect temperature, perfect buoyancy, texture, and its movement is perfect. My comfort is almost unimaginable. Why? Don’t ask why. Fully supported in comfort. My breathing is like nowhere else. I can hold my breath effortlessly for tremendous lengths of time. Am I holding at the end of exhale, in the middle somewhere, both? It feels like a sidddhi that I have experienced before, in water like this. There is no question of breathing. It’s as if breathing is happening, but I am not taking in any air. It is a suspended state. Thinking doesn’t intrude on this state. I think, sure, but it doesn’t mean a thing. I am fully present in a primal state of equilibrium and ease. Support. I really do live for this.

Day 3 – Thursday

I got sunburned. Discontent has given way to peace. Just peace. Eat when I’m hungry. Sleep when I’m tired.  Meditate all the time. The line between practice and not is just gone. How nice.

Day 4 — Friday

Falling in love again. States of mind are so seductive. Even the so-called negative, the painful ones. Watching my mind be so happy to be relieved again. Watching my mind almost cling to it. Like trying to grab a single undulating cell. Its membrane simply slips from my grasp. This is perfect. I feel good. I am an experience junkie. My yogic life has been about a chasing of the good feelings. Trying to get away from the pain. There is no question about this. It is just true.  So I either grasp this undulating cell or I slip into the interstitial fluid and let the cell be itself. In the fluid I see all the cells and I float between them without resistance. At least for a moment. Grasping shows its face again. But I know better. There is no sustained release in any of the grasping. It just doesn’t work  Adyashanti calls it “check mate”. Check mate. Listen to this. The comments are the best part. Here is the link. It is a free download called “The Undefended Heart”.

Day 5 — Saturday

The goddess is found.
Was she waiting for me? I am not the goddess. She is the whisper of love inside me. She is the golden threads of healing. I feel the weave of her touch.
—not to say except to myself and to her.
I ask her if she wants to go swimming.
She does.
I ask her if I can go with her.
She says yes.
I laugh.
Gratitude.
(After all, we need to do some pranayama anyway and we both like to swim).

Still Day 5
Dying is not a problem.
The end of the weave of me.
I don’t mind.

Even this beach. Even Shri.
I don’t mind.

Love? Pain.

I honestly don’t think I feel love often enough to really miss it. Miss it. Miss the point.

With missing the point – dying is really not a problem. With getting the point – dying is not a problem.
So, dying is not a problem.

From pain I look forward to the culminating process of dying. An ultimate release into awareness and from suffering. I expect it will feel good.

From no pain, there is no loss – no gain.

It’s just not a problem.

25Apr2012

Try This—Release your Aversion to Discontent

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

From Vieques—

Unity
The philosophy of Unity is definitely comforting. Within the philosophy of Unity it is popular to extrapolate that everything is perfect just as it is. That may be so, but is it your experience? Is life perfect just as it is? Philosophically this is an extremely attractive idea. But I feel there are problems with accepting it when it is not your direct experience. Am I perfect? Maybe, but do I feel perfect? Not really. Perfection is not my ongoing and immediate experience.

Is perfection a quality inherently contained within Unity? Does perfection simply mean that nothing can be anything other than what it is? Clearly there is no floating standard out there that can be called “perfection” that everything is weighed against. It’s either all or nothing. Is this so-called perfection really just a statement of Unity? I think so.

It all comes back to the same thing over and over again: Recognition of Unity is the game. A feeling of lacking or imperfection is always the result of a perceived separation from the Vastness, the Unified Field, the Divine.

Ego Dominance
Our ego-mind is very good at creating a personal sense of imperfection. Ego likes to be in charge and loves to perceive itself as the ultimate reality. We may know philosophically that this is an illusion and that ego is just one of the many expressions of the Divine, but when we are caught in the dominance of our ego we feel separate and distinct from everything and everyone else. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not great for recognizing Unity. My perceived separation from Source makes me feel imperfect even if in some ultimate reality I am. So how useful is the philosophy of perfection and Unity if it is not my experience? Our sense of separation breeds the inner sense of imperfection that penetrates all levels of our experience.

We say that this perceived separation is a problem. But if we perceive it to be a problem aren’t we caught by it? Seeing it as a problem has an insidious effect of making us want to get away from something – away from the problem.

Ultimate philosophies are so attractive to the suffering body-mind. As I rest relax, swim, write, read, and bask in the perfect sea breezes, I am struck by the ongoingness of my resistance to life as it is. Yes, it is almost unimaginably beautiful here, and okay, you could just about call this beach perfect. But there is a mitigating factor here that is remarkably strong. It is me. It is my personal ego mind fighting it out with itself. This is no more than usual. It is usually doing this. But in the relative perfection of this amazing Caribbean beach my mind is just more noticeable.

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28Feb2012

Idealization, Yoga Movement Systems, and the Guru Problem

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

I think it’s safe to say that all of the major systems of Hatha Yoga in the west today have something of value to offer. There are excellent teachers from all traditions. And, as we know, there are also some incompetent yoga teachers from all traditions. Each one of the systems has specific tenets and principles that apply to their asana practice, but there is certainly no system of movement (asana practice) that will protect everyone and every joint in the body from injury.

No one system has all the answers, and to the degree that any system claims to be right, it is probably wrong a good deal of the time. It requires a fair amount of naiveté to accept that principles of movement or alignment that are useful in many instances are the be-all and end-all for organizing movement in all bodies. I think that the willingness to accept and hold too dearly a set of alignment principles in asana as right or true is symptomatic of an underlying need to find simple answers to life’s big questions. This tendency is idealistic without being grounded in the reality of how complicated and masterful the structure of the human body-mind system really is and that it may take years of study and practice to begin understand it.

Believing in an idealistic vision of asana that seeks to simplify and categorize human movement into a learnable code is problematic It involves thinking that there is an ultimate reality that applies in all situations and that this ultimate reality can be fully understood and then categorized by our human mind. This belief comes from a desire to see life as much simpler and more easily understood than it actually is. If there is an ultimate reality (which I actually still feel there is), one thing you can say about it is that we as individual spinning spheres of consciousness will not ever be able to grasp it fully. If our human form is made in the image of the Universal Vastness there’s a good chance that the individual ego, “I,” will not figure out how it functions. The best we can do is take the ride, all the while increasing our awareness as we notice more of life’s essence and beauty as well as everything else life offers us: pain, suffering, illness, and death. If we are wise, we may even be able to figure out how to assist our selves and others in finding greater comfort, ease, and stability along the way. And if we are serious in our practice, over a long period of time we may even be able to begin to glimpse the radiance of it all. We, as yoga teachers, are guides in this journey. We are not the owners of the vision—no one is.

Idealization—the kind that allows us to glorify, and even deify, a person or a yoga system—is a problem of naivete. If our yoga practice is working for us, we will mature and evolve beyond idealization of anything or anyone. This pretty much decimates excessive belief in a particular system and the impulse to idealize and therefore give over our personal power to another person, whether that person calls him or herself a guru or not. A guru is a guru based on how she or he acts and how people relate to her or him. If people give away their personal power to another person whom they put on a pedestal,, that person is seen as a guru. The label is not important, but the power dynamic is.

The guru problem and the yoga movement systems’ problems are ones that many serious yoga practitioners and teachers have had to grapple with over the years. Many of us, myself included, have tried to go down one version or another of these paths. As I explored, I found that the more answers any system of movement or philosophy claimed to have, the more suspension of higher judgment a devoted follower needed to adopt.

When I was a young practitioner, I hoped that by attaining perfect alignment and mastery of yoga asana, I would also attain a perfect body and a radiant mind. Additionally, I hoped that I might meet the guru person who could show me the way to enlightenment. Personally, in terms of asana, I decided that I would complete them all—literally check every posture off my list. It took a while, and as I neared completion—and didn’t feel that enlightenment was about to fall onto me—I began to see there might be a problem in my thinking. Fortunately for me, I could never adhere to a specific system so I did have the advantage of not having any authority to rebel against and no system to leave. One of my early and most influential asana teachers, Ana Forrest, used to tell the story of going into Iyengar’s class in Pune with a sticker on her hip that read, “Question Authority.” That message was clear and made a strong point that I never forgot in my personal journey. In terms of philosophy and meditation, I have been lucky to have never found any one person who seemed to hold all the answers, and the best teachers along the way never pretended to. Those are the teachers from whom I have learned the most.

I believe that these two issues, believing too much in a system of movement and believing too much in a single person’s authority, are not separate. I think that the source of both ways of thinking can be found in a fragmentary vision of reality in which we perceive the world, our bodies, and ourselves to be composed of a collection of discreet and individual parts. This usually incorporates a hierarchical vision of life that positions some things as binaries: bad/worse, good/better, and not-so-smart/smart. Usually, we don’t like the bad parts of our lives, so we try to annihilate the bad and maintain the good. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t work. You will never be all good and neither will anyone else.

Obviously, the idealization of a guru has many potential pitfalls. From the perspective of a fragmentary mind, the guru knows more than I do, and I need to defer my knowledge to him/her in order to “better myself” or perhaps to “rise” to his/her level. We aggrandize this person until eventually, in order to “progress,” or to be free of the guru’s influence, we need to knock the guru down, which is easy to do, because in fact, the guru was never any better than we. But since we are still stuck in the better-worse dichotomy, we now see the guru as “worse.” There is no end to this game, and it holds no spiritual development for anyone along the way.

When we are watching someone who we have placed in a high position on this contrived scale of good to bad take a fall, our tendency is to vilify that person because we are so stuck within ourselves in the good/bad dichotomy. The idealized person, now taking the fall, is also clearly stuck in the good/bad dialogue. Otherwise, she would never have allowed herself to be put on the pedestal in the first place.

The guru is not better or worse than we. This person has not suddenly been revealed to be “bad.” He is just like me and just like you, and without an expanding vision that is a pretty difficult position to hold because that would make you and me bad too. To break out of this thinking, I need to go deeply inside myself and see that I too am good/bad and everything else in between, all the time. That is not such a comfortable realization for a person who tends to idealize anything! To the degree that I put my guru down, I am limiting the opportunity to go deeper within myself and accept more of my own humanity with all of its so-called faults.

The problem of idealizing the teacher as a guru is one that many serious yoga students will have to address. Because yoga is a spiritual practice, the tendency to idealize the teacher and to believe the teacher has great knowledge or power is strong. As yoga students who are also yoga teachers, we have the responsibility of not allowing ourselves to be placed in the position of a revered guru. We need to be mindful of our role in this power dynamic. This pattern of idealization will happen again. It will, because we inhabit an imperfectly perfect universe. Accept it. We all have a tremendous responsibility to do the best we can to act with integrity. It is key to a deep practice. In order to really act with integrity, you need to accept all aspects of yourself. Without accepting the unwholesome aspects of yourself as well as the more desirable qualities, you may find that you act on them before you even notice what you are doing.. By accepting all of the aspects of yourself and airing them in the clear light of consciousness, you gain real choice and thereby you can make good choices. Denial of the unsavory corners of our psyche does not free us of them.

17Jan2012

Yoga Teachers—Time to Take Off Our Masks

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Teaching by Patty Townsend

A response to the New York Times article of January 5, 2012 – “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” by William J. Broad

What a wonderful opportunity this discussion has been for yoga in the west!

For the most part I agree with this article. It’s unfortunate that part of its aim seems to be sensationalism and the statistics quoted are incomplete at best. But, let’s face it– those of us in charge, yoga teachers, have been perpetuating a false notion of yoga ever since this wave began in the early eighties. The simple fact that one can get hurt doing yoga doesn’t even get to the source of the problem. The deeper problem is that yoga teachers have been purposely obfuscating the truth about yoga in order to serve their own personal ego needs.

Unfortunately, most yoga teachers have bought into a hierarchical way of looking at yoga study and teaching that puts a person on top – the guru – and everyone else below. This is a dangerous structure and it requires a lot of people to buy into it in order for it to work. In order for it to work there has to be an agreement that someone essentially holds the power. In the yoga world this is really insidious because the person holding the power is supposedly the most “spiritual”, as well. That is an extremely seductive proposition for someone considering becoming a yoga teacher! By becoming a yoga teacher we can take care of our own insecurities by rising to the top dog position – not just top dog, but top spiritual dog! Part of maintaining this hierarchical structure that keeps the teacher on top is making sure that the students don’t start to think they are as good as the teacher!

Once you have a position of power it is very difficult to give it up. If you want someone to think of you as in some way better than they are, you will have to lie to them – simple as that. And the secret of many yoga teachers is that they feel this need. They feel the need to pretend to be “better” then they think they actually are. It is not that they are really not good enough. I will argue that they are good enough. The problem is that they don’t believe it, and they feel a need to present themselves dishonestly. Continue reading →

21Jun2011

The Three Pillars of Practice — Inquiry, Acceptance, and Discrimination

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

INQUIRY — Embodied-Inquiry™ is an intimate exploration of all layers of our form and consciousness, through the body’s systems to the cellular, sub-cellular, pranic levels and all the way to the Core of Awareness itself.

CONTENTMENT — Santosha is the wholehearted acceptance of and contentment with What Is – without inferring non-action. True self-acceptance lays the groundwork for personal evolution by freeing us up to make choices about how we perceive ourselves and our place in the world.

DISCRIMINATION —Viveka is the penetrating practice of discrimination. It hones and refines our consciousness, protecting us from the perils of self-deceit.

16May2011

Yielding to What Is — by Abigail Clarke

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

To be alive is to be in relationship.
Each of us is in relationship with other people, the environment, our surroundings, and with our self. Our bodies are the complex result of trillions of relationships among individual cells. Before we were born we were in relationship with the earth, feeling gravity and its pull. The sciences—biology, ecology, psychology, sociology, etc—are the study of relationship, how one thing relates to and effects something else.

Yoga is an invitation to embody the exploration of relationship. While being in relationship is a natural part of being alive, the quality of our engagement is a choice. We can choose to be passive, allowing the world to float by. We can choose to be forceful, using the strength of our will to create or move toward what we desire. Tantra teaches that true Yoga exists between these extremes, not a passive collapse or a forceful effort, but the yield that underlies all movement.

Continue reading →

26Apr2011

What Does Anatomy Have to Do with Yoga? — Part 2

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

Meditation on Hands

The body doesn’t think the same way as the mind. Every cell is awake, intelligent, and self-aware – but not involved in discursive thought. Perfect for meditating upon! Let’s take a very simple Embodied-Inquiry™

Take the thinking mind off the hook for a moment. Sit comfortably and feel your hand. Look at it. What do you see? It has weight, density, temperature, color, texture, etc. How do you experience this? Look carefully and you will notice that you experience many things more than just the most obvious characteristics of your hand. You see a certain kind of liveliness. You notice the suppleness of differing textures, the firmness of the bones, and the fluidity and warmth of the bone marrow. With your inner sense of touch you feel the blood flow and the vibration of the nervous system. You may notice the sensation of spaces between the layers of the tissues. You feel the spaces between the cells. You feel the tissues touching one another. You “intuit” a coordination of function. Continue reading →

21Apr2011

What Does Anatomy Have to Do with Yoga? — Part 1

Posted in Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry by Patty Townsend

Tantra and Hatha Yoga recognize the universe to be a single unified field of vibrating and undulating intelligent-life-force. The Unity philosophy says that all of nature’s manifestation – from the tiniest to the unimaginably large – is an expression of vibrating energy, and that vibrating energy is inherently conscious, intelligent, and aware.

The field of form and relativity, according to Tantra, is nothing more or less than this vast sea of creative intelligence manifesting into nature, under its own motivation, through itself and its elements — earth, water, fire, air, and space; one seamless undulating sea of undifferentiated and differentiated awareness, vibrating at varying densities, with changing, rising, and falling characteristics and traits, giving rise to a nearly unimaginable variety of creative expression. Continue reading →

11Apr2011

Mesentery and Gut-Intelligence

Posted in Breathing, Embodied Anatomy, Philosophical Inquiry, Practice by Patty Townsend

Sensing and Feeling in the Mesentery
In our human vertebral and esoteric yogaic anatomy Manipura Chakra is the fire center. The central manipura is just behind the belly button and relates to the digestive tract and the layers of consciousness concerned with thinking, making sense of life as it is, digesting our experiences and assimilating them – or not. We have always considered the small intestinal tract to be a key in the inquiry into the expression of manipura chakra – who we perceive ourselves to be in the world.

Our mesenteries are soft tissue fascial structures woven through with vessels, fat, blood and lymph vessels, and of course, the enteric nervous system. They are complex hubs of developmental and structural support, and provide a home to intricacies of gut-intelligence. They are alive within, waving in their fluid world of the abdomen like glorious sea creatures. They explore and communicate our gut feelings with the body-mind as a whole.

This tree fungus resembles our mesentery in its shape. The thick folds of tissue are attached to the tree as their as their waving tissues search outward into the environment.

The fascial and fluid nature of the mesentery makes it an especially important structure in relationship organizing movement around our navels in yoga.

Starfish Eating

I feel the mesentery holds a deep understanding of who we are within our navel cores. In embodiment it opens a window into the weave of our fluid underpinnings and our human experience of “gut” reality—safety, comfort, and nurturance at its most primal level. Or many times, the opposite—fear, discomfort, confusion, and misperception.

Embodying the mesentery and exploring its form and consciousness can be real window into the integration of body and mind at the navel. Very primal. If we choose, we can learn to accept ourselves as we are. These deeply fluid navel folds can provide soothing comfort when learn to release the grip and fear that we may hold in our guts. When acknowledged and allowed, we can experience our mesentery’s true fluid and undulating self. We can find them as perceptive and relational partners to the whole of our structure and consciousness. We can journey inward and assist this process through gentle, movement, breathing…and of course, self-acceptance.

Explore the mesentery in movement, breathing, and embodied anatomy in my video library.
https://www.embodyoga.com/videos
Let me know what you feel.

8Mar2011

Santosha and Viveka—Contentment and Piercing Discrimination

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Teaching by Patty Townsend

Santosha is contentment with what is, without inferring non-action. Viveka is discrimination. Wise asana practice is infused with keen discrimination and tempered by radical and abiding self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance is an absolute prerequisite for useful practice. Without self-acceptance we are always in a battle with ourselves trying to change or perfect one of our imagined limitations. This is a battle that is never won because as soon as we perfect one thing we are on to the next to try to alter, change or improve another aspect of ourselves. The radical idea that you are just fine as you are is almost unthinkable to us. Continue reading →

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Embodied inquiry means facing these layers of shraddha.

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The Pit-of-the-Belly—Engagement, Relationship, and Freedom

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