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    Found Exhortation (and “Opening to Grace”)

    ByElizabeth

    I was contemplating today the Anusara yoga principle of “opening to grace,” one aspect of which I always understood to be seeking to pause and listen in and from a place of luminous spaciousness before acting or responding to what one does or encounters. Ideally, the intentional practice of yoga opens the possibility of doing all this simultaneously and immediately, but most of us need to reduce the speed at which we approach or take in things if we are to experience and engage the fullest and most nuanced relationship with the wild extraordinariness of what is in and around us.

    If we move too quickly or push effortfully or immoderately past our limitations, we are at risk, as I have recently reminded myself in a rather clumsy way. When through our own actions or happenstance we are pushed past our healthy capacity, it is time to slow down, to pause, to reflect, to reinvite and reexplore the basics and seek a deeper level of understanding and capability if we are to expand our capacity to live with grace.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Pratyabijna Hrdayam Sutra 17 (and organic energy)

    ByElizabeth

    The 17th sutra is “madhya vikasha cittananda labhah,” which is translated by Swami Shantananda as “the bliss of Consciousness is attained through expansion of the center.”

    Madyama, in our physical embodiment is the central channel, the sushumna nadi that runs vertically in the space of the spine.  One of the key actions of Anusara’s organic energy is expansion from the midline.  It is, in its essence, using the body to physically explore the bliss that comes from the expansion from the center.

    If we can get bliss just from expanding, then why would we first draw in?  In applying the Anusara principles, we use muscular energy first.  We hug into our core before reaching out.  This parallels the yoga texts.  If, for example, one already embodies the perfect bliss of consciousness, one doesn’t need to study the sutras or to practice yoga, one would just live from that place of perfect bliss.

    The way I think about it in terms of the Anusara principles, if one were perfectly open to grace and lived being fully open to and expressive of grace, there would be no need to explore, learn, or study any of the other principles.  That’s a rare being though.  Most of us, and definitely me, need practice to discover and embody even a glimpse of perfect bliss and grace.  So the expansion from the center comes after consciously softening and opening, after intentionally drawing in to strengthen and embrace, after making with discrimination further expansion, and after drawing in to contentrate mind and body with honed intensity.  With ever more refinement and practice, we then can experience and make offering a deeper bliss when we expand from our center.

  • Refinement (and the Anusara loops)

    ByElizabeth

    One of the things that I love about a slow, therapeutic practice is the joy of delving into details.  Seeking mastery and refinement of understanding can itself be exquisite, even when the subject matter is not of our choosing.  Although I would like not to have places of constraint or tightness in my body, they are a fact of my life.  I find great freedom and delight, though, in exploring in detail how to go into the constraints and untangle them.

    Last night, after having taught two classes, cleaning house, and walking 5-6 miles commuting to teach and running errands, my hips and low back were not feeling pained, but they were tight.  Going to bed without a good, long practice was not an option.

    So I dug in deeply, working to isolate different muscles better to open them.  One of the things that works best for me to open my hips and low back is to work the Anusara “loops” separately.  When I work the loops independently to refine the major principles, I find it optimal if I move the right and left side independently.  If they are moved as one, I find the tendency is to have the thigh bones and spine shift with the muscles, instead of having them be supported in their optimal alignment by the movement of the muscles.  So, for example, in working kidney loop with refinement, the action of kidney loop lengthens the psoas muscles and brings them more into the back plane of the body, but the inward curve of the lumbar spine remains unshifted.

    As I continue to practice, I look forward to ever refining my understanding and ever enhancing the optimal flow of energy.

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