Posts

Technical Terms: Īśvarapraṇidhāna

-
Image
We see beauty all around us: a bird in flight, a bee on a flower, the sunlight on the water, the moon in the night sky. And then the mind tries to capture it, savour it, and repeat it. Have you ever noticed that when the mind tries to capture beauty the sense of beauty goes? The mind can never capture beauty nor any experience. It is too slow. The point is you are the beauty. You are the same beauty as the sun, the flower, the water and the bird. When we stop trying to experience beauty, we are free to relax into what is already true. We feel the beauty, love and harmony of the One binding absolute Reality that is appearing as you and I and everything. In the same way, in trying to capture the experiences and ideals of spiritual traditions we can never enjoy them; because we already are what these words express. There is no getting to spiritual ideals. There is no “becoming” a Buddha. There is no getting “enlightened.” What there is is direct participation in Reality Itself; the Nurtur
Post a Comment
Read more

Yoga Breathing Techniques in the time of Covid-19 | Mark Whitwell

-
Image
One of the silver linings of the corona virus pandemic is that the world has become more attuned to how we breathe. And as Covid continues to spread, affecting the respiratory systems of millions of people around the world, research is growing into how breathing-techniques can help support our health before, during and after an infection. Early studies in the U.S. and India have shown that the quality of a person’s breath plays a significant role in their response to the virus, alongside existing healthcare.¹ “One of the first things that happens with Covid is that you get short of breath and your oxygen saturation begins to fall,” Californian pulmonologist Raymond Casciari observes. “The better condition your lungs are in, the better off you will be.” Indeed, the lungs have been described as the “battleground” of Covid. Now more than ever before, it is a good time now to discover the power of whole-body breathing for yourself. To those of us who are familiar with the spiritual and med
Post a Comment
Read more

The Asana Files: Trikonasana as Strength-Receiving | Mark Whitwell

-
Image
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya’s life represents a bridge between ancient past and modern present. Born in 1888 and dying only recently in 1989, he was the vehicle by which the physical wisdom practices of Yoga entered modern India and then the world. After spending seven and a half years at Mount Kailash with his guru Ramamohan Brahmachari, he returned home and began to teach. He was teacher to the most prominent figures of 20th century Yoga: B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, and his son TKV Desikachar. Krishnamacharya taught Yoga as the union of opposites: as each person’s perfect participation in the male-female harmony that is nature of Life Itself. The principle means of this participation is the breath. The exhale carries the male principle of strength and the ascending life-current. Whereas the inhale carries the female principle of receptivity and the descending life-current. The exhale moves up from the body base; the inhale moves down the soft, feeling frontal line. When
Post a Comment
Read more

The Principles of Adapting Yoga to Individual Needs | Mark Whitwell

-
Image
TKV Desikachar on T. Krishnamacharya In 1995, when Desikachar’s book The Heart of Yoga was published, we did a series of interviews in New Zealand in which Desikachar spoke at length about his father’s life and approach to teaching. Desikachar described his father, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989), as an extraordinary person who lived for one hundred useful years; as a man whose thirst for yoga knowledge eventually took him to the high plateaus of the Himalayas where he lived with his teacher Ramamohan Brahmacari for seven and a half years; and as a man who gave his life to translating an ancient body of wisdom into the modern world for all people. Above all, Desikachar emphasised his father’s insistence that Yoga must be carefully adapted to the individual, not the individual to the Yoga. But this idea, he clarified, was by no means his father’s invention. “The importance of respecting the individual is already in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali,” Desikachar observed. “Our ancestors
Post a Comment
Read more

Beyond the Drama of Seeking | The Yogas of Participation vs. Temple Religion

-
Image
On what are the Yogas of Participation, the difference between temple religion and Yoga, how to practice without seeking, and the historic roots and dangers of motivated celibacy. “Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.” — William Blake Real Yoga is each person’s searchless and direct embrace of Eternity. It is your direct participation in God, arising now as the whole-body and all tangible and intangible conditions. Yoga is easy and anybody can do it. It is primarily about participation in the union of all natural opposites: left/right, above/below, front/back, inhale/exhale, male/female, strength/receptivity. By participating in the union of these opposites the source of all opposites is revealed: the hridaya ; the heart on the right; the seed of Eternity, Truth, God, Reality Itself, that is blooming now, in and as your whole form. Yoga is not a search but embrace only . The search for perfection (or connection, or Samadhi, or enlightenment, or God) only obliterates your a
Post a Comment
Read more