What a journey from Manchester to Cork via car, train, boat, coach and foot. Now if your not serious about having to be somewhere, to do a job then forget this line of travel. But me, I am serious and it’s just another away day in the life of………..
Out group was 11 people, 2 of them male including myself. I explained the idea behind yogAsana to the group and we worked for 2 hours through the more passive aspects of the practice that lead to a beautiful stillness as a preliminary to a short meditation on the breath.
If someone is not used to staying in postures with relaxation for any length of time, then it can seem a little daunting. But this is very good training for learning to sit still in a formal meditation session. Things happen. We feel sensations, hear sounds and intruding thoughts arise and we wish all this would cease, and we wish none of these things were happening, and it would be so nice to just sit in stillness and peace if even just for a little while. Well our ears are open, our sense of touch is still there and our mind is still present so why should these functions automatically cease just because we have decided to sit for a meditation session. If we can turn this around and remain focused on our chosen object of concentration, then there is really nothing to get annoyed or upset about. It’s because we think that we must have these conditions present and when we notice that things are not quite like we would like, we feel agitated and restless during out meditation period. So how do we deal with these distractions during our practice? Well, I can ask you, “How do you deal with those same distractions when holding a posture in stillness for say 3 -5 minutes in a yogAsana class?” And my answer is to handle the distractions in a very similar way. They are not the object of your practice but only become so when we give then that power to take over our concentration. Just ignore the distractions and keep your mind on the stillness. It’s this continual coming back to the stillness that eventually trains the mind to stay at ease even tin the heat of heavy distractions.
It’s a matter of doing it again and again and again. Does that seem repetitive and where have we come across this same idea before? We need to habituate the mind to the task at hand, and this can only come about with repeated application. That’s the punch line.
So what about Yoga Guru in Cork, Ireland? This weekend is an opportunity to habituate the body and mind in a particular direction for a sustained period of time. If you can find the time, then it’s this kind of input that can propel us from our everyday level of understanding to that of insight, to that of another way at looking at our relative reality and drawing us ever closer to an awareness of how things really are as opposed to the way things appear to be. Never ever stop………………….
Yin Yoga is becoming more and more popular with each coming year. Is this a new yoga or similar in any way to traditional Hatha Yoga. Something new and different has the elements of attracting new interest but are new methods really new or just rediscoveries of tried an tested systems from ages past? Well I particularly like Yin Yoga and for the following reason, that it concentrates on allowing the body to find it’s own natural range of movement without the extra emphasis on reaching that little bit further that can take one into the realm of strain. This is very important because what I have found is that although it may feel and look more pleasing to the eye to exhibit a ‘flat back’ say in Paschimottanasana, forward bend, does it have to be that way. In fact when we go forward in this pose if we do so with a flat back then we target the lower back muscles which may strain if we push too hard. But if we go forward in a more yielding way and with a more rounded back then the whole of the back comes into play and as we experience the pose becoming more free, we can then lengthen into a more ‘flat back’ position which by then becomes more a movement involving the whole body and a safer method of practice. In fact older pictures of yogis doing this posture do in fact exhibit a more rounded back whilst showing these postures.In fact if we take on a softer approach to our practice than we may find that the way we naturally tend to move into postures can often be safer than learned and drilled ways of practice. What I’m saying is that as yoga has moved and fashioned itself into the modern era, the shape of the postures has also taken on a new appearance. Yin yoga in many ways allows this ‘See how it feels for you’ sense to be active within us and a less rigid approach to our yoga.