2022 – Yoga Practice for New Years Beginning – the gift of time

Somatic Release – Happy New Years (!) Time to trust , let go and surrender…

Welcome to practice. The word welcome, suggests an opening to a warm invitation to be received, a welcome to all of you, not only as a group, but you invite all of you, your shadow and your light to show up. You have gifted yourself this time to practice. Time is the greatest gift you can gift yourself and for that matter to others, to me. Thank you for attending this practice with me. 

So, you as the Yogi or Adhikara, which means, you are the competent student that can honour the teachings, refine the tools you have received and apply them to practice. Now – Artha – Now, begins the practice of Yoga – Artha Yoganusasanam. You have sharpened your sight and discernment and decided which tools are best suited for you today, we call this Viveka – keen discernment of sight to apply to your practice.

Practice, we call this Abhyasa, a focused, diligent, devoted practice we gift ourselves consistent time to work with the body, energy and mind. In our practice we interface with what we are holding onto, the effects of living our lives and the impact it has on the Physical Body, Subtle Body and Conscious Body. 

Practicing Yoga is an open invitation to courageously change. Change the way we are relating to life, ourselves and stop the numbing, buffering, distractions, avoiding and attaching to those things that are not serving our path. That pull and entangle us into more pain and suffering. Yoga Sutra 1.31 states that the symptoms of suffering are negative thoughts, emotional distress, instability in the body and disturbances in the breath that mirror within the mind. When we see (Viveka) these arising in practice (Abhyasa), we welcome all, reject none, as we as the Adhikaras use everything that arises as a teacher, refining the tools and using our practice to heal, to inspire and to transform our experience ultimately to cultivate a practice where we feel lasting fulfilment, deep contentment within and liberation…a freedom from what was causing us pain and suffering in the physical, subtle and conscious bodies. This becomes a somatic practice as we release and learn how to to trust, let go and surrender. You will notice stuff bubbling up in your practice. Some of it has a strong charge, so cathartically in Asana practices we breath and move to help release the undigested information stored in our bodies. This is where practicing the stated techniques becomes essential, as when we are in fear, anger, hurt and uncertainty we hold on even more trying to protect and control because we don’t feel safe to let go. 

As a side note and bit of encouragement, you do have techniques at hand to manage this feeling of unmanageability that surfaces in practice by following the suggestions stated in the Yoga Sutra 1.34.

• Follow your breath awareness, then
• 1.35 follow sensation and then
• 1.36 sense inner light, this light that heals, that inspires and transforms.

This is the simple technique for complicated people. As we practice over and over again, we learn to trust ourselves, feeling safer, more loved by our choices and belonging to the body, as well as a connection to Grace, the god head of your understanding, bring that into the mix. This is the environment in which we feel stable enough to learn how to surrender and let go.

So to recap…

We welcome ourselves to an open invitation to courageously change and through a devoted practice (Abhyasa) we create that heat for positive change (Tapas) physical heat, energetic heat and mental heat of concentration as we turn inward (Pratyahara) to self-study (Sva Dhyaya) and focus (Dharana) on the body breathing, open to sensation that is arising and falling, expanding and contracting and sensing more light, that resplendence, inner illuminosity that shines so bright it clears that we surrender (Isvara Pranidhana) and follow the pathway toward lasting fulfilment, contentment and liberation.  

If you are enthusiastic try last years workshop Unraveling the knots that bind us.