a center for
personal and planetary
awakening

Mystic River Yoga
196 Boston Avenue
Suite 3900
Medford, MA 02155

781 396 0808
info@MysticRiverYoga.com

Introduction

Mindfulness

                Yoga and Yoga Teaching

  Our primary vehicle in this course to " purify bodily sensation", to use Francis Lucille's terminology, will be based upon classical hatha yoga postures or asanas, although any embodied practice will suffice. The sensations of the body are an entryway into presence and away from compulsive thought activity. The process is not about expecting, acquiring or achieving anything, but rather awakening and remaining present to the flow of sensation arising in the body as the energetic field of the body interacts with the energetic field (primarily gravity) of the Earth. This offers us an anchor in Presence and allows us to gradually begin to identify the  compulsive thought activity as it arises (story), explore the energetic roots of these mental patterns (sensation), and learn skills to alchemically transform and dissolve the energetic patterns of suffering into free flowing life energy. Yoga postures or asanas can be utilized to awaken new levels of understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the world around us and how the principles of yoga philosophy support this awakening.

 Through yoga we will examine the body-mind in all of its chaos and harmony, looking deeply not only at the physical level (muscle/bone) and physiological level, (breath/organ/fluid/vibration), but also the psychological/emotional components that arise concurrently in the poses. Also, our underlying attitudes and beliefs about practice, ourselves and the world are as fundamentally important to study as are alignment, strength and flexibility.

 Beginning students tend to separate the formal practice from the rest of life, but it is important to recognize that as long as you are an embodied being, there is always a pose or stance being expressed. In addition to dog pose you may discover  'defending my position' pose, or, I'm not happy because I am not getting my way' pose, or 'sitting in my car' pose. In the context of Awakening, recognizing the forms of posture is a 24-7 practice.

Our study of yoga will evolve around the "Practice Trinity"

                               Mindfulness/Meditation

     Posture/Alignment               Breathing/Movement/Sound              

1. Understanding Mindfulness/Meditation: The foundation of the practice is the capacity to remain present to what is arising moment by moment. This practice is fundamental to working with posture/alignment and movement/breathing. Our Mindfulness section  will go into detail about Mindfulness in all life situation. Here we will be applying it specifically to our formal asana practice.

  Mindfulness in a yoga pose means the primary attention is to the sensations that are arising moment by moment . They may be feelings of stretching, tightness, shakiness, stability, tension,  compression or pressure, or lightness, space and ease. There may also be an emotional component as emotions have a powerful effect on the shape and quality of the bodily sensations. Compulsive conditioned thinking, taking you into past or future, out of sensation and into the thoughts or story, will be a distraction. Why do I still have this back pain ? Will it ever get better ? Why am I so tight when  everyone else is so flexible? The practice is to return again and again to sensations as they are actually arising and to not get "lost" in the story. What you can actually feel, in all of its complexity, and with whatever sensitivity you can mobilize in the moment is the focal point.

Of course, there is also the intention of the form of the pose, embodied in the instructions of  the teacher, book, video, or your own mind. Extend the arms, stretch the legs, rotate the trunk and various other directions point to possibilities of new sensation and movement.  These instructions initiate action. They generate sensations, which are noticed in perception. As the asana practice matures, action and perception become inseparably linked as a single flowing intelligence. B.K.S. Iyengar refers to this as samyama (Y.S. III-4) in asana

  Listen to what your body is telling you. Trust your "gut" feelings. Come out of a pose if it does not feel "right", if your body feels threatened. There may be ways to adapt the pose or modify your alignment to alleviate the distress. Do not believe that you need to hold the pose as long as other students, or do what they are doing. The body is "smarter" than the mind when it comes to knowing how it should be. Over time, you will be able to track moving sensations and work with them more intuitively. This will become a meditation and begins with mindfulness of the breath.

2. Understanding Posture/Alignment: What does an embodied being need to know about living on the Earth? For one thing, how to use leverage and gravity to unblock stress stored in the tissues. Using awareness the precise approach to yoga postures developed and refined by B.K.S. Iyengar,  we will explore how aligned action awakens a sense of flow and presence in the classical yoga poses and also how to carry this flow into our daily life activities.

  To help sustain flow we need to cultivate a sense of playfulness in alignment and form: Each pose has a basic form that is the stating point for exploration. There are usually consistent general instructions about the alignment to help feel the essence of the pose and protect possible areas of weakness such as the neck, lower back and knees. Some understanding in anatomy (structure) and kinesiology (movement) will  be helpful in guiding our exploration in the postures.

3. Understanding Breathing/Movement/Sound: Life is movement. From the sub-atomic realm, through the cellular activitites, into circulation, respiration and digestion, and the movements of our bodies through space, our aliveness is sensed and expressed through breathing and movement. We will explore mindful ways to awaken and deepen the breathing process, explore sound through chanting, experience the spontaneous movements of aliveness in daily activities as well as movement in flowing sequences of poses known as vinyasa.

A common tendency for students is to hold or restrain the breath, especially when in a challenging or new situation such as staying in a yoga pose. This may involve anything from a total suspension of the breath to much more subtle closing off of the breathing space. As best you can in the moment,  find the breath, feel the breath and keep the breath moving as flowing sensation. This may not be easy, but is the foundation to everything that arises in any yoga pose of life situation. Eventually, the flow of breath and the flow of sensation will be experienced as a single flow.

                
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