Awakening and Yoga 

              Nourishing the Heart

   The Yoga of Psychology, Emotions and Relationships

           and the maturing of the new consciousness

a center for
personal and planetary
awakening

Mystic River Yoga

214 Crosby St.
Arlington, MA 02474

781 643-0117
info@MysticRiverYoga.com

Introduction

Embodying Wholeness

Cosmological View

Non-Dual View

  Why do humans suffer? What are the sources of our anxieties, neuroses and fears? How do emotions and thinking affect our mind states and our physiology? What possibly remedies to these challenges are available for us? These fundamental questions have intrigued us for milennia and many of the finest human heart/minds have undergone intense investigations into the causes of and solutions to suffering.

  The confluence of developmental psychotherapy and neurobiology has tremendously expanded our understanding of how and why, what Buddha called "dukha", and what now might be called 'psychobiological disregulation" arises. Daniel Goleman recent books, "Emotional Intelligence" and "Social Intelligence" are great introductions to the emerging scientific studies in this area. Amazingly, and challengingly enough, these patterns of self confusion/disregulation originate in the earliest days and months of our existence as our neuroplastic nervous system seeks to awaken its inherent possibilities by both individuating away from and bonding to, another self regulating nervous system (usually mom, but a primary care giver). In this process, the developing brain is highly dependent upon the primary care giver(s) to resonate or rhythm entrain and help self-regulate the develping nervous system as it experiences and passes through the major emotional and energetic states that are humans biological inheritance.

In the process of maturing, both biologically and psycho-spiritually, the human nervous system develops the capacity to emotionally bond or link with energetically and to separate/individuate from other humans and animals, in cycles of resonance and independence, and also to self regulate the fluctuating intensity of emotional energetic charge sustained by the nervous system as it interacts with the world. These are absolutely fundamental life skills that can be refined and developed over our whole life time.

In the developing child, the emergence and nurturance of these life skills requires other nervous sytems (the primary care givers) for practice, and thus the emotional maturity of the care givers have large affects on the path of development. Although most humans make it to adulthood with a resonable amount of emotional maturity, there are still enough moments/hours/days/weeks of dysfunctionality to inhibit further spiritual growth until these packetsor patterns of disreglated energy can be integrated into a holistic self sense.

 From an Eastern spiritual perspective, the mature expression of this holistic self sense is a discriminating wisdom that accurately knows itself as distinct from the subtle depths and individual forms arising moment by moment in the consciousness, and at the same time feels a deeply compassionate connection to the underlying wholeness of all forms arising in the moment. There is totally freedom to bond deeply (fullness) and/or separate completely (emptiness) without losing its innate sense of wholeness. This is known as the non-dual view, embracing fullness and emptiness, the Absolute and the relative, or any of the many yin-yang pairs, simultaneously.

An individual (jiva) with an mature, awakened heart/mind lives in the non-dual view. She/he is whole, dynamic, open and mature. The discriminative wisdom of mind, seeing deeply into the nature of what is without the need for judgment or blame, nurtures and is nurtured by the wisdom/compassion of the heart. The compassionate heart, intuitively recognizing the inter-being, the innate wholeness and oneness of creation, nurtures and is nurtured by the wisdom mind.

   When the heart-mind energies are out of balance, the bonding process may degenerate into con-fusion if the sense of self is not strong enough to stand on its own and fuses with another to find strength. While a fundamantal survival skill for an infant, this con-fusion is dysfunctional in an adult. Another imbalance has the differentiation /separation process degenerating into alienation. Here the individual cannot open up in relationship to others and remains armored, defensive, closed off, alienated.

It is quite obvious that modern society, and we, as individual members of society, need supplemental work in continuing to refine these fundamental life skills and restore the dynamic integrity of our social brain. This section will explore classical and modern perspectives on the heart/mind relationship and provide many skillful practices to help restore some sense of maturity to our psychology and emotions. As many of the imbalances are hiding in the unconscious, work on uncovering and working with the "shadow' will be included.

  Modern studies in neuro-biology have expanded our understanding of how fleeting thoughts and feelings can become deeply entrenched patterns enveloping our entire energy field and influencing our moods and behavior. Fundamental to all explorations is the sense of "Self" we all have.

   The "Ego" is a commonly used term for a sense of  'self', of 'I', that we all have as the basis for our experience of, and action in the world around us. Just what is this ego, this "I" sense ? What can we come to know about it, or is the "I" the one that knows? We will use classical Vedantic teachings as well as modern scientific perspectives to help bring more clarity to this fundamental question.