Teaching Yoga

As a yoga student matures, the recognition arises that you are a teacher, to yourself at the very least, if not to others. This in and of itself brings about a profound shift. A curiosity awakens about the nature of learning, of awakening, and your vision expands. You recognize that yoga is not just about posture, or limited to one persons view of yoga, however profound their understanding may be. New teachers and new teachings appear. You begin to see connections and relationships at all levels of your life and society. You are ready to integrate all aspects of your life into your practice. You begin to further mature emotionally and psychologically through the opening of the Heart/Mind; deepen your discriminative faculties and your grounding in the Non-Dual - Absolute Timeless Presence, and explore the emerging relative world of time and space, name and form, in the pursuit of Self Knowledge. Our deeper explorations will primarily include:

1.Mindfulness:  the "Power of Now" and the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, the Non-Dual teachings of Advaita Vedanta as unfolded by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, their parallels with modern Non-Dual teachings and teachers, The Big-Mind/BigHeart teaching of Gempo Roshi, Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and the modern Buddhist teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Suzuki Roshi and others;

2.Posture/Alignment:  we will explore the energy/fluid body/subtle body with a deepening somatic and energetic exploration of the classical yoga asanas (poses). The practice of yoga postures is a profound way to maximize the health of all of our organ systems, an excellent means to stabilize the nervous system to deepen the practice of meditation, and a means of increasing the vibrancy of our energetic body to anchor our awareness in the present. We will also look at energetic patterns and shapes and some general principles of working from the energetic dimensions.

3.Breath/Movement/Sound: We will cultivate a deeper perception of breath and the energy body. More detailed explorations in movement will emphasize how subtle flow patterns can be felt and awakened. Some fascinating approaches to movement such as: the evolutionary movent sequence as developed by Caryn McHose, developmental movement patterns as taught in the Body-Mind-Centering work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and the fluidity of Continuum as developed by Emilie Conrad and Susan Harper will inform our investigations.

    Mindfulness/Meditation: As the Dalai Lama continuously reminds us, all human beings share the same goals: we all seek happiness and do not want suffering. If our approach to seeking happiness is through acquiring things from without, whether they be security, pleasure, more yoga poses, more yoga students, or even yogic states of mind, we inevitably fail. We all know this from direct experience. However, if we discover and cultivate an inner happiness, one that is not dependent upon any outer condition, then we find our happiness, our inner peace, undisturbed under the most challenging of circumstances.

  In taking the meditation practice to the next level, we begin to examine the causes of suffering more deeply. What are the factors that perpetuate the compulsive mental noise that seems to flow in a continuous stream? Now that we have developed some stabilty in the mind/nervous system and can observe our own mind activity, we want to cultivate some skillful means to counteract the habits of the old mind states and strengthen our capacity to remain present and open to all that arises.

We recognize that opening the heart leads to the realization of this natural state of happiness and deep inner peace that is eternally present, undisturbed by the oscillations of pleasure and pain that move through the mind-field. We realize that this is who we truly are, not the small-me-self created by the continuous stream of compulsive thought. This Realization

( moksha in Sanskrit) is not something to be accomplished in time, in the future, through arduous work, but naturally arises by staying present, seeing the truth and depth of each moment as it arises, without running away. The source of this inner peace/happiness has many names including: Brahman/Atman, Wholeness, The Absolute, The Godhead,

Sat Cit Ananda, Ultimate Mystery, Buddha Nature and

The Ground of Being.

Why is our Natural state so "unnatural" ? By discovering, studying and removing the impediments (kleshas)  and obstacles (vikshepas) in the human mind that cloud our vision of this Truth, our "Natural" state emerges.

  Our primary practice is meditative self-enquiry (vichara) to discover the workings of the mind. We examine the egoic, time-bound mind states which require past and future, ignore/avoid the present, and perpetuate the cycle of suffering, and develop practices that attenuate the power of these states.

  Eckhart Tolle articulates this practice wonderfully in his books and audios. He describes bringing an alert presence he call being "in the NOW' to every moment, but especially to what he calls the pain body, the energetic field of emotional/psychological pain we all carry in our psyches. This pain body consumes our life force, obscures our natural open presence, and perpetuates itself through its unconscious activity. The egoic mind states, activated by the pain body, neurotically attempt to survive by constantly comparing and judging to others, feeling inferior or superior, and generating conflict and drama. Bringing non-judgmental witnessing to the pain body as it arises prevents it from self-perpetuating and thus slowly depletes its energy.

 Genpo Roshi has created a powerful practice he calls "Big Mind" to help facilitate an understanding of the nature and functioning of the egoic states and the capacity to transcend them, moving spontaneously into Big Mind / Big Heart presence. I highly recommend working with the Big Mind  process for students with all levels of meditation experience.

 In the Yoga Sutra I - 33, the sage Patanjali lists four practices to help counteract the negative mind states. These practices, also a fundamental aspect of Buddhist teaching, lead to 'citta prasadana', a mind flowing serenely like the mind of a saint. These brahma-viharas or heavenly abodes are maitri (friendliness), karuna (compassion), mudita (joyfulness), and upeksha (equanimity or indifference).

  The formal practice we will pursue here is "Embodied Meditation", a term that covers a broad spectrum of practices including but not limited to: simply sitting mindfully, explorations of the breath, explorations in movement, classical yoga asanas, yoga vinyasa, formal Buddhist meditation in differing traditions, and eventually, every aspect of your life.

The connecting link is the remaining in the present moment and realizing that everything that arises, pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, is an evocation of Divine Shakti, of Isvara, of the Emerging Kosmos.

In our explorations we will learn about our living bodies, our breath, our minds, about perception, conception and intelligence, about gravity and flow. We will play with the five basic elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether, all the time learning to discriminate between the I Am, our Self-Knowing Wholeness, and the I-thoughts, the commentary of the egoic small self.

We will see how the egoic self creates Dukkha (suffering, being stuck), Avidya (not seeing the Truth of Our Selves). But also how the egoic structures, when centered in a healthy Self Sense, actually have a very positive role to play in the unfolding of our lives.

  Consciousness is a fundamental expression of the Whole, the Creator/Creation. It emerges with the birth of the Universe in the capacity to relate under the guidance of the Cosmic laws (of which physics is one obvious expression.) As an early example, the protons and the electrons created in the beginning 14 billion years ago, consciously, electro-magnetically, discovered each other,  bonded, and created Hydrogen. Untold quadrillions of Hydrogen atoms felt each others presence, through the gravity, drew together as vast galactic clouds, and gave birth to the first stars.

We may also call this Intelligence. A plant can absorb water and the proper nutrients from the soil, CO2 from the air, and radiant energy from the sun to sustain itself and reproduce. A lilly creates more lillies. A dandelion creates dandelions. a conscious intelligence is operative at all levels of the Universe.

With the arrival of the human, we find not only the consciousness we find everywhere, but Consciousness of this Consciousness. This is the birth of the I AM, the Aham in Sanskrit, the self sense, self- consciousness. This is the metaphor of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. (See "Up From Eden" by Ken Wilber).

The human journey is the gradual unfolding, an evolution, a becoming conscious of, the capacities to be more and more conscious, to "see" at more and more subtle levels. And also to re-cognize the tendencies to obscure consciousness, the unconscious obstacles to the full flowering of the human potential.

 In the beginning, the I Am is born as a sense of separateness. Here am I, and there is everything else. I am small and the world is  huge and scary. The Oneness of the Whole remains unconscious. This alienation is hell and the spiritual journey out of hell and into an Enlightened RE-Union with, a Re-cognition of the Whole requires constant diligent practice.

What inhibits the Realization, moksha, preventing a total conscious participation in the evolutionary journey? One possible explanation would be that the addictive nature of compulsive thinking gives rise to a sense of self, a self image, based on the continuous stream of thoughts and images oscillating between past and future. A pathological survival strategy of this egoic false self is avoiding at all costs the eternal present. Vast amounts of psychic energy are consumed feeding this small-me beast as it perpetuates its own existence through conflict and pathology.

Therefore, to liberate the True self, the universe awakening to itself, as the source of and as the evolutionary journey itself, this compulsive stream of thought has to be recognized as not-self and drained of the life energy it sucks out of the psyche.

What are some strategies to help recognize, to step out of this stream of compulsive thought? Constantly bringing one’s attention to what is actually arising in the present moment (dharana), keeping it there through will power (dhyana), and remaining there effortlessly (samadhi).

What is arising in the present ? Sensations, commonly used in all traditions to anchor the mind, arriving through the portals of the senses, inner sensations including inner touch, kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensations arriving from the body, and mental movements, what Patanjali calls citta vrttis. As Vyasa notes in his commentary to the very first yoga sutra, atha yoganushasanam, samadhi is the natural state of the mind field, but the mind can become dull, disturbed or distracted. This is the compulsive stream of thought where there is minimal awareness of what is arising. In developing ekagra citta, one point focus in the present, the mind steps out of the stream of thought and sees thought as just one more sensation that comes and goes. What is needed is a seed, a bija, for the mind to focus on so a passing thought does not erupt into a raging stream, but just arises and dissipates.

Sensations arising as the energetic field of the body are rarely felt in our culture. Why? Because we are lost in thought, in compulsive thinking. (Males have a greater challege here than females who have their own challenges.) So the body is viewed from the perspective of egoic thought, either as a source of pain to be avoided/ignored or as a challege to be conquered. What if we were to experience our body as an anchor in the present, in presence with the energetic body as the bija? Of course, the sensations would have to be amplified to be noticed at first. yoga poses are perfect for this.

Here it gets interesting, The pathological mind states have a very clear energetic presence in the bio-energetic field, as do the healthy ones. If yoga poses are presented as a means to develop awareness - presence, by focusing on the sensations and staying with them without analysis, a natural tuning of the organism begins to arise. The bio-energetic field not only becomes an anchor, but a self-evolving one, as the in-tune-ment deepens. Guidance of a qualified teacher of course is necessary to navigate out of the compulsivity as well as misalignment. But the feelings of lightness, openness, expansion, clarity are available to beginning and experienced students, if they are guided here.

As the organism becomes more finely tuned, it becomes a self-perpetuating system in the positve direction, rather than the habituated negative one and the energetic field strengthens. As communities become more highly tuned, the resonance accelerates amongst the menbers and radiates out into the world.

A yoga pose is not an end in itself but rather a means to awaken presence, to recognize and heal the pathology, and to liberate the psychic energy for E.E. When you integrate new awakenings in neurobiology, psychology, and somatics, the resources available to accelerate the awakening are phenomenal, but not yet widely known / realized. Yoga is not necessarily taught this way right now . The egoic conditioned social structures still dominate even the yoga world. What a surprise! But, that is changing and we are accelerating that change.