What’s Yoga Got to Do with It?

 

Note: Everything I write here is deeply informed by my long study and embodied practice of Taoism, Shakta–Shaiva Tantra, Anusara Yoga, and Katonah Yoga.

Form
Form, by its very nature, is not perfect. By “form” I mean bodies, plants, and all of creation. And even the form of my daily schedule.

 Purna

Great Nature—God, the Universal—is said to have the nature of Pūrṇa, a Sanskrit word meaning “fullness of perfection; wholeness; undivided love.” This pūrṇa takes form and becomes you, me, cats, trees, frogs, and so on. But to do so, it must become partial. As Leonard Cohen writes, “We are one in the higher eye. But down here where we live, we are two.”

Individual nature is part of Great Nature, yet also apart from it. Knowing this—and learning to live well with it—is what my teacher Lee called enlightened duality.

So—what’s yoga got to do with all of this?
Personal, individual form tends to be deformed, malformed, misinformed, leaky, diminished in potential and efficiency.

But because we are part of Great Nature, form also has potential. It can be re-formed and transformed toward greater capacity to hold information, to receive and transmit currents of intelligence and grace.

The practice of “good” yoga is formal precisely so it can transform and reform us. The intelligent principles of alignment in yoga—both physical and esoteric—are formal in nature.

The big goal of postural yoga is to use physical techniques, alignment principles, shapes, and movement patterns to cultivate:

• Strength
• Stamina
• Stability
• Fluency
• Mobility

I think of these qualities as ways of praise: the individual form emulating, performing, and gradually—perhaps inevitably—re-forming, drawing nearer to union (yoga), to remembering we are made in the image of God/dess.

Living “down here where we live”
In daily life, good mental, emotional, and relational health means cultivating options and “workarounds” (much like epigenetic theory) for my less well-formed aspects. This consolidation of center allows me to radiate more fully and evenly, becoming more efficient, refined, reliable, and capable of participating in the well-being of both my inner and outer worlds—family, community, planet, and cosmos.

With this, I am better able to “stay with the trouble” (Donna Haraway) as well as with the ineffable gift of being embodied here on Earth, in this "mess-in-the-muddled-middle" time of history.

So I remain perpetually interested in the techniques and practices of body, breath, and mind that help me measure up—to be useful first, and then beautiful—infused with mind and spirit, a container for universal spirit, a spirited containment of joy.

50 Years

 This spring is my 50-year anniversary of starting Yoga. Happy Yoga Birthday, to me!

When I was 16, the sisters at my Highschool – Marycliff – brought in Yoga. Wow! We could sign up for Yoga instead of P.E. I was first in line. Not because I knew what Yoga was but because I didn’t like P.E.

I loved Yoga immediately. I didn’t have words for it then, but I think I fell in love with how the physical was knitted together with the spiritual and that a conscious movement form could be like a prayer.

Yoga continued from then to now, as a zig-zagging tessellating ever-present thread in my life. And by Yoga, I mean the Whole of Yoga –including meditation, study, and breathwork.

And now I can say this for sure: just like good health does not mean you don’t get sick, and a good life does not mean you don’t have trouble, good yoga practice does not guarantee you’ll be fit and happy all the time. (Sorry! All those magazine covers have been very misleading!) But Yoga does reduce and gradually eliminate the mental and emotional suffering that life on planet earth inevitably brings. And it brings happiness for no reason. (mudita” - unreasonable happiness….happiness for no reason….sympathetic joy).

Opening happiness and neutralizing suffering do not require 50 years of Yoga. Believe me, I wasted a lot of time doing my 20s! And I have seen newcomers to Yoga – even when starting at an older age – do a fast lane into its benefits. You do not have to be young and flexible and proud to wear tights. (oh those magazine covers!) Any age, and any ability, is the perfect place to start. Just start. You will not be disappointed.

Here's one of my favorite poems to help me say the way it is for me vis-à-vis Yoga and celebrate 50 years of this practice, that has been a thread I've followed. I've held on to it and it has graciously and reliably never let go of me. 

The Way It Is by William Stafford

 There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Goal of Yoga

 

 If someone asked you "what is the goal of Yoga"? what would you say?  It might be a brain-stopper of a question, right? Read on..............

The deeper tradition of Yoga in the lineage of tantra says that to practice yoga is to gradually but inevitably gain a greater Recognition of the Light within, the Light in all things and all beings. Or - in different words, to learn to see God in all things, as all things. 

For yoga / spiritual practice to be effective, three things have to come into alignment

1. VIEW. Our Vision of Reality; The View we are cultivating.
2. AIM. Motivation for Practice (Pure Aim)
3. MEANS. The Practices Themselves

VIEW

View: The vision of Reality we are aligning with

“The light is One and cannot be divided.” Sri Abhinavagupta

“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our heart.” -Chandogya Upanishad

There is ONE LIGHT. You are It. It is you.

 MOTIVATION FOR PRACTICE

Align with Pure Motive (Pure Aim) by asking for it, with a Prayer:

Almost everyone begins yoga with a motivation that is unclear or  that does not align with the View. These are referred to as "wrong" motivations" or "impure motives" not in a moralistic ways but simply because they do not line up with the chosen View. 

The 3 main "wrong aims" are: 

1. practicing to fix something wrong with your self; 
2. practicing to feel a certain way - like "great" or blissful
3. practicing to get "power over" for example to be stronger and more powerful than the average "ordinary" person; or to look really good, sexy, which gives one sexual power. 

To cultivate a motivation for practice that aligns with the View that there is "One Light" and you are not separate, begin your practice (whether it is asana, pranayama, meditation, etc.) with a prayer for Pure Aim. Here are 2 examples – but best to make your own prayer. Make sure your prayer lines up with the view and to do so it should have all 3 parts: self, god and others.

May I practice out of love for myself, to help me to see, more and more often, god in all things, in all beings; and to be in service to all beings (or to extend kindness, genrost8y and compassion to others). .

Beloved Who I do not yet know (do not yet recognize) I welcome That which you would have me serve; I welcome that which you would have serve me…. all obstacles removed – no resistance remains.

Gradually but inevitably, Pure Aim will become your default motive, which deeply increases the impact of your practice.

 

MEANS – THE PRACTICES - SADHANA

"Means" are the practices themselves and the ways of practicing that make one more prone to Recognition or One Light, God in All Things. .

Whether your practice is asana, pranayama, meditation, etc. do it in a way that aligns with your view. Practice with love for yourself as an expression of One Light. Practice in devotion to that One Light, in you7rself and all beings. 

The Anusara alignment principles are exceptionally reliable in the way they help align Practice with Aim and View:

1. Open to grace.  Beginner’s Mind is necessary. Sukumara: fresh, open, ready, and childlike; This is first principle.

2. Draw in (be here now; fully present; intimate). Muscular Energy.

3. Having drawn in, you connect with your very essence, the light at the center of you and all beings. It will shine out. “You” will shine it out in full participation with the light you have connected with. Organic Energy.   

Repeat.

Lineage

 

A long-time student - one of my "yoga-kids" - (she started studying with me at 16) recently wrote to me and asked me "what is my Yoga lineage".

Here is my reply.

"I do not know if it  is relevant to your inquiry – but before I answer I will tell you that I used to long for a tidy answer to the question “what is your lineage” ….as if it could help me locate myself in the wild swell of the universe and give me a feeling of legitimacy in the weird, hijacked pop-culture that sometimes goes by the name of Yoga.

But now I do not feel that longing. I think I finally trust my patchwork integration of a variety of lineages and with having a transdisciplinary approach to Yoga and to the Sacred.

So – That is my disclaimer before writing my not very comforting response :-)

I grew up in a Catholic family that had a deep devotion to the path of the Sacred Heart. I still feel that the Christ spirit is a planetary Guru. And I have a great devotion to the Mother which I originally knew by the name of Mary. But now that Sacred Feminine goes by a variety of names (Magdalene, Quan Yin, Shakti) or by no name. I do not really worry about it because whatever name She goes by, She is the Goddess or the MA, in my homemade lineage of the Heart.  -

My early Yoga life was based on Iyengar and the lineage classical Yoga of Patanjali.

I studied and practiced deeply in the ways of Taoism including Chinese Medicine and Qigong.

Iyengar and Taoism were not – for me – pathways of the heart – but were incredibly valuable parts of my journey and still are.

I found Anusara and recognized it as a kind of homecoming for me – Home to the Heart. And also, there is the lineage that gave rise to Anusara: Nityananda, Baba Muktananda and Guru Mayi. (All of which I honor to but do not feel to be my “my lineage”.

I have studied – and continue to study - long and deep with Paul Muller Ortega and Blue Throat Yoga and the lineage of Kashmir Shaivism – which now goes by teh name of Shaiva-Shakta tantra.

And of course, there is Lee Lozowick – the ultimate Patchwork master for me). There is a lineage that goes with Lee too - Swami Papa Ramdas – to – Yogiramsuratkumar  - to Lee. But I mostly resonate with Lee and his teachings.

I respect and am grateful for – feel blessed by - all the lineages I mentioned here – but do not really feel I can say any one is “my lineage”.

My sadhana is a patchwork. But I know without a doubt that at the center of my sadhana is the Heart.

 “The Way It Is” by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

SUNDI The Place Between

 

 The Sanskrit word sundi refers to the space between two actions. Or between "this thing and the next" - like a doorway.  A familiar sundi is the space between preparing food and eating it. Maybe we pause and honor that sundi, perhaps by saying grace. Other examples are dawn and dusk, significant sundis in the daily cycle. And there’s Sunday, the sundi between the weeks. A profound sundi, recognized by women who have given birth consciously, is “transition”, a potent quiet place between labor and birth, that is so powerful and filled with Shakti, that it feels like the eye of a storm of Grace.

In the sundi there exists possibility, a potential for an opening to Grace, to something new.

 In Yoga practice - asana, pranayama, and meditation - there are many sundis. In fact, these practices are well-designed to help us recognize and expand the magic of the sundi - of then "place in the middle”. For example:

·         The centering at the beginning of a Yoga class is a sundi between the busy world of 10,000 things, and the focused time of practice.

·         In asana, we learn in very physical ways to recognize the quality of a sundi. For example, we pause and connect to foundation and breath to make a skillful transition between poses. And we practice Tadasana as a pose which honors the place between poses.

·         Pranayama offers a wonderful awareness of sundi as it cultivates the pause between breaths, whether a gentle pause or a retention of the breath.

·         Meditation pivots awareness deeply within to a vibrating silence; at the end of a meditation, it is good practice to pause and honor the sundi, a liminal or transitional place, before your awareness moves fully outward to life.  In that way the energy of the meditation can follow you back out into your life.

·         Savasana can be a way to practice the Sundi between life and death (well OK - maybe just between yoga class and the rest of your day).

·         There is sundi just after a Yoga or meditation practice when you can consciously offer the fruits of the practice outward.

Whether on the mat or off the mat, sundis ask us to pause in recognition, and in that pause to expand the middle space between inward introversive awareness and outward manifesting awareness. We naturally and gradually learn to honor this pause between things rather than rushing forward to the next task or the next thought or the next …. [fill in the gap] …(Pun intended.) One benefit of all this is that we do not lose or drain off the energy that was cultivated in the practices but instead it builds and gives a good reserve of energy to use for our day.

Sundis offer us opportunities to enter a relationship with the Divine which lives in the “space between”.  To begin our day by dwelling in the sundi a bit is to begin our day with “the Beloved” – or with the Sacred Mystery” if you prefer, gathering Itself more firmly to us so It can follow us back out into our lives.

Once the day begins, we are almost always moving in an entrainment with a multitude of schedules and logistics and demands on our time and energy, doing the dance of outward moving awareness and manifestation. Often, we roll out of bed and into the world without even an awareness of the blessing of the sundi between sleep and waking, and then we march lockstep through our day all the way to sleep and miss that important sundi as well. While our busy day truly is the blessing of embodied life, it is more possible to awaken to that blessing if we learn to pause in the sundis – the between spaces. David Whyte expresses it beautifully in his poem “What to Remember When Waking.”  

 

~~~~

What to Remember When Waking  

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

 

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

 

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

 

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

 

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

 

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

 

from The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press

Envelope

 

A few days ago, I saw a young woman in remarkably high heels, “dressed to the 9’s”. It reminded me of being in my 20’s when I would sometimes dress to the 9’s, heels and all, and go out to dance with my women friends. I still remember how full of delight that envelope of my life was. But now it would be empty, a flattened-out envelope if I were to try to recreate it.

 

In my 30’s we had babies and made a home that became an envelope full of love and protection and potential. It stayed that way for years. We called that envelope the “pink house” (because the house was pink!). Eventually, the energy, (shakti) of the pink house envelope flattened out and it was time to move on. If we were to try to go back to it somehow, it would be a bit ridiculous, trying to squeeze who are now into that envelope of then.

I could draw the same envelope analogy about career, business, teaching, pastimes, and practices. Like everyone else, I have been co-creating envelopes that fill with shakti, envelope me, and eventually flatten out.

Maybe because it is the New Year (or the Christmas after-party) I’ve been contemplating “what do I love, now?” What envelope or envelopes does my heart want to maintain, create, or re-create now? I have had so many heart-made and shakti filled envelopes in my life.  Some are still full, and some emptied out long ago. What are the longings of my heart now? I know the envelope of my heart itself felt a bit flattened out by 2020. And I want it full again. I long for a renewed fullness of heart.

The Saiva-Shakta philosophy that underpins Anusara Yoga says that longings are God / Shakti (operating in me, as me) yearning to create and fill envelopes. The Invisible longing to make Herself visible by slowing, contracting, enfolding, and encoding Herself to become embodied life. She creates an envelope of Herself and fills it with Herself. 

She creates “mom-velopes”.  My mom used to hand me envelopes full of cash when we lived in the pink house and never had enough money. When we would get together, she would slide an envelope to me (she seemed to think I should keep it a secret, which I kind of loved doing for some reason). She was being “mom” – generous and unstinting. Now I think of the Divine Feminine / God, as a bestower of mom-velopes. (And, for the record, I now give my sons mom-velopes)

The next part of this post is philosophy. It is fascinating – to me at least - but stop reading here if that is not your love. And go create or maintain some good envelopes and fill them with the wild generosity of your heart. Keep it simple and doable. Call a friend. Clean your house and make it beautiful. Pour yourself into a creative project. Like that. It is time for all of us to momvelope the world. 

OK – back to the Big Picture painted by Tantra. Shakti steps down through a vibratory spectrum, from pure energy to root and bone, to become our manifest world, to become you and me. This philosophy tells us that we are unbounded light with a gravity laden root.

As an analogy, consider Joan Ruvinsky’s interpretation of Sutra 6 from the Recognition Sutras:

Way up north in the Arctic there is a huge bay called James Bay at the mouth of which there are mega hydroelectric dams that capture an astronomical amount of energy that gets sent through miles and miles of thick high-tension wires that deliver the power to step-down transforming stations all over the countryside with tall cylinders and insulators that are fenced in and decorated with “danger high voltage “signs. And there are smaller wires that lead out from here along the highways and byways and then to the road right outside your house where there is a pole and a little gray canister which itself has a wire leading out of it right into your house and you plug in your toaster, make toast, plug in your washing machine, and do the laundry, charge your cell phone and computer to communicate with everybody everywhere. And we call this reducing valve Maya it would be all over for you and your cell phone if you plugged it in at the mouth of James Bay. Without Maya’s reducing valve action, the teacup would be shattered by the ocean.

Unbounded light and love, like James Bay, or a vast Ocean of Light, uses Maya as a contracting valve to step down and modify and moderate Her flow all the way down to my feet and toes at the bottom of the of the tattva chart where I live and breathe.

 Just so shakti reduces herself, folds herself into a multitude of momvelopes most wondrous. Including you and me.

She flows into the rivulets and arteries and lymphatic channels of my body. Condenses into central channel, sushumna, slender as a spider thread, brilliant as a million moons. She modifies Her hugeness so that me and my cell phone don’t blow into 1 million pieces. So that the teacup of my embodiment is not shattered by the ocean. So that Her Love is encoded and enfolded into a manageable envelope of embodiment.  In this way I can begin to see my small-self humanness as a kindness and a goodness rather than seeing myself as a mistake, an accident on the earth, a problem to be solved.

 

Here is another way to think of it: when a high frequency sound is slowed to a lower frequency, we can hear it and enjoy it as music, language, poetry and so on. Just so, when the Sacred Mystery slows Her vibration, it allows the sky to touch the earth, it lets the earth hear the sky. These two, like lovers, continually and perennially meet at the “place in the middle,” (the hridaya) said to be located at the heart center of each of us.

 “The soul reveals itself to itself through gesture of hand, foot, spine, face and body. The invisible loves the visible.” (Radiance Sutras)

This process of enfolding into manifest physical form takes tremendous vitality. It is no casual thing to fold the sky into a root. It is no small feat to genetically code pure energy into conception and new life. The vitality and vast energy of the sky that is coiled within us is always yearning to expand to the freedom of unbounded light and flight. That is the essence of the story from Hindu mythology, about Garuda. the eagle-god who is Vishnu’s mount. In the great epic Mahabharata, Garuda first bursts forth from his egg and appears as a huge cosmic energy, so vast it frightens even the gods who beg him for mercy. Garuda hears their plea and as an act of love (for God so loved the world) reduces himself in size and energy, steps down to a manageable dimension.

Often, we live and breathe in a very narrow band of the vibratory spectrum. Small envelopes. Or envelopes that long ago flattened out but we still shuffle them around on the desk of our life. Or maybe we just stopped trying to r-e-a-c-h past inertia and fill an envelope that is still alive and waiting for attention.

I have had fun contemplating the year ahead in this way. Asking myself “what envelopes of possibility are waiting for me to co-create, renew, refill? Is there a new “never-before-seen” envelope that is drawing my curiosity and excitement? Or an envelope that wants to be renewed – but needs some love and attention? 

Asana practice can be a powerful method to push out the edges consistently and repeatedly of what we think we are. Much bigger than “this body only”. And yet, this body too is a miracle of a momvelope.

 

 

Life Energy - Shakti - is inherently and wildly generous.

Life Energy - Shakti - is inherently and wildly generous. Shakti is the Divine feminine. She is awakened creation emanating out from the still point - Shiva - like a vortex wheel or a blossom, here and now, in you as you, in your life as it is. She is embodied, organic and tremendously alive.

Shakti's generosity is expressed in Leonard Cohen's song "Come Healing":

.......

The longing of the branches

To lift the little bud

The longing of the arteries

To purify the blood

....

If I accept life as it is, exactly as it is, I give life - Shakti - permission to move in my life, to shower me with the generosity of Her amazing Grace.

And then I can - I must - express that same grace outward with unstinting generosity.

I can't force ripen or force-blossom Shakti. I must open and wait and accept Her in my life as it is. Just as the dark night must be faced before dawn can appear.

My Sanskrit teacher Dr. Katy Jane Poole writes: 

"It's a test, my friend. Can you face that dark night? Can you have faith?

The word for "faith" in Sanskrit is Shradda, "the feeling of an expectant mother." She has no other choice but to sit and wait.

Rest assured, the moment of change is coming. It's inevitable. You just don't know what it is. And you can't control it.

…………..The dark night of the soul isn't supposed to be fun.

The whole world is in a pregnant waiting pattern. Sometimes Shakti makes us  wait, makes me sit where I am and face the unknown where I can't see anything. But you know what? I say YES to Shakti even in her dark phase. A big YES. In a practical sense, for example, I am taking the "flatten the curve" effort seriously. I take it on as a practice not so much for myself personally but for the whole world - like a prayer for all beings. Just because I am lucky to live in a sparsely populated area does not entitle me to ignore the efforts of humanity to flatten the curve. When I have the impulse to "not comply" I name it in myself as "my will and my way".

Instead, wait. Open to grace. Listen deeply. Practice. Surrender to waiting. Don’t measure the waiting.

The image of a Lotus works beautifully here. 

First: surrender to the grace of gravity - your roots in the mud. Dark. Waiting. 




Second: grow a "stem". You will need the muscular energy and discipline to engage principles of alignment  and right action. 

Third: Open, shine outward. Let the lotus blossom and your heart open to the world. Offer it out as prayer or a blessing - however you can serve the generosity of Shakti.

And begin again.

1. Open... to the grace of gravity. Sink your roots in the mud. Not knowing. Wait.  Surrender to Life - as it is - here and now.
2. Align... Muscle energy and discipline.
3. Expand...your heart in an expression of fierce and sweet generosity. Shakti will show you ways to do this even while you shelter in place. 

And begin again.