My photo
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, United States
Karen is a yogini, writer, student, teacher and meditator. She founded Garden Street School of Yoga in 2000. Karen lives with her husband Chris. They have two amazing sons, Eli and Leo (both of them young men).

Mar 15, 2016

Sundi



SUNDI
The Place in the Middle
The Gateway to the Heart

The Sanskrit work sundi refers to the space between two actions.  Some familiar sundis  are the space between breaths, the space between preparing food and eating it and even the pause just before sneezing.  Dawn and dusk are considered significant sundis in the daily cycle. And then there’s Sunday, the sundi between the weeks. A profound sundi, recognized by any woman who has 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. 
Yoga teaches that in the sundi there exists the potential for a great opening to Grace.  In the sundi, blessings rain down.  It all depends on learning to recognize the sundi and then being present in that place in the middle. 

In Yoga Asana, Pranayama and Meditation there are many sundis.  The centering and chanting at the beginning of class is a sundi between the busy world of 10,000 things, and the focused time of practice.  There is another sundi just after practicing when you consciously intend to take the fruits of the practice off the mat and into the world of “the 10,000 things”. Two of the classic and most obvious asana sundis are Tadasana and Savasana. Tadasana is a pose which honors the place between poses. 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 :).  Pranayama offers a wonderful awareness of sundi - the pause between breaths. And meditation sometimes takes one into a very deep sundi - a vibrating silence and space between thoughts 

Gurdjieff spoke of sundis (although he didn’t use that word) when he said that at two points in an octave you either go forward or backward; there is a shift in direction.  You can’t stay the same.  Because the flow is blocked and requires more energy to bridge the gap, you need a push or you will go backwards.
In other words, when we hit a gap, a sundi, if we don’t have enough energy, we don’t jump the gap and move forward.  We have to make a sort of leap and this is always precipitated by some sort of shock although we may not always label it that way and it may be only a mild shock if it is only a mild sundi.  Think, for example, of the mild shock it takes to leap the gap between dog pose and kicking up into handstand. 

Yoga teaches us exactly what to do in that gap.  We must become spacious inwardly, open to grace.  Yoga trains us to learn, gradually but inevitably, to draw inward and expand when we find ourseves in a sundi.  This is in fact the practice of pratyhara.  We draw our senses inward and expand our inner body and heart from the inside out.  One of my favorite images for understanding how to practice pratyhara in the sundi is the tortoise.  I like to imagine that I can withdraw all my senses like the tortoise withdraws her 4 legs, tail and head, into a spacious light filled room in my heart.  And from there I can open to grace and leap the gap. 

One other thing that often helps us leap the gap is purposeful or intentional use of sound.  Imagine hovering at the door of a plane, waiting to sky-dive, and the shout of “GO!” is what makes you leap.  Or, in a quieter way, imagine someone saying “yes, yes, keep going” as a child attempts a difficult new skill.  In Yoga, chanting “OM” or saying “Namaste” at the end of class has been what has taken many people across the gap between “just a work-out” and “the practice of Yoga”.

Whether on the mat or off the mat, leaping the gap is how we evolve and transform.  On the mat, we learn to recognize the quality of a sundi, pause to draw into our heart and then, moving from the expansiveness we find there, we learn to leap.  The practice on the mat helps in another way also. It builds in us, gradually and over time, a reserve of energy.  When you reach a point where you must either go forward or backward, where you can’t stay the same, you will have the reserve of energy and a practice of courage to bridge the gap, to leap across.
         
Awareness, cultivated by practice, generates a current or charge of Prana which can help to bridge the gap. Think of a synapse and the spark that leaps across the gap. Practice is the key: we do not rise to a challenge (or a leap) but instead are enabled to leap by the ground that is cultivated by our practice. Steady practice over a long period of time, with devotion, will assure that when the sundis arise, you will be able to see the opportunity and leap the gap.

1 comment:

  1. Ah, just perfect. I have been contemplating thresholds - how to pause in reverence at this place in the middle, the way one would pause at the temple to remove your shoes before entering the sacred space within. Your writing on sundi is a beautiful illumination - aha! "that's what that threshold is - a sundi". thank you, thank you. <3

    ReplyDelete