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meditation
Savasana (Image © Yoga Robin®)Savasana is one of my favorite poses. Why? Not because it's a simple relaxation...
It depicts the end of a vibrant and soulful yoga practice preceding it. It's the most spiritual aspect of my yoga practice sometimes, as I assimilate the meditative state I uncovered preceding it with breathing, movement, Samskaras burning and spiritual insight.
Namaste.
~ Robin Ellen Lucas, MA
Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science
Read on for more details...
Of course it works to believe. And to dream in purple...
While in savasana, your yoga sleep at the end of your practice, not that you should be asleep and dreaming, but concocting or envisioning a dream-come-true will suffice. The energy created during a powerful yoga practice that preceded it could bring you to your knees metaphorically.
It could leave you speechless, silent and in awe, even allowing you to follow yourself up an elevator to look down upon yourself from above. This clarifying space is where all that truly matters is illuminated for you to gaze upon. In solitude.
glow inside me, show me my dream
If you see a purple light at the crown of your skull while in your savanana, it's a sign of the seventh chakra and connection to the spirit world. A most blissful state of being, it opens to a world where anything is possible. This is where magic comes from. If you can imagine this state of mind as a small flame flickering that never goes out, then you will be forever changed when reaching this state.
Its presence could quite possibly be preparing you for something.
...because your dream just came true...
© 2013 Yoga Robin®
Stop what you are doing now, no matter what it is, and for 15 minutes do nothing but close your eyes and breathe deeply. Try to breathe using ujjayi breath used in Ashtanga yoga or Pranayama meditation.
Make sure that you don't cheat yourself on your inhale or your exhale. Make them equal in length. Try 5 second inhales and 5 second exhales all through your nose, breathing through the back of your throat.
This breath is like an ocean with waves ebbing and flowing slowly. With your eyes closed you can even imagine waves moving to the rhythm of your breath as you look with the eyes of your soul.
While working a busy day, living a stressful moment at home, or feeling anxiously happy, this will be like transporting yourself to the beach...
You will be releasing toxins from the body and mind with this practice.
Are you a workaholic? Do you work extra hours because you really need the money, or do you believe your job really needs you, and that it's ok to take care of your job more than yourself? Or do you, for one reason or another, find yourself addicted to your computer whether it's work or personal?
You do know that if you are working too much, you are acting like you are not very important.
Maybe, without knowing it, you are covering up something basic in your existence and doing it through your work. Staying busy all the time with a task that does not cultivate your soul can be like a drug that you continually allow to drive you. But you can beat it if you recognize who you truly are.
If you need rationale outside of yourself in order to ease up on workaholism, remember that no one really gets the best of you if you don't nurture yourself first.
Coming into wholeness. Feel your peace. Be in love with your path in life.
Find it inside you. Let go of all that makes you worry. Be free.
Access this freedom any time! The truest side of you coexists with the emotional mind...
Imagine 3 buckets of water.
The sun is shining in all three, and they each enjoy the sun equally. One is muddy, one is stirred up, one is still and clear.
Reflection in bucket #1 is dim and dull, in bucket #2 is agitated, and in bucket #3 is peaceful.
Sun is the Self, water is the Mind, reflection is the Ego (mis-identification)
Some conclusions...
I am now wondering where my fears are, going off the edge to find them in myself, in the depth of who I am. If I am bold enough and I don't turn back, I will be able to renew my patterns. This action will set me free.
In the dark shadows, I imagine I will sail through my depths as if a dream and find the silence I need and have searched for all my life. I know that the best stuff is at the very bottom.
More conspicuous and offset against the darkness, the gems and secrets are easier to see and feel. Sometimes they shine with luminosity like a beacon, with my name on them!
The bottom must be a bed of soft sand which I can dig my bare feet into and feel rooted, maybe for the first time. The ground of my soul. To touch this part of me is to release all that I previously imagined was hidden.
Transforming itself, no longer in the dark, I will invite it to be a part of my waking life.
Savasana, the final pose of any decent yoga practice is the place where you reflect upon your entire practice as it comes before your eyes from a distant cloud.
Savasana is one of the most important poses in yoga, reflecting true peace as the culmination of your practice.
This final resting pose, otherwise known as Corpse Pose, is a pose in which to wrap the fruits of your labors, your joys of movement, and your love for your body.
After moving the precious prana within your body through movements that flow through you, twists that wring out toxins, and peaceful moments in between that take your breath away, savasana is a time to celebrate and smile within. It's a place for stillness.
Celebrate your life force. You may have a tendency to ignore it as you move along in your busy day.
I just returned from a Bikram yoga class. What sticks with me is not the power of enduring the heat, but the power of discipline to control the mind.
Bikram yoga, unlike the Vinyasa Flow yoga which I have 13 more years of experience with, has many rules that are not necessarily inherent in many people. In my life and in my yoga practice I am used to living organically, letting my life take me in a flow. When I am practicing yoga alone, I have no plans in advance for my practice. I let my yoga practice take me.
Sure, there is discipline required with many styles of yoga, such as Ashtanga. But the movement inherent in this active style, where you generate your own heat, and move your own prana makes for a more organic practice inately.
Back to Bikram. What I feel in these classes is the necessity for discipline, as I'm led along a distinct path and how the discipline itself becomes the spiritual practice.
It is important to notice where the mind goes in any yoga practice, but in Bikram it is more about needing to stay with the group, listen to the teacher on cue, not close your eyes, drink water only when told, rest in savasana over and over, to name a few
On my jaunt through life I have contemplated the truth of my nature. I have always felt most comfortable knowing that there is an ultimate source permeating us all, and at times I have felt a unity with this source. At other times I have felt completely alone. It was my yoga—vinyasa flow, ashtanga & meditation, in particular—that saved me from this quandary and answered many questions for me.
My search, through poetic expression, led me to this present moment as I move into my desires to use their creativity and life force to fuel me.
Taken as an excerpt from my poem yoga, what you do for me, I speak to you, yoga, inside me as you are me: You help me find my pure state of mind, you help me change energy into fuel, you help me find the deepest parts of myself without fear, you help me believe in magic and you taught me how I can do whatever I put my mind to.
In studying the histories of Sankhya-Yoga, Advaita Vedanta and Participatory Spirituality I have found inspirations from each to aid me on my path.
Although Sankhya and Yoga are different systems, they work together and support each other so have been combined together as one unique system called Sankhya-Yoga.
Life is a journey. I intend to make it worthwhile.
With regards to this journey it is not important what the venue, physical activity, or endeavor, or even the goal. What we make of our experience is what counts. What matters is the lessons that remain with us after we have completed whatever it is we do and how we integrate this knowledge in our hearts back into the society in which we live. It is a true life meditation to keep lessons we learn inside us and never let the magic die.
