Viewing entries in
spirituality
Image © Yoga Robin® (Vrksasana, Tree Pose)
Grow like a tree even if your leaves fall off as the seasons change, and flower buds wait for their time to bloom. Be like nature ebbing and flowing.
Yoga sutra 1.22 says that as much as you give to your yoga practice, it will give back to you by removing the veil. Remove your veil. Grow.
Namaste.
~ Robin Ellen Lucas, MA
you are balanced. i live with you.You are a work of art. It’s not easy but you do it. You live true to who you are and know it. When you are open, chakras, in my yoga practice, I don’t question it.
dear chakras, you help me walk with strength, enchanted. i’m open to each of you as you arrive, speak and feel. i know who you are…
-->> chakra article moved to here.
find your peaceMaybe it doesn't seem like it at times, but there is peace within you. Sometimes it's hiding on purpose, so that you cannot find it easily. Let's say you find the source of a problem and throw it out the window. But your inner chaos returns. Why?
Surrendering is a process. You need to believe that it relieves you. And then know that this action needs to be repeated.
But what does surrender even mean?
source: Facebook evokeandimagine
I am humbled by many of life's experiences. This extends into my yoga practice, despite the fact that I'm a yoga teacher. I always remain a yoga student. As a teacher, it's my mission to always learn from my teachers and students. And there are situations that seem to occur in my life, as if concocted just for me to see and experience.
Continually learning is a sign of confidence, I believe. I never know it all. This is my yoga philosophy.
Even with myself, I am always a student of my own mind, continually needing to clear
Do you associate more with the right side of your brain while you practice yoga or the left side of your brain?
The two hemispheres of the brain have fascinating connections (Photo credits: Simeon Schatz)
The right-brain/left-brain theory grew out of the work of Roger W. Sperry in the late 1960s, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981. The cerebral cortex controls rational functions and is made up of two halves, connected by masses of nerve fibers which pass messages between each other. These halves, or hemispheres, are commonly referred to as right-brain and left-brain.
Is a true spiritual practice about respecting time—living by it and being on time for it? Or does the mere concept of time mess with creative flow in life?
...is most likely to live in a timeless place in your mind. To come down from that—to live with a real clock—is a downer. In this way, the clock can be a method of control, and becomes one to fight against in order to be free...
image by simeon schatz
Let's look at two different spiritual ideas to compare: mindfulness from Buddhism and illuminated thoughts from Tantric tradition.
Mindfulness seeks to empty the mind of thoughts, letting the thoughts go so that you are left with peace.
Tantra invites the thoughts to become illuminated, positive or negative, so that you have a beacon in which to focus for your true path.
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...
As yoga speaks the poetry of your body, words speak the poetry of your soul. Yoga and words complement each together. Any type of activity can also be a way of living your yoga.
No stranger to a community of poets and those who like to verbally relay their words to others? Many have a vibrant and active lifestyle to go along with this love of words.
Like the wind off a clear blue lake blows its answers to the mountains, take time to whisper the secrets to your heart. Listen to every touch with your sacred ears. Sit with the words as they write themselves. There are no mistakes. It is all yours. You write it to share, so that you can touch something other than the normal, regular you.
As you move the prana in your body, and work through the chakras, you experience your purpose in the moment. Through your desires, your energy and your heart, you will most likely find the soulful words whispering to you gently.
Continue moving and you eventually can surrender to that which you've activated, feeling it clear out all that gets in the way of knowing your true intuitions and spirit connection.
Picking up where I left off in my article on an inquiry into your nature…
The idea of participatory spirituality has some more juice in me at the moment. First, I’ve been on a tangent speaking of shyness and opening up about my true expression. As if in a bit of a conundrum, I go back and forth in my life between befriending stillness and befriending the gems inside me that I can only get to by stirring up the darkness to see what’s lurking beneath that surface.
From the words of a song, “I swear that I can feel you creeping underneath my skin. It feels like heaven to me sometimes.” The feeling is all-encompassing. There is a quality of light within the dark—a yin/yang. The love is what I feel.
I can feel a side of me inside reaching out for expression, asking gently to not vaporize the energy of the expression into an emptiness, thereby bypassing it all together. It is telling me that there is much to be learned in feeling this darkness that I hide within the armor I’ve built like a child building a sand castle.
Sand is a good metaphor for this armor. It is made of rock, symbolizing strength. After many years of weather it can harden to an impenetrable substance, but if air continually moves through the tiny spaces (e.g., breath) between each grain, the wall can easily be knocked down in its softness. A simple symbolic hand can do the trick with one violent strike. Alternatively, I could douse it with my watery essence in a waterfall, or a slow drip to eat away at it slowly.
A soothing Italian proverb leads the way in my life now:
Chi va piano va sano va lontano. Chi va forte va alla morte.
(Who goes slowly, goes healthy and far. Who goes fast, goes faster to death.)
Taking time with the precious gems is most important. They have been in the dark so long, so once they see the light do I expect them to acclimate immediately? Give them time to adjust and evolve to become one with me again in their new form, with light shone upon them.
If I do they will become like a dream that I’ve always imagined but could never reach. Not until now at least.
© 2010 Yoga Robin®
Ever-changing, I seem in this moment to be in the middle of a silent breath between states.
Just as there are many forms of life, I notice that it is common for people to tag a style of being in the world, which then closes them off to other inspirations that could come spontaneously, from afar or from within.
There is a misty quality to knowing I am on the right path, regardless of the unknown.
I follow the mist........
There are uncountable ways to grow and evolve. Each has his or her own way, and to follow another's way is to not fully engaging with one's own inner guidance. I am influenced by many modes of thought but always, in the end, I follow my own visions.
In fact, my yoga practice has taught me this as well.
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
Staying present helps. It does help me to stay peaceful when life on my path deals me too much chaos.
Sometimes it seems like some force is behind it all, dealing me one blow after another or all simultaneously to get the largest effect. It is in these moments when I know that I am being shown a serious sign to listen.
To know the lesson, I need to refocus because staying with each moment, breathing patience, is the only way to get through the most chaotic times.
In this way I dive into the chaos and embrace it. I do not freak out. Instead I laugh in a way. I invite each moment, dealing with it as it comes. In doing so, eventually I realize a miracle has occurred! I come out of the experience at peace and with a secret message...
From here in this space, absent of worries, I have more personal power. If I erase others' doubts and erase the pressures of needing to be more than I am, I can see the truth clearly.
To reach a personal space where I see people I care about as a resonance of my perfect heart beating, I feel freed of any negativity that could go along with feeding into chaos.
I cherish the point in my yoga practice where I no longer have to tell myself:
"O my mind, you talk too much. Do follow my heart that lives in silence." ~ Sri Chinmoy
Then I am free. It's like shooting stars have just gone off to remind me I am here in this sacred space...
When I’ve reached this place, I no longer know that I had a goal to get here in the first place.
It is then that I am able to truly see and feel the transpersonal. It is in the stillness that it all comes to me as the primary channel of my experience, making the most sense to me in an energetic form that cannot be described in words.
The ineffable feeling gets articulated within me, from a heartfelt space, in a poetic form. I have been given a gift with this mode of expression. It is what flows through my veins
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.
Hiking on a sunny day... turning to sunset. It is my favorite time up on the mountain.
image @ Cora Varnes
I can watch the day sunlight culminate from warmth to secretive, from life-giving to artistic. With that change comes a change of heart too.
Hiking is a type of yoga for me, as I pay attention to my breath in the same way as I do on my mat. Living yoga outside of yoga class is the true test of a healthy yoga practice anyway. Hiking is part of having a well-rounded yoga life for me.
If I take an intention with me, it unravels with every step. I can even go through the various chakras as I climb, balanced together with music of the soul. What's most important in order for me to make my hike into a yoga adventure is silence—not necessarily inner silence but literal silence (i.e., no orating any words). This can be done with a partner as long as this is agreed.
Another important factor is breathing through my nose, using what we call in yoga the ujjayi breath. It is done throughout an Ashtanga practice. This breathing is done by making a sound in the back of the throat. Some people like to refer to Darth Vader from Star Wars when describing it.
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that you dropped everything and turned to your spirituality? I know I have. In fact, I have done it for days on end, which led to months and then years.
I added yoga to the mix as well as dream interpretation and psychology. Although it is all good to dig deep into yourself and find all of your secrets, it can be a double-edged sword. Is it part of the path to enlightenment, or it is a danger to avoid?
From the start what got me into yoga was the feeling of loneliness and a special group of people to practice with to stir it all up inside me. I think we were all there for the same reason. It was an escape while I was doing it, but it led to my freedom and happiness.
I was feeling bliss as if flying, yet I was also genuinely lost and ungrounded while I was not practicing yoga. I escaped my life and reality and lived in my yoga, always moving, isolating myself more and more from friends and family into my inner world. I was obsessed to meet some end, knowing on some level that the only way to open the door to peace was through this uneasiness and drama that I created.
With much strength and years I was able to get a hold of the escapist manner in which I was dealing with my life. I realized I mimicked my life in my yoga! I was able to get out of the endless loop
It is through an injury which brought me over my physical edge and left me unable to do my yoga practice and function in my life, that I was able to see my true power and find my true courage!
It was as if I quickly was shown what life would be like without the blessings I currently take for granted: my capable and amazing body. Through a significant injury I questioned, in a desperate way (as if the injury could be permanent), how can it be possible for me to maintain even a basic means of living? I learned how.
I knew it was my path. Our path always teaches us lessons. So I tried to see this injury was a gift and I surrendered to it...
With my neck and twist intensive yoga practice I've come to rely on periodical chiropractic neck adjustments from an amazing man—a yogi, in fact—so that I could continue to do the yoga poses which brought me to the most spiritual places that were unheard of before I learned how. They truly are the key to me.
Whether it be through yoga or through other means of moving the body such as hiking or surfing, our experience is embodied when we let our body absorb the essence of the movement allowing it to sink in to who we are. It is here that we no longer think with our mind and our ego, but feel with our mind-body. Here is where the magic begins.
Think now of the difference between hiking for two full months along a medieval trail mimicking the ley lines of the stars above vs. reading a book about the transformation of such a journey or path. Think now of the difference between surfing in the Pacific Ocean feeling the pure power of nature as it carries you to shore vs. watching a movie of someone else doing this and reading about their feelings of the experience.
The outcome of the experience cannot be easily described in words. The nature of it has the power to teach that silence, breathing, and being present with the experience are the true transforming powers.
The more awesome experiences in our lives are probably the ones that brought up the most fear in advance. What becomes torturous is putting ourselves into situations that force us to feel what we fear most. Surrendering and challenging our fear through boldness is the way, however, to crack open the secrets inside.
"Leap and the net will appear" (Zen saying).
I see the universal truth like a tiny speck of sand that I can collect in a treasure box. I can cherish the treasure like my own life. When I crave the truth I can open it up and select the most valuable grain. The truth is sand and we are all part of it. Each of us has a part of the truth. We are all parts of a whole.
This idea is freeing. I can feel this freedom easily if I go for a long walk on the beach on a sunny day and pay attention to how each grain of sand reflects the sunlight and can be like stars, and how people can be those stars. With this knowledge, how can I worry about being alone? It is not possible. I am the first and the infinity. To imagine this is unbelievable in ways. When I evolve, the world evolves with me. Looking up into the sky knowing this, I feel such an incredible presence.
To express this most precious part of myself I have turned to my yoga practice. It has led me on my path, as I surrender to all of the answers in my body. Spiritual and psychological meaning is trapped in my body until I move it. It is through the movement during the yoga asanas that I have been able to find truth
The poetic fire in my heart will undoubtedly lead the way as I feel my way through life guided by its sacred energy.
I am an eater of the "poisonous leaves of the plant" (John Welwood) in order to truly feel, and then become immune, as I invite intense situations to exacerbate them in order to see my boundaries. In doing so, it unlocks the vitality contained in the poisons—that which can help me maintain my connection with the earth, my passion, and everyday life.
In other words, I go straight into the fire. Ideally, I see my path in life as an ineffable river that simply flows as I follow my instincts, moving my body and mind as if I am escorted as a puppet on a Divine string.
I feel this sacred subtle presence moving through me in many facets of life. It is inherent in the elemental composition of my body, in my Hatha yoga practice, in my angelically guided path, in my connections to other beings, in my connections to myself and in my connections the Divine itself where I feel deep love in my heart.
I speak internally to this reality as “you”, knowing that although I move within the boundaries of different covering of layers, they are all one. I experience a vibrant warmth when knowing overcomes me and I can feel that it is actually sacred and much larger than myself, and I feel as if I am without a buffer between myself and my true nature.
