yoga, it’s not what you think

setting a foundation

spending the week with john friend, founder of anusara yoga and my yoga guru for all intents and purposes. and like the title says, yoga ain’t what you think it is, probably. and that other scary word, guru; that just means light bringer. it’s an honorific, which can be challenging in contemporary america. let’s just say he’s my teacher whom i honor for bringing me closer to my true nature, which means happier, more comfortable being me, funnier, sexier, all that stuff you think you need to be happier. and yet being closer to your true nature is what brings all that stuff.

let’s start over

yoga ain’t what you think it is. it’s a system to bring you closer to being the person you truly deeply madly want to be, know you are, and yet fear that you may not be, and are terrified that you will never be. and i’m studying this week with the guy who has helped me the most in that regard, and who promises to help me even more.

woods for the trees

so let’s get into something useful. take a minute and sit up straight. take a deep breath and open your heart. there. now we can progress.

we started this thing on monday, with a day devoted to what john calls the five universal principles of alignment, which begs the question; aligning with what? aligning with your true nature, of course. this is yoga after all. so forget all that stuff about jumping around on the floor with your foot behind your head, wearing sexy duds while listening to music with indecipherable words.

shall we start again?

come to the front of your seat, fill yourself with breath, feel your heart. feel how much you want to be that person you truly madly want to be, know you are, fear you are not, quiver that you may never be.

the first principle that will bring you into recognition of that self is called opening to grace. what’s that? open to grace. let yourself feel your connection with your maker, your source, the life energy that flows through you, that moves you, however stumblingly, through every day of your life.

yes, we stumble. we stumble because we are not aligned. we are off balance. there are ruder ways of saying this. and you know that. so to end the stumbling, the speed up the recovery, we follow the principles. and we start with principle number one. open to grace. soften up, open your heart, feel your connection to something bigger than you. something as big as big gets, and then magnified by a really big number. something bigger than that.

so what happens when we do that?

and why the (rude word) should i care? what happens is that we get happy. we feel joy and connection. we delight in our own freedom.

or to put it another way: we get into the zone. stuff happens with exquisite grace (that word again). we glide through the yuckiness without so much as soiling our shoes. that thing that was so hard (insert time frame) with (insert person, challenge, task etc) suddenly eases up, starts to shimmer, and it’s like you are keanu reeves in the matrix, minus the machine guns, walking up walls, doing backflips and landing in the right place at the right time to say the right thing to the right person.

sounds great, where do i sign up?

of course, we live on planet earth, not a computer program, so there is the very earthiness of our existence that we have to work with, which brings us to day two and the second principle, muscle energy. say what? well, you didn’t think it was all just breathe deep, feel your heart, and now everything is bliss, did you?

or maybe you did and that’s why i am here to say, once again with exclamation point; yoga ain’t what you think it is!

so let’s look at a famous picture to make sense of both of those principles at once.

the first picture of planet earth, taken on november 10, 1967, just after the summer of love. this big giant heavy hunk of stone, floating in empty space. floating.

space is grace. earth energy is muscle energy.

so there we go. we float in this grace. we feel this connection. and…well, if we are going to do anything, make any sort of action, we have to have some hold-to-it-ness. some place to do things from. we have to draw into ourselves our strength, our love, our muscle, in order to provide, as the earth does, a platform for action. 

like, try telling your friends, family, business partners “hey i feel so great and i love you so much. isn’t that enough?”

exactly.

now remember, there are five principles. it’s day three. i’ll be back on friday with more to report. in the meantime, talk amongst yourselves, float in a bit of bliss, and hold it together. peace.