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Every moment you have is an experience, how you view the experience is possibly more important than the experience, although the experience is vitally important.

Make the best of everything you have that comes your way, and the people you know and meet along the way. Enjoy everything you can and humbly accept the rest.

Life is about understanding, transformation and embracing ourselves as we are in the world as it is. Starting from this point we move as we are into what we will become.

This is why I find the tools of yoga so practical the more I learn how to use them in my life. Harmony and balance, a dynamic interplay of forces, each force requiring a continuous re-adjustment to maintain balance.  Try balancing something on your finger, like a spoon and once you find the point of balance , you will notice it requires minimum effort to continually maintain it’s position. Yoga for me is about learning where this balance point is, and how to maintain it.

As we continually refine and hone our ability to develop and maintain this balance we release more energy, and effort becomes effortless, we can do as we need, thereby allowing us to make the most of who we are, how we are and what we can do becomes spontaneous and more enjoyable. We become less attached and less adverse to what comes our way, although we will still have likes, dislikes and opinions, we may see them for what they are, transitory interactions rippling through who we are. This process of course shows much about who we are, and this is why I like Swami Vivekenanda when he says “Experience is the only teacher we have”.

Yoga isn’t just about sitting or standing on a mat and putting your body in odd positions, although these are very powerful and effective. The yoga tradition has so many other tools available that it caters for people of all dispositions and backgrounds.

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

This is how I see it, there is no point doing nothing because you might as well be dead. There is no point indulging the senses because that gets you into trouble and gets in the way of a well functional body and mind, therefore getting in the way of being who you are. So the trick is too work out what serves you and continually revise what serves you.

Namaste

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

Yogic and Spiritual practice are not so much about the vehicle of practice, as it is about how you drive that vehicle. For example I have been practicing various yogic techniques for years now, and through it I have gained the understanding that each day, each moment is the real practice, when it is lived fully.

How do you make a start? Well you don’t have to go to yoga classes, or Tai Chi, or any other such class, although they will help you, and give you formal practices. They will also provide better understanding of the body and be very beneficial in many ways. However, all said and done, you can start right now, without a formal practice.  Start where you are, be easy and understanding with your self, and never give up on your self or what your trying to do. Water given enough time reduces the nature of a rough pebble to a rounded and smooth one in nature, streamlined to fit into it’s role of being a pebble.

What is the practice? Anything you choose, pick say your job, make it your mission to become the master of the job you do.  Or maybe pick one thing you do at work, or at home, and master that one small aspect. This will bring great benefits, you will make much progress, others will notice how well you do something, and negative feelings will drop away. Your state of being will become enhanced, just by taking care and attention of what and how you do it,  and in the attempted perfection of what you do.

In terms of yoga this is seva (service) and karma (yoga of action). You will confront negative emotions and thoughts, you will be distracted and have to pull yourself back from these distractions. You will be practicing one of the 8 limbs of Patanjalis Yoga, or royal yoga. By continually bringing your self back to this one thing (a single task, the entire working day, whatever you chose) you will be practicing concentration, and in doing so you will be practicing several other limbs as well. The process you will go through in making this thing the focus of your attention, will be to make good progress and preparation for your future; you will become better at what you do, and better prepared yogic  or other practices you may want to undertake. Becoming better at what you do, will make you more noticed by others, and more effective, now who wouldn’t want some one who shines out and causes less problems for others?

Over time, obstacles to your health, progress and state of being will fall away, and you will find success more naturally and easily flows with less and less effort. You will become more joyful and calm, and things will bother you less. Focus on the process and the working towards perfection and push other negative thoughts and emotions aside, recognise them, understand them, but don’t dwell on them to the point of being overlay distracted by them. The practice is in recognising, accepting, understanding and MOVING on from that disturbance (emotional, intellectual etc). The learning of your true nature is what we are talking here, you will dispel various non-truths that you hold about things including yourself, and you will flow and become harmonious in how you are as a person.

So, make it your mission to do your best at one thing, be gentle and understanding with yourself, never give up, although you may stumble and take a break. Do these two things (perfect, and never give up on that), and you will make much progress and be thankful for it.

Namaste

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

Most of us have a job, we need money (the reward) so we go to work and do what is required and then we get money. Yoga, if we want the rewards of yoga we must put the time and effort in. What are the rewards, a positive change in every area of your life, including those areas that you may not be aware of. A transformation into a more enriched being better able to cope with life and them selves and an ever more expanded awareness. Yoga and it’s benefits is way more than I have described, but this is meant to be a short post.

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

Attachment is a clinging to pleasure, aversion is clinging to non-pleasurable experiences. They are both forms of attachment. Attached to pleasure or attached to non-pleasure. Drop attachment and freedom is ours. You can’t have freedom without dropping both attachment and aversion. This doesn’t mean you have to stop experiencing, just experience in the here and now, without attaching your self to positive or negative aspects of the experience. The moment of now, freedom, just is without grasping. Like water washing over a stone, as the stone we let the water flow, as the water we move without clinging. We are both the water and the stone, if for one moment we would let this truth be one with our experience, we would be freedom and experience freedom. We do the grasping, we could stop, so we are the only ones to give ourselves freedom.

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

Imagine a small crystal clear sphere, this sphere is warm but not in a hot way, yet it keeps the cold out, keeps you warm and snug, and brings forth joy, love and contentment. Now imagine this sphere is covered with debris that insulates you from the many warming, joyful and contented states of being this sphere can manifest. Over time with yogic (or any spiritual) practice, we remove this debris bit by bit. The more we start to release the eternally ever present qualities of this sphere, and as we clear more and more debris, we feel the qualities of the sphere increasingly and with less effort. Naturally and spontaneously the qualities of the sphere become manifest, we start to realise we are that sphere, and as we clear more debris, the more we can manifest the qualities of the sphere. We always were and are the qualities of the sphere, but without the qualities emanating from our crystal clear sphere we are unable to know the qualities within.

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

Letting go of ego
and false ideas.

In the stillness
We observe clearly.

With clarity of perception
we act in harmony with
the present moment.

To transform oneself into stillness
and reside in love, understanding
and compassion.

This is yoga, the state of Being,
that is our natural resting place.

Copyright © 2008 Russell Smithers