Today I would like to discuss a little about my experience of how the regular sustained practice of yoga (any yogic technique, mediation and posture work for example), benefits our daily lives.  First we need to look at the effects of a yoga practice, which could be meditation or posture work (asana), and how that makes us feel. We can then continue on to how this effects our daily lives.

The practice is the seed of the fruit, the fruit lasts longer the more we foster the seed with regular sustained practice. It may help to bring a little yogic science/philosophy into this article, only a little mind. Lets introduce 3 qualities; laziness (inertia), very active, and, a balance or a transcending of the active and lazy qualities.  These three states are tamas (lethargy), rajas (activity) and satwic (lightness and awareness, balance and harmony), and are known collectively as the gunas.

When practicing yoga techniques (or equivalent ones in other traditions) I find my state of being changes. I find that I’m more calm, relaxed and aware which is satwic (lightness). I’m more in tune with myself and things take less effort. Emotionally I’m more stable, not that I’m an emotional sort of person, I’m not, it’s all relative. I also have more energy. These effects do wear off over time, but less so the more regular and sustained I am with my practice. Over time the quality of the experience and state of being attained in the practice increases and remains longer, essentially the state of being cultivated over many practice sessions becomes easier to attain and maintain. Each practice session is like a pulse, which helps the satwic qualities permeate your being.  Each day you generate more satwic qualities around the various aspects of your being. The practice sets up a rhythm that generates it’s own energy and vibe in your life, which sets the tone for you and how you are.

When regular practice is sustained over long enough time you will end up being established in your yoga practice. One way you will know this, is when you don’t practice, you notice your state of being becomes less than what you have become accustomed too, a degeneration of the rhythm and vibe. It is when you reach this level in practice that it is easier to practice than not to practice. Of course everything becomes easier the more we do it, and we will have found practicing becoming much easier while we are establishing our practice.

In my daily life I find my working day is easier, more productive and flows better. My relationships with people are enhanced and remaining calm in difficult situations becomes easier, more natural and spontaneous, therefore my actions become more appropriate to the situation and everybody wins. As the saying goes yoga is a win-win thing. Needless to say work isn’t the only aspect if my life that is positively enhanced

So it comes down to choosing how we want to live our lives, making choices. We can all say we don’t have time, or make up many excuses, or allow ourselves to become distracted. The bottom line is we modern western people have plenty of time, or at least the lucky majority seem too. How much TV, game playing or chatting on the phone do we do, not to mention other activities. Simply put most people do have time to incorporate regular practice. I think the real barrier in most cases is twofold; 1) not knowing a technique/teacher who can help us, and 2) the discipline to get on with it when we have a technique to use. Sure, I know there will be other reasons, but mostly I think they will be superficial reasons. I know there are exceptions, and this isn’t a blanket statement, but it has held true for most people I meet that are interested in developing a personal practice.

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

“Why does anyone practice yoga at home without the aid of a teacher in the morning, day in, day out? Why, no one is telling you to do it, so why do many people practice yoga on there own?“

The new page Why Do I Practice Yoga? has been added which looks at this topic. This post serves to inform the people who receive weekly digests and those using an RSS feed aggregator, I use RSS Bandit which is a good tool for keeping in touch with RSS enabled websites.

The effects of practice are felt most over an increasing length of time spent attending to your practice. This is something I can now see for myself, for those of you who follow the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali you will know this is Sutra I.14.

So how then do I see this in my own life, proving for myself the path of yoga to be fruitful?

Firstly I have seen it emerging  within me during the years of my yoga practice. Little bit by little bit, obstacles falling by the way side freeing me up. This is a lesson in non-attachment as much as it is about staying with your own yoga practice, see Sutras II.30, II.32 and II.37 (although probably others too).

The other way I see it is when I see how others take their happiness from things external to themselves, and how that all goes horribly wrong for them when their expectations are not met. I am reminded of how more and more I am going within to that which is unchanging, to that which is not dependent on the external world. The longer I practice the bigger the chasm between my reactions (or lack of reaction) to external events in comparison to others. The difference in how external things affect me in comparison to how they effect others becomes a more obvious indicator of progress on the path.

Along the way I have found as Gregor Maehle discusses in his book “Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy“, that studying the Yoga Sutras, Upanishads and other  yogic/spiritual texts are in balancing a daily asana practice. The two help each other, in fact Gregor says that these are “two sides of the same coin”.

Copyright © 2008 Russell Smithers

This piece is about the mind and thoughts. It is about how we perceive, why not switching of our analytical mind when it’s not needed deceives us, and how it is possible to become in control by becoming an observer.

Some things can only point you in the right direction, like a menu, the menu is not the food but points to it. So please forgive me if some if this article seems repetitive, it maybe, but only because saying something differently helps moves one in the right direction, seeing something from multiple perspectives gives a rounder picture.

There are times when you have a flash of insight, maybe something you never understood becomes understood in a moment, a flash. It becomes understood at all levels in you, a feeling level, body level and thinking level, in moment understanding of something happens in all places in you together, at once and without any doubt. Essentially you know, and you know you know without any doubt, there is no need to be uncertain, because you know, the inspiration and flash of knowledge was so complete you just know it for your self.

This flash of understanding can also occur after intellectual understanding has accumulated and seems reasonable to accept; however, thinking/intellectual knowledge is like an island, only part of the world knows, part of you knows but not all. Thinking knowledge is not really complete until every part of you knows it. You can be reading things, thinking, logically deducing things, but the learning isn’t really complete until a flash of inspiration that fills in the missing areas of your being with the meaning of the intellectual knowledge arises in you. These flashes of inspiration rage in size and impact.

Yoga practice, that is personal and regular, seems to promote these flashes of inspiration, many a time I have had a phrase spring to thought after such a flash of inspiration. Or at least I seem most creative in writing terms after a yoga practice.

Today I had this pop into my mind with the flash of understanding; “As our untamed mind, so is our false reality. Mind Empty of thoughts perceives 100%.”. For a long time now I have been able to see how when the mind is empty of thoughts, switched off, not running wild is a good thing. It’s calming, peaceful and allows observation without misperception. It allows us to act from a deeper level.

I have understood for a while the benefits of not thinking when analytical muscle is not required, but today I realised the true impact, meaning and importance of training the mind so you control it, so most of the time you do not think but just are. So why and how does the untamed mind cause false perception. Well as you can imagine this isn’t easy to explain. The yoga sutras, philosophy and science explain this very well, but it’s only intellectual until the deeper understanding occurs, as it has with me.

Imagine your arm, you only use it when you need it, you only walk when you need to walk, when your sitting there is no need to walk. Well the mind is like your arm or leg, it is a tool, a function of the body, but it only needs to be used for certain things at certain times. The problem many people have, let’s say most, is that the mind is running wild like untamed horses. The untamed horses distract and get in the way of the real moment or situation. While the horses are running around and distracting us, we fail to notice many things. As I have proved for myself, it is possible to do many things with no thought; years of meditation have taught me that. And so once a person has experienced the ability to act without thought, and be in a busy place without thought, one understands how being in the world doesn’t need the constant flux and flow of idle thoughts like circus acts, distracting us moment by moment.

The mind and its thoughts need to become under our conscience control, this way we can learn to turn on or off the brain muscle, on and off the analytical, on and off the thoughts, at least to become aware of our thoughts without unconscious involvement, without our actions being caused by an untamed, unchecked thought. Reaction is when a situation prompts a thought that prompts action without the mind seeing this thought, and discerning if it’s appropriate.

To quote David Swenson an Ashtanga Yoga teacher; “The fruits of Yoga mature with practice and care”, and like K. Pattabhi Jois an Ashtanga Guru says; “99% Practice 1% Theory”. Lets also quote Aristotle; “Practice is the best of all instructions.”

How did I come to have this understanding? A combination of regular personal yoga practice including regular mediation, yoga lessons, reading the yoga sutras. Over time the garden of me cultivated in this way promotes understanding at a deeper level, allows me to develop the skill of not thinking, and improves my ability to not think and be in control. In essences to transform myself from conscience to unconscious, although I admit I still have a long way to go.

I hope I have been able to share some of my insight, although hopefully you will appreciate that these words only uncover a truth at shallow level, and are not the total understanding that I have talked about.

Copyright © 2008 Russell Smithers