Living Yoga - Next Steps for Yogis

To be honest, living yoga and the yogic principles are not exactly the next steps for yogis, although they are that as well - please come and see my slide show presentation for more details on that - rather, living yoga and the yogic principles come before the place where most people in our society start on the path of yoga. Did that make sense?

We normally start with yoga poses and show up to a class and do this thing called, "yoga," which is really asana practice. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's just not the traditional order and sometimes, sometimes it happens that people do a yoga practice and don't learn much about the rest of yoga. I've heard of this happening!

As a result, learning about the principles of yoga, and a bit of yoga philosophy, often comes after we've already embarked on a yogic practice. Again, nothing wrong here. However, by learning about the yogic principles found in the yamas and niyamas, for instance, our practice of postures can go deeper and connect more with our lives as we live them, creating more alignment and sometimes a sense of purpose and direction, possibly leading to more fulfillment in our days.

Some people practice yoga once a week and I'd even say that's a great thing. Once a week, taking an hour or two to yourself, working on your health, thinking about things that matter, taking a deeper breath - these are all good things! But just like if you were to injure yourself in your practice or doing anything else, a good health care advisor would be more concerned with what you had been doing around that injury. How do you spend most of your time? What's your position like? How's your alignment?

So if you only spend an hour a week working on your alignment, that's great, but for even greater alignment and awareness, come learn and share about the yogic principles and how we're in positions all of the time. Take a look at what our alignment is like in our lives, not just our physical lives, but our relationships and jobs and attitudes, and see if this alignment is working for us or not.

The class will be held in a new location this season as Kat's house will no longer be available as she is moving soon. (Don't worry! She's just going to India to do her usual teaching and then will be readjusting to life in Ottawa given that she's managing an estate in the Laurentians, which hopefully will be the location of some retreats in the new year.) A possible location is at The Hub, which is downtown and I'm a member of. Let me know if you're interested in attending these six evenings. To register, as usual, just get in touch with me or Kat.

Living Yoga 1
Tuesday evenings September 16 - October 21, 7 - 9
Unit 1 of Makata Living Yoga Teacher Training Program
$240

Is Telling the Truth Religious?

At the beginning of some of my yoga classes, I give a short lesson on some of the non-posture parts of yoga or sometimes a little bit about anatomy. The other day I was at the school where I teach twice a week, where kids go who've been suspended or expelled in the Catholic school board, and I was initiating a discussion on Satya, or truth.

We were talking about how we feel when we lie - not good. About how our behaviour changes when we lie - we have to be careful around certain people and remember who we told what to, for instance. I asked the group how they thought other people would feel around us if we told the truth, and knowing that satya comes after ahimsa, non-violence, they said people would feel safe. I said that the yoga sutras say that taken to its fullest, when a yogi is practising satya, what they say happens. It's pretty powerful.

One of the boys asked me if this was religious. I thought about it. If it's religious to tell the truth, then sure, it's religious. Personally, I don't think telling the truth belongs to any one religion, but it doesn't surprise me that it shows up there.

I like to teach the yamas and niyamas by saying that we don't practice them because "god" told us to or because it's the "right" thing to do. We practice it because it frees us up energetically. We may have peace of mind when we don't have to review all of the messes we've made during the day by being harmful to someone, even in our thoughts; or by lying and trying to keep our stories straight; or by stealing other people's things, hoping to not get caught; or dealing with a hangover that comes by being intoxicated by whatever it is that we over-indulge in; or simply by staying emotionally attached to things and people through our expectations of how they should act or behave.

It's just simpler to avoid those things in the first place than to clean it up later, but realistically, we just need to be cleaning up all the time. Taking out the trash regularly. It's an on-going process and just because we may have done a deep clean through a yoga retreat or some good therapy, practising the yamas and niyamas is something we can keep doing forever.

Transparency

I'm big on this. You probably already know that about me. I don't have much to hide. I'm open. What you see is what you get pretty much. Some people I know are uncomfortable with that - it turns out the people I know for sure who are uncomfortable with that are people who do a lot of hiding and lying. Okay person. Nevermind.

It can be uncomfortable to say one thing and have that ring out in space. Other people may hear what you have to say. So if you like to say one thing to one person and something else to a different person (sometimes known as talking out of both sides of your mouth) you may not be comfortable standing by what you've done or said or having what you say be public. That doesn't mean you have to go around saying everything you've got going either. Filters are useful!

I sometimes like to say what's on my mind and when that changes, I'm happy to update. I think it's great that we share ideas and opinions and clips and songs and pictures. During the teacher training something came up about when to play mantras. It was suggested that maybe we don't play mantras doing certain things (supposedly unconscious things that perhaps happen at parties ha!). My point is if you can't play mantras doing what you're doing because it's not worthy of the mantra, why are you doing it at all?

Just this moment's thoughts...