lao-tzu

Can you find stillness in your life and not stiffness? It is during the most challenging times in life that we test this theory out. But we can teach ourselves to do it the right way, with softness.

Yoga is a great place to work on this. Some yoga classes are all about moving fluidly with your watery nature, and like a dance you find your way to a place of balance. This feels great and can also help us flow better with life, learning to move with what we are dealt and become one with it.

Life, however, deals us chaos and challenge sometimes. A challenging yoga class can help you mimic this challenge and give you the chance to relax into it and come out ahead of the game with your head on your shoulders.

A serious Ashtanga yoga class can be a place to find stillness and calm. When the teacher instructs with their voice or their rhythm to be serious, can you allow yourself to find softness in the strength? This is important, especially in your neck and trapezius muscles that support your neck — a common place to hold tension. Can you find the perfect balance between expansion and contraction of your muscles so that the end result is soft and still? If you cannot, your yoga could be harming you.

Can you find this perfect balance in your mind? In your spirit? It takes a lot of patience to traverse your oceans of time…

Now, let’s talk about other activities such as surfing. Surfing requires a lot of focus on paddling and learning how to ride nature’s gem: the ocean. She is pure fluid. Can you find the strength in your muscles to protect you, fuel you, and help you get the most enjoyment possible, while still remaining soft and fluid, especially in the back of your neck?

What about sitting at your computer doing a simple physical act of typing, while heavily and emotionally involved in your topic. Are you able to sit in balance? What if you are in the physical presence of a person who makes you feel insane? Are you able to stay balanced, soft and supple?

Are you able to take a step back and feel your tension and then remember that the key lies in softening, not in tension that only feeds anger? It is easier said than done. But eventually it can be a natural response.

Life is a journey. Yoga and other mindful activities can be a container for this journey. Having said that, your yoga practice can be a spiritual/psyche container while you are on your mat, and it can be a phenomenal experience at that! 🙂 But ultimately, you CAN take your yoga into your life and really live it and be real with it……

Be real. It is the answer. Learn to live your life in stillness, despite chaos.

silence is a source of great strength
~ Lao Tzu ~

The final pose of any decent yoga practice is savasana. It is the place where you reflect upon your entire practice as if it comes before your eyes on a distant cloud.

Some yoga teachers and practitioners believe savasana is the most important pose in yoga, reflecting true peace as the culmination of your practice.

This final resting pose, otherwise known as Corpse Pose, truly is a pose in which to wrap the fruits of your labors or your joys of movement and love for your body.

After moving the precious prana within your body through movements that flow through you, twists that wring out toxins, and peaceful moments in between that take your breath away, savasana is a time to celebrate and smile within in stillness.

It’s a time to celebrate your life force that moves through you, that you may have a tendency to ignore as you move along in your busy day.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. ~ Lao-Tzu ~

Savasana does not act alone. It is the end result of that which came before it. It is your consciousness in its pure state, which you can see most easily after clearing out impediments in the body, mind and heart, especially with a seasoned teacher who can lead you eloquently through it, in the right vibe.

In this way the meditative state created in the space becomes like a cloud that you can trust and call your own. As you wind down your practice in a true state of peace, your ending rest has the power to bring you to samadhi, the 8th limb of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Samadhi is a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which you become one with all that surrounds you, and all of your thoughts connected outside of yourself, in which the mind becomes still, concentrated on one point though the person remains conscious.

If you are lucky you will feel bathed in a purple light. The true art of savasana is to become as if a body floating in the ocean, weightless and free.

Namaste.