Going Deeper

In the beginning

I was a hurdler, sprinter, and long jumper in college. In track practices and meets, the goal was always to sprint faster and jump farther. When you made progress, the evidence was absolute, even if you’d only beaten your last personal best by one hundredth of a second or a half inch. After college, the sports I engaged in were not so easily quantified. Still, I often compared my 'performance' to the last one: How long did it take me to get from Point A to Point B? What weight did I loft last time? Did I tire out more or less quickly this time? How well did I keep up with my training partner? And so on.

So what is 'Progress' anyway?

Yoga asana being a physical practice, I approached it the same way early on because this is the paradigm I’d grown up with—as have most of us. We look for results in the form of how far the body can move, compared to the person on the next mat and compared to our last practice. When I first started asana practice, touching my toes in a forward bend was but a dream. Six months in, my inborn flexibility had returned and I was nose-in-my-shins in seated forward bends. Progress, right?

If you approach asana practice from our familiar Western paradigm, you could definitely interpret it as progress. But as I came to find out over the years, the concept of progress is a completely different animal in yogic thought. I came to find out that progress in yogic terms was not the continuous push to go deeper into poses—to rest my nose on the floor in forward bends, move ever higher in back bends or stay longer in inversions. Progress in yoga is exactly the opposite:  to rest more deeply in the pose that you are already in, because this is where you find yoga’s greatest promise—the settled mind.

I often tell my students that deepening our practice does not mean adding more Cirque Du Soleil postures or crazy arm balancing. There is not some pose somewhere out there in the future—one where you look more like the bendy gymnasts that grace the covers of Yoga Journal or populate Bikram asana competitions—that’s better than the one you are in now. The pose you are in now is, in fact, the most perfect pose for you in THIS moment. And since THIS moment is all we truly have, our choice is this:

1. to wish it was different and push to make it something different, or 
2.  to relax into it right now just as it is

When all effort is relaxed

Many people are familiar with the following two sutras from Patanjali about asana practice:  

·      Sutra 2.46:  The physical posture should be steady and comfortable.

·      Sutra 2.47 says:  [Asana] is mastered when all effort is relaxed and the mind is absorbed in the Infinite.

Hmmm. Nothing in there about rocking crazy-fancy poses or about pushing your edge. I think what Patanjali is suggesting is to relax into where we are right now. In releasing effort, we cease doing the pose. When we cease doing the pose, we are free to be the pose. If the definition of yoga is “the settling of the mind into silence” (Sutra 1.2), then to go deeper in the yogic definition is to cease struggling against what is and to instead settle into the vast peacefulness that is available in each moment when we stop struggling. It doesn’t matter whether the asana you’re practicing is active and challenging or quiet and restorative. Can you relax into the truth of this pose, right now?

Of course, with all of us being Western yogis, the competitive paradigm is deeply woven into our conditioning. It takes time to rewire that pattern so we can begin to practice yoga asana from a completely different intention. That process is another challenge we can relax into—the truth that the pattern of struggling and striving still has power, and probably will for a while. But that is what is present. Relax into it.

Be patient and kind to yourself. Get curious and explore if you are willing to relax?  If you are willing to let go of the striving and the pushing and the achieving in order to choose to just be—be with what you are, be with what you have, and be in the sensation of the present moment feeling whatever it is you need to feel and the emotions attached to those physical sensations.  Are you brave to sit within yourself with yourself? Are you willing to wrap your arm around your deepest fears and wounds? Are you willing to explore the ‘who’ and ‘what’ you are in the present moment?

After two decades of asana and meditation practice, I can attest to the fact that the mind is much more stubborn about changing its habits than the body is. With patience and softness around the process, your experience of what it means to go deeper in yoga will evolve. Enjoy your present process, because that’s all there is. Be brilliant.

Blue Spirit Transformation.....yep....Again

What is a transformation journey?

• It’s an inner voyage that results in change through awareness practice.
• By developing clarity of mind, you will be able to identify and choose to live your heart’s desire.
• You can feel more joyful, alive and grateful by infusing your life with purpose and most importantly with God.

Who is the transformation journey for?

• If you want to change but don’t know how, you will get the information you need.
• If you want to live a more enchanted, God-reliant existence and need directions, you’ll receive them.
• If resistance or self-sabotage is a problem for you, you will find the solution.

In other words, a transformation journey is for everyone. Period.

When I first started down my yogic path, I needed to change so many things about my life, it was hard to know where to start. I needed a physical and spiritual transformation, from the mental to the muscular to the molecular. I needed to stop treating my body and mind like a random vehicular landfill. I needed stability, which I had not seen in so long, I had forgotten how it felt. I needed a reset button.

Testimonials the world over continue to suggest yoga eases the symptoms of a range of maladies—depression, diabetes, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, migraines, arthritis, back pain, and heart disease, for instance—while relaxing the mind and slimming the body.

"Can't you just do all that by, like, running every day for 60 days?" a friend asked me. Good question, but the answer didn’t interest me. None of my past fitness activities—running, cycling, training for fitness competitions, weight lifting, kickboxing—seemed catalytic enough for the depth of change I was and am still after.

I'm not a renovation; I'm a teardown. And I found that yoga was, is, and always will be my bulldozer…..just like God.  Yoga is my most precious tool set to bring about the changes I need in order to be more of who God created me to authentically be. Just like the baby doll’s bottom that is 'Made by Matel’, my heart, my mind and my body are ‘Made by God’.  I need to be able to give up the notion that I can do it on my own.  I surely can plow through on my own, but I can not be the change I wish to see in the world ON MY OWN.  That kind of transforming power is beyond me…..you…..all of us.

My time in Costa Rica was just magical.  The depth I am pruned to as a teacher, a person, a mother, and a wife are always so unbelievable.  There is something so powerful and at the same time so devastating to be apart of someone-else’s transformation all while on your own metamorphosis.  That is what these retreats allow.  They allow us all to pull way and dig deep, go deep, play deep and relax deep. It is where we learn how nonchalantly we faded into an American existence focused on quantity not quality. That place where career reigns and family is second? Third? Fourth?  It is a place where you greet your kids first rather than allowing your children to see that your spouse is THEE most important relationship after God’s that there is in your family. Meals are timed events rather than something that lingers and weaves deeper the emotional ties of your relationships.  Blue Spirit living is where care is given to every moment, every interaction.  Solitude is encouraged as is sitting down and just being still in the silence of nature’s symphony….no distractions other than the fascination of your surroundings and your inner self…where the demons hide. Coming to your mat twice a day is your vehicle to unlocking your freedom.  How did we as individuals and as a nation stray so far away from God’s plan?  We know God’s plan is better than anything we can do on our own.  God, Spouse, Children, …..and then everything else.  Be simpler.  Be authentic. Be honest. Inner peace begins with knowing God, but it remains when we choose to get to know ourselves and decide to decide.

I am always grateful that yoga is my bulldozing vehicle back to God’s plumb line. I’m too ravenous for my to do list to be checked off; too motivated by goals and achieving the ’next level’.  Decide to decide….and decide now.  Are you game? Go have a two hour dinner…..tonight…..make beets and get fascinated that your pee and poop turn purple even when other colorful foods don’t do anything close! Enjoy the simple.  Choose to look inside.  Choose to heal.  Choose to not be bound by a ridiculous schedule.  Go play tag.  Look inside and get rid of the chains that bind! It is a life journey…..begin today.  Your  Blue Spirit transformation begins in each and every moment.....and yes, you can always join us next year too :)

Pura Vida Yogis.....Pura Vida.