Y de Yoga

From time to time, I like to write down, by heart, the eight limbs, so taht I never forget. It’s always good to remeber them!

Here we go (that’s how I remeber them, so maybe there are a few errors):

1. Yama
 - Ahimsa (non-violence)
 - Satya (truthfulness)
 - Asteya (non.stealing)
 - Brahmacharya (use well your life force)
 - Aparigraha (non-coveting)

2. Niyama
 - Saucha (cleanliness)
 - Tapas (austerity)
 - Santosa (contentment). I couldn’t remember that one! Oh, well. Had to cheat on this one.
 - Svadhyaya (study of self, study of the vedas)
 - Ishwara pranidana (devotion to God)

3. Asana (postures)

4. Pranayama (breath management)

5. Pratyahara (withdrawal from senses). I don’t get this one very well. 

6. Dharana (concentration)

7. Dhyana (meditation)

8. Samadhi.

Namaste!

Isvara pranidhana is the 5th Niyama and one of the most difficult for me to understand.

I understand it as faith.

And faith, to me, is such a puzzling concept.

I’ve grown up in a catholic environment, but in my home, we’re very “mixed”. We don’t usually go to churches, althought there was a period in my life when I went to a lot of churches, each one with a different approach.

I was a little “lost”, and was trying to hold on to what I called … faith. I don’t like religions anymore, I mean, me, personally, I find it more comfortable to have faith, but no religion. It feels better to me. I understand many other people feel better by belonging to a specific religion. I don’t.

I believe in faith, nonethless. I believe life is sacred, and I believe in God, althought I don’t know exactly what God is.

I believe faith is that part of us that is amazed, that loves to watch the sun rising, that keeps trying even when everything is upside down, that do something good to someone else without expecting gratification. All that is faith. Faith in goodness, faith in oneself, in life, faith in others.

Faith is beautiful. And I like to nurture mine.

Here’s how I do so:

- I do my best and trust my future without craving for results (the ones I want). I like to see my life unfold, sometimes in ways I never knew it would.

- I try to develop my intuition and to follow it. I am now doing a very interesting course about it. It’s online and free. Here’s the link.

- I meditate. Meditation feels so good. I love to be in this stillness, feeling supported, like if the time stopped and everything is ok. In my opinion, it demands a lot of faith to dedicate 30-60 minutes everyday to sitting quiet and doing … nothing. We live in a goal-oriented society and it might seem a lack of ambition not to say lazyness to do it. I don’t mind if someone call me lazy or crazy. I dedicate some time of my day to meditation with gratitude and joy.

- I sing mantras. Gayatri mantra is so good to everyhing, and I found it also handful to strenghten my faith.

- I believe in myself and I keep saying to myself: “You’ve done a good job”, “You’re doing great”, “Love you”. Sounds cheesy, but in the right time, with a sincere heart, it’s blissful. We all need to encourage and compliment ourselves, I think.

- I read nice books about spirituality. I’ve been reading “Light on Yoga”, from Iyengar and it is strenghtening my faith.

- I look up to inspirational people. Their greatness is to me a reflection of the greatness of our Creator.

- I do Yoga! It strenghtens my faith like nothing else does.

Keep it up, Yogis and Yoginis!

Namaste.

Svadhyaya. SUCH a lovely niyama. One of my favorites.

Self-study, self-inquiry, to know the Self, to know who you are lies at the base of any spiritual work. If you know yourself well, it will be easier to practice all the other Yamas and Niyamas. Because you’ll know what you want and what you don’t want, it’ll be easier to you to live in the Truth (Satya), to not want things that belong to others (Aparigraha), to remain calm when conflict with other arises (Ahimsa).

I know I’m a yoga student and that my knowledge is limited, but I think that svadhyaya reminds us we are all students, we’re all learning during our lives and beyond, so we shouldn’t be ashamed by our “level” - be it a beginner, be it an advanced one.

We also learn how to value our own knowledge and that helps us to live more fully, trusting ourselves, listening to our intuitions and never wanting to be someone else.

What you can do to practice Svadhyaya:

- Keep some sort of a journal. It can be a virtual one, like a blog. The important thing is to track your progress, and to register your insights.

- Meditate daily. It will open the doors to your inside world and help you to know yourself better.

- Have honest and real relationships. I believe one of the best ways to know who I am is through real, lovingful relationships.

- Do something you always wanted to but never had the possibility to do. It can be a trip, for example, or even trying a new sport or learning a new language, or reading a book. By doing something your soul has longing to do can be a nice way to get to know yourself better.

- Remeber: you’ll be always a beginner when it comes to how much you know yourself. Never take it for granted. Never think you know better. You’ll be surprising yourself for ever (I think).

- As an anonymous person reminded me, study the Vedas, that’s a fundamental meaning of svadhyaya. You can (in my opinion) also study other books and texts about spirituality and yoga, and everything that can help you with the philosophic part of it.

Keep practicing!

Namaste.

The name Tapas always reminds me mexican food.

But this niyama means to make an effort, to be willing to progress in your path by your comittment, to strive for being a step closer to your goal, to do the “hard work” and be happy about it.

Sometimes, we need more tapas to get out our comfort zone and go for our aims, to work for our dreams.

I am smeone who likes to do a hard work but who never liked to have someone telling me what to do. I guess that’s why I like Yoga so much, it is about hard work, but it’s more about autonomy and freedom. This way, I never feel exhausted or drained. Quite the contrary.

What you can do to practice tapas:

- Choose a challenge and set a schedule to attain it.

- Study the philosophy of Yoga. It’s  a woderful way to work for your practice.

- When you feel strong enough, choose to do an asana practice with a very challenging teacher, or choose a challenging asana sequence, or a challenging class. Something that can “push” you closer to your limits. Take care of yourself during the practice and take a nice rest after it.

- Try to wake up when the sun rises and do at least a half Surya Namaskar, really “saluting” the sun, smiling to it. Never mind if you go back to your bed after it.

- Do a 30 minutes or a 60 minute meditation. Choose a quiet time, a quite day and prepare your space with blanquets, pillows, candles, music and whatever you need to make it more pleasant.

- Tell yourself you’ve done a “good work” after your efforts. And do something to celebrate it - it can be a small thing, like eating your favorite snack while watching a nice movie or TV series.

And keep the practice!

Namaste.

The second Niyama is Santosa, which means contentment.

We all know we must be happy whith everything we have, happy about who we are, it is something very related to the “duty” of being grateful.

Gratitude has a lot to do with the concept of santosa, because if we are not grateful for what we already have, it gets really hard to evolve, to make any progress. Without it, we feel in a vicious circle of complaining and depression.

It is important to look at you, to your life and see how much you have only by being alive. The sun rises magnificent everyday and you can contemplate the greatness around you and acknowledge how good it feels to be here. Taking part in the human journey. All that is santosa practice.

But there is also this feeling that:

“I’ve done a lot. I’ve been doing my best until now. If the results are not exactly what I dreamed of, I can celebrate that I have put my heart on that, and I’ve made progress”.

Santosa is also to perceive your own efforts, to celebrate your achievements, even the little ones, and to practice the inner happinness, this contentment with oneself.

It can be highly benefitial.

What you can do to practice Santosa:

- Surya Namaskar is a saudation to the sun. It is supposed to be done early in the morning, in front of the the sun. It’s a respectfull way to say “Hi, Sun, I’m glad to see you again!”. I must admit I NEVER do a complete Surya Namaskar in the morning, because my body feels very tight in the morning, and I don’t usually get up early (like 5 a.m.), but I want to. I think that is a good way to enhance my overall practice and to practice Santosa.

- Celebrate your little or big achievements! Do something that will please your heart when you noticed you’ve been progressing in the path of your life.

- Take part on the joy of someone else. It feels great to be happy when someone else is happy, even if it is a stranger. Celebration is better together!

- Be thankful for who you are, right now. Nothing else matters more than this. Call yourself awesome. To be kind and respectful toward oneself is also Ahimsa practice, and it is very benefitial to you and those around you.

Keep practicing.

Namaste.

Today, 16th July 2012, I complete six months of daily asana practice. I am thinking about how can I celebrate it

Very proud of myself. I practiced Yoga now and then since I was a teenager, but I only started to practice it daily six months ago.

I started only with the asanas and about 15 minutes meditation, and now I practice about one hour asanas and at least 20 minutes meditation (sometimes, 60 minutes medtation, but not often). I also practice many of the eight limbs, and improving.

Yoga is a powerful transformational system, but to get its benefits, you must practice everyday (and every moment!). I like to think that my whole life I practiced, but now it got serious.

Congratulations to me! \o/

Namaste.

The first Niyama is saucha, that can be translated as cleanliness. I understand it as being free of hurts, of negative thoughts, of everything that “cloggs” your energetic system.

In Healing, we learn that fear, hatred, and many other emotional pain can “clogg” your energetic system, because the energy “stops”. It doesn’t flow when we are upset, hurted or afraid and if this energy is not “cleaned”, it can cause many problems in your energy system and thus in your life.

To be “clean” inside is not always easy. We have many challenges in our daily life regarding relationships, unfulfilled expectations and so on. Many times, we beat ourselves up for so many things, for not being the way we think we should be.

We don’t recognize what we already are (we don’t practice Santosa, another Niyama), and keep hoarding frustration and pain in our spiritual bodies. The attachment to pain is more common than we think. About it, there’s a very nice quote:

“Yoga is the severance of our union with pain”. (Bhagavad Gita)

By meditating you can clean a lot of your energy system (there’s this very good meditation on YogaGlo to help us with this – only available for members). But sometimes, the help of a Helaer is necessary.

Saucha is cleaning, that can be done slowly, and purify ourselves and our lives, enhancing our practice.

Namaste.

I’m now studying the Niyamas. I would appreciate any articles, websites and books suggestions.

Namaste!