Welcome to the Living Practice – April 2001

 

Teaching by Vivekananda

Awesome Prayer submitted by Pam

Myth, Healing and the Peak Experience by Julian Walker

Quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama submitted by Peg

The Omniscient OM by Megan Lurie McCarver

A World of Choices - Ayurveda , the Science of Life by Donna

A Recommendation by Charles

Why is Chiropractic Maintenance Care Important by Jeanne Lisella

Our Children No longer Cry by Arun Deva

A Note from Yogaeverywhere.com

Yoga eCommerce and eVents

 

Dear lovely viewer,

Thank you so much for visiting Yogaeveywhere.com. I truly appreciate your generous attention to yogaeverywhere.

 

I entitled Yogaeverywhere.com’s eNewsletter, The Living Practice, because I believe we are often being presented with challenges painting the continual practice of life’s lessons. On the days that I strive for perfection, I am distracted on the action of striving and the expectation of perfection. On the days that I live my practice, I feel complete being just "me", trusting that human kindness is enough. What I have found is that in the process, humility is healing. Thank God life is just a practice, "the living practice" and we have loving teachers, often our family, friends, colleagues and community that surround us with light and awareness.

 

Let me tell you my lesson this month. Arun, my yoga friend and I were discussing over dinner the teaching of ego-less yoga. The following day, I began to explore the feeling of teaching as well as being in practice without ego (and my ego is pretty big and attached). Like all letting go for me, the first few days manifested tremendous anxiety. The odd thing was I could not place my fingers on what I was letting go of. Ego is a non-tangible part of me, and a very visceral experience.

 

Then I began to feel some clarity. I began to design my meditation on inhaling the word "I" and exhaling the word "trust". Feeling more self-confidence that I had a path and having faith in the practice, I continued to sit and gradually the anxiety eased. Arun’s comment was "if you consider ego the "I" principle, then you cut yourself off from the universal energy and your output is limited to a singularly perceived reality that can only connect with a like-minded energy. If, on the other hand, you submerge your ego in the universal principle, then you teach, and live, from a place of compassion and thus can connect more freely with other perspectives."

 

So your practice for today is to set ego aside in your daily routine and see what comes up. I want you to consider what it is like to present yourselves from an ego-less state of mind. What tools do you practice to be your authentic self without ego? Perhaps you have some of these answers you would like to share with me. Play with it.

With love and great respect,

Megan

 

 

Yoga Teaching of Vivekananda, Living at the Source

"When a kettle of water is coming to a boil, if you watch the phenomenon, you find first one bubble rising and then another and so on, until at last they all join, and a tremendous commotion takes place. This world is very similar. Each individual is like a bubble, and the nations resemble many bubbles. Gradually these nations are joining, and I am sure the day will come when separation will vanish and that Oneness to which we are all going will become manifest. A time must come when every man will be intensely practical in the scientific world and in the spiritual, and then that Oneness, the harmony of Oneness, will pervade the whole world. The whole of mankind will become jivanmuktas – free while living. We are all struggling towards that one end through our jealousies and hatreds, through our love and cooperation. A tremendous stream is flowing towards the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss."

 

Awesome Prayer submitted by Pam
"May today there be peace within you.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
I believe that friends are quiet angels who lift us to
our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly."

 

Myth, Healing and The Peak Experience by Julian Walker

"Lancelot and The Dark Knight"

The myth of the Quest for the Holy Grail starts with the Knights of Arthur’s court sitting at the Round table and having a vision of the Grail covered by a veil. One of the knights proposes a quest to find the Grail and see it unveiled (so that he would have the direct experience that the vision is symbolizing). The knights decide that each should go on their own personal quest. Each knight enters the forest "at a dark place where there is no path."

 

The Grail could be called "connecting to the core" or "awaking the Kundalini" at a yoga studio. Chinese tradition might call it "moving chi". Some schools of psychology would call it "living from the authentic self" or "congruity between one’s inner and outer life". The Grail is the holy cup, the vessel of life force. It’s not so much the cup itself, but the implied sacredness of the more ineffable substance it might hold.

 

We are all on a quest. When we begin any path of healing or self-transformation, we start to engage the energies of the psyche that know all about the quest. It may have many different qualities, it may express itself in more overt or covert ways, more masculine or feminine ways, but essentially, it’s the soul’s drive towards wholeness, self-knowledge and love, here and now, in the field of space and time. All myth and religion, all practices and techniques, all psychology and spirituality, spring forth collectively from this urge within us. It is the evolving current in the universe, it has produced us and it draws us forward towards communion with it.

 

As part of this quest, one of the knights, Sir Lancelot, comes upon an enchanted castle. These characters represent lost beauty, innocence, love and vulnerability. The enchanted castle and its prisoners are protected by the fierce Dark Knight who rides out to kill Sir Lancelot when he gets too close. However, Sir Lancelot is an excellent warrior and so defeats the Dark Knight and enters the enchanted castle. There he spends an idyllic few years with the beautiful queen and her daughter. He forgets about his quest, about the other knights, about his King Arthur, and about his lady at home, until another of the knights arrives. Now it is Sir Lancelot that has to ride out as the Dark Knight.

You see, his quest is incomplete, and he holds the enchanted castle now in it’s place of limbo. Sir Lancelot colludes in keeping the queen and the princess out of the integrated field of everyday reality; they are in a magical, but powerless place.

 

Now, Sir Lancelot does not battle with his friend, but neither can win, and so they finally take off their helmets, recognizing one-another and ride off back to their King Arthur to see how the quest is going for the other knights. The enchanted castle and the lost innocents are now forgotten. This is the spiritual struggle, to integrate the gifts of the heightened state of awareness with one’s mundane reality.

 

Whilst in the enchanted castle, Sir Lancelot forgot his real life and when back in his real life he forgot the enchanted castle. We must bring the vision down from the mountaintop. We must share it with our community and integrate it into our real lives. In other words, how do we take the energy that is manifested in our yoga, meditation, therapy, etc. and integrate them into daily life? This is a question, as like the knights, we each explore individually.

 

Soma Yoga and The Peak Experience

Georg Feurstein, the most respected Westerner scholar on the yoga tradition, author of "The Yoga Tradition", says that the origins of yoga lie in the ritualized consumption of a medicinal tea called "soma". The participants in the ritual gained entrance into the state of consciousness in which they awakened to their energetic and spiritual identity. The tea brought on a visionary experience. From these visions we got the chakra system along with all the spiritual art of the Hindu traditions. We got the esoteric writing of the Vedas and the Upanishads where soma is often mentioned. This is a deep experience of the mystery, represented in the form of symbols and images that try to explain what they are feeling.

 

Now, the story goes that as these cave dwelling yogis moved out of the mountains, they no longer had access to certain plants and herbs that are vital to the tea. So they started to develop breathing and physical exercises to stimulate and awaken their energy in the same ways. And so we have the yoga tradition. Of course that we now know that the benefits of the practice are legion, the health of the body, the healing of the emotions, the focusing of the mind, etc. These early yogis may have known this too, but their efforts to develop the system intensified with the goal of accessing this heightened state, what Humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow would call the "peak experience".

Maslow is most well known for his idea called the "hierarchy of needs", which actually maps quite well onto the chakra system. He also did the in-depth studies on people he called "self-actualizers" and on what he called the "peak experience". In the peak experience we gain insight and healing, we are temporarily free of our illusions and defenses, we feel connected to the deeper sense of meaning. Maslow said that the self-actualizing people make their choices based on their peak experiences, and actively seek out this type of experience, while non-self-actualizers were lucky to have one or two peak experiences in a whole life time. As part of this experience of liberation, insight and healing, we usually are asked to face our own Dark Knight, if we are to reintegrate our lost innocence, our joyful connection to the energy of existence.

 

Any genuinely transformational process will take us on this journey. The Core Sequencing System of Yoga and Bodywork works with a map of the body-mind. A map of how certain muscles in the body hold blocked energy, therefore, affect the way we hold our bodies and live our lives. These blockages often have their origins in the places where parts of ourselves; the "innocents" have been locked away by the "Dark Knight". The spell may be something like "You’ll never amount to anything!" or "You’re too selfish to ever love anyone!" In the yogis myths, the Dark Knight would be a deity or wrathful deity. In modern psychology, he is the internalized abuser, negative interject, or shadow archetype of the psyche. In Core Sequencing, he’s an energetic block that once released and integrated becomes an ally. Mythic scholar Joseph Campbell says, "Any demon is merely a God that has not been honored".

 

Honor the demon and he is transformed into a blessed God presence, reclaim the blockage energy and it is yours to focus in a new way. The spiritual path is a mystic path, the mystic path is a healing path, healing restores our humanity and in our human-ness we find what is truly spiritual.

 

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

"My religion is simple. My religion is kindness."

 

The Omniscient OM by Megan Lurie McCarver

Imagine yourself witnessing a butterfly transition out of its cocoon. Picture yourself standing in a meadow full of lavender with a cool refreshing breeze washing over your skin. See yourself soaring in the air with a huge wing span in full glory. That’s what it is like to be a yoga teacher.

 

I love sitting quietly in community with my hands in prayer pose, listening attentively to my breath as well as my neighbors, feeling secure as my heart beats steady and strong, and chanting passionately the mantra "OM", the Eternal sound of God.

 

Kristi, a yoga friend said, "Chanting OM is intended to remind us of the spirit that dwells in us. When we chant OM, we are not reaching out to spirit nor trying to be good for spirit to serve us, but reminding ourselves that spirit is always there in every cell."

 

Tatra Niratisayam Sarvajna Bijam - Yoga Sutras 1-25. "In Him is the complete manifestation of the seed of omniscience." Interpreted by Sri Swami Satchidananda.

I was first turned on by yoga visually. I adored seeing the spaces between and around my friends in asana (posture). Soon I began to see all shapes and forms surrounding the object I was looking at. Literally and visually, I began to expand. I found this new way of being very comforting. In the yoga sutras every thing inside the circle is Purusha (Soul) and everything out side the circle is Isvara (God). This all began to finally make some sense.

Tasya Vachkah Pranavah - Yoga Sutras 1-27. "The word expressive of Isvara in the mystic sound OM (note: OM is God’s name as well as form)". Interpreted by Sri Swami Satchidananda.

 

It is written that OM can be broken down into four syllables, A-U-M- and the fourth syllable is the sound vibration of God. "A" represents the first letter in the alphabet in most all languages. For example, "A" in English and Sanskirt or Aleph in Hebrew. The "U" sound or "oo" represents the continual rhythm of creation or preservation. The "M" sound represents the end or dissolution. The fourth syllable is the vibration sounds of life, often referred to as God.

 

A few tips to the OM

1. Do not be attached to the sound. Let it go.

2. As you create the sound vibration of OM, listen to your neighbors’ OM as well as yours.

3. Know that there are some practices where all they do is OM all day. Your OM, your sound waves go beyond the walls and join their OM to create one sound, the sound of OM.

4. Settle into the moment after the OM.

5. Conclude your OM experience with a silent prayer for yourself.

 

OM is the basic sound always vibrating in you. Do this now. Press your hands gently together in prayer pose the knuckles of your thumbs gently pressing into your chest. Relax your shoulders breathing long and soft. Inhale fully and on the exhale allow your self to OM. Begin with the "ah" sound by opening your mouth towards a smile, leading into the "oo" sound by creating an open puckering mouth and then continue into the "mm" sound by relaxing your lips together. Do this three times ending with a silent prayer or blessing to yourself. Feel the energy.

 

This is a story about Mother Theresa and a reporter interviewing her. The reporter asked Mother Theresa what she says when she prayers to God. Mother Theresa’s answered "I don’t say anything, I listen". Then the reporter asked, "What does God say to you?" Mother Theresa’s response was "God does not say anything, he listens".

 

Megan is the founder and originator of www.YogaEverywhere.com/  She teaches several classes per week and is available to teach yoga for corporate seminars and conventions. Her specialty is introducing people to the yoga community in a gentle and kind fashion.

 

A World of Choices - Ayurveda, the Science of Life by Donna Foster

With its roots stemming from India, Ayurveda is now gaining much attention here in the west because of its holistic approach to healing. Ayurveda focuses on living life naturally. It teaches us to live in society and in the universe without disturbing the delicate balance of nature. Ayurveda not only addresses illness and treatment, but is a complete way of life which describes the activities, diet, lifestyle, etc. which enhance life.

The system is based on the concept of balance representing health and leads us to well being through four levels of healing.

The first is disease treatment. The whole person is assessed to determine the cause of the illness (or imbalance), and remedies often involving the use of herbal preparations and diet/lifestyle modifications are prescribed.

The second stage is disease prevention. This teaches us to eliminate disease by contemplating the factors in our lives such as work, lifestyle, our psychological condition and the environment around us. In order to eliminate illness, we must eliminate those factors that negatively influence us and make us vulnerable. This requires constant awareness, as long term health cannot be achieved with sporadic practice.

The third level of treatment is life enhancement therapy with the goal of longevity and improved vitality.

The fourth and final level of Ayurvedic healing is awareness development. This requires a spiritual approach to life, including the practice of meditation. Meditation raises our awareness, enabling us to calm the mind and spirit, and discover the essence of who we really are. It seeks to raise consciousness in a return to oneness with the world around us, and the spirit within us.

Through Ayurveda we are taught harmony through simplicity and contentment, in which true fulfillment (and consequently health) is a matter of being, not becoming.

Donna and her partner Michael are focused on the provision of alternative health products, alternative healing methods and information via their web presence at A World of Good Health. Their specialties include Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Aromatherapy.

 

 

Why is Chiropractic Maintenance Care Important by Dr. Jeanne Lisella ,D.C.
Many times when I first see a patient they are in pain. After several visits when the pain is gone they feel that there is no reason to continue. The key to keeping a patient out of pain is with periodic check-ups. It is very similar to your dental check-ups - regular cleanings keep teeth healthy so that your gums and teeth don't break down. Regular check-ups to the chiropractor can deter spinal degeneration and disc disease.

 

There are several pluses to continued care:

1. People who have been under care tend to recover from further traumas quicker such as car accidents.

2. Patients tend to know their body and know the early warning signs of the spine being out of alignment and come in before they are in severe pain.

3. Maintenance care during pregnancy allows for an easier 9 months and has also been shown to decrease the time of labor.

4. Maintenance care becomes less costly: one visit per month is easier than when there is severe pain when a patient may have to be treated up to 3-4 times a week until the inflammation is gone.

 

Jeanne is a local Santa Monica chiropractor in family practice for over 10 years. She specializes in women's health issues (PMS, menopause, pre/post natal care, and osteoporosis) and children's health. Dr. Lisella’s goal as a chiropractor is to allow her patients to feel their best and to avoid needless disease.

 

 

Our Children No Longer Cry by Arun Deva

Our children no longer cry,

We stopped listening to them so long ago

They now find other ways to reach us.

 

Our children no longer cry,

They pick up guns

Which are so much louder,

We still do not listen to them.

 

Our children have dried their tears,

We want them grown up today!

They pick up our toys and live in our fantasy.

To catch our attention,

They turn it into a nightmare.

We were once children,

Did we not learn to cry?

 

Our needs are so strong,

We step on each other,

Our greed is so strong,

We trample each other

 

A prayer then,

A prayer for us.

 

May we stop being children,

So our children can be children.

 

May we grow to lessen our fears,

That we may be their safe refuge.

 

May we accept our responsibility to them,      

Stop being the cowards we call them

 

A prayer then to our children,

Please forgive us.

 

We may have missed our childhood,

We are trying to find the courage now

To let you have yours.

 

Arun is a yoga therapist and teacher specializing in Ayur*yoga. Originally from India, he makes his home in Los Angeles.

 

A Note from Yogaeverywhere.com

As most of you know we are launching our Yoga and Retreat Center Directory page very soon. We want to extend the gift to your favorite yoga teachers and retreat centers. Please invite them to join our directory for the first six months for free.

All we need is their name if they are a private yoga teacher, or studio/retreat center name, address (snail mail), telephone number, eMail address or live link and a twenty-five word or less description of their service by May 1st. Please pass the invitation on to your recommended teachers and yoga friends. Thanks for helping us "raise our barn"!

 

Your ongoing support of Yogaeverywhere.com and the Living Practice has greatly contributed to our rapid growth. Please continue sharing your appreciation by telling your friends, forwarding your eNewsletter to other sentient beings, contributing articles, sharing your teachings and/or becoming a sponsor.