YOUR BODY IS AN INSTRUMENT, NOT AN ORNAMENT
Sunday, 02 June 2019Your body is an instrument, not an ornament.
Did you get that? Can you make that shift in perspective?
Ethical yoga is a process aimed at changing the dominant culture of MIND. Awareness is cultured toward freedom. Freedom from a mindset that keeps us in the rat wheel of 'everything either being good or bad, right or wrong, something to be desired or something to fear.' A yoga practice is not meant to be a process of just tidying and renovating our personal prison cell (mindset). Yoga is meant to bust us out of the prison of self-doubt and delusion that binds us to unhappiness.
For yoga to function as a practice of liberation, our learning context trains us to examine our attitudes. Whilst we are working in postures we must learn to watch our mind for the judgements: the manifestation of desires and the leering mind of fear and shame.. (in yoga these judgements are studied as vrttis and kleshas) and they manifest in all of us.
When we can witness the characteristics of mind (fluctuations or vrttis), and shift the intention of practice to make these ‘fluctuations’ 'objects' rather than ornaments; at that point, our yoga practice changes us. The mental forces that bind us to unhappiness are weakened. Fears and desires, delusions and imaginations, are no longer dictators and back seat drivers in our lives. We stand in the power of our own presence and act from a place of inner wisdom. We create space for our Self.
When our mind set is toward the body as an ornament, we tend to engage with it in ways that glorify performance. Actions inherently serve no practical purpose. They leave us feeling unfulfilled. Whereas when we engage with the body as an instrument, we are concerned with the capacity of the instrument to harmonize within its context or circumstance. We understand that what is being expressed through the body is in fact the Self. Within nature, there is an eternal expression of wisdom. Our manifest nature; our body and small mind self, act as a playground where a yogi learns to relate to the eternal wisdom. We play with gravity, relational forces, anchors, extension, space. We develop concentration and accuracy of perception. Practice trains the mind in concentration and becomes the gateway to meditation.
More News
Woodgate Class news
Friday, 13 October 2023More class options starting October 24 2023
The cost of yoga
Sunday, 26 June 2022But to me the question really is, what is the cost of no yoga?
No longer willing to compromise your wellbeing.
Wednesday, 24 March 2021Yoga is the lay persons neuroscience - Yogis have known for centuries that there are layers of mental activity that can be harnessed and directed. When attention becomes concentration and concentration establishes a pause between the rise and fall of thoughts, we arrive into a state known as meditation. The interconnections between the layers of consciousness create the conditions for wisdom.. it arises in the pause, in the interruption of habitual thought.
