Posture and Passion in 2022
Hi Friends!!
Please, before you read any of my words - consider a few self-reflective questions to get your wheels turning:
How are you sitting, standing and moving right now?
Physically, mentally and emotionally we have postures. Those postures are a mirror image of our beliefs, habits and world-view.
Where is your heart at?
When distractions are absent, where do your thoughts travel? When left to your own devices - where does your curiosity lay? What larger questions do you ponder?
Personal Yogi Share:
The challenge of holding a yoga community and being a yogi in an industry of yoga is that there are so many conflicting viewpoints of what yoga is and isn’t. And I am sure as a practitioner, it’s equally nauestating or at least saturating.
Sometimes I see clients who have built really unbalanced breathing and yoga habits from the biggest online yoga platforms in the world (breathing apps, yoga schools, etc) that do not and cannot account for the fact that the PERSON IS THE POINT, and that each yogi is unique - traditionally the teacher-student relationship is the primary relationship in yogic study.
NOT because the teacher is the point, but precisely because - the teacher getting to know the student is essential. And the student practicing seeing through the eyes of the teacher/teaching is essential for releasing old karma and ways of being.
In the studio industry culture, yoga is: movement plus some theme-weaving, plus some (if one is lucky) breathwork. And, yes, I have fallen into that trap too - of delivering what people expect versus what I see is needed. But I won’t go there again - we both deserve more.
Inquiry, both into oneself (including ones posture and movement patterns) and the nature of one’s Self (as Ananda - already full and complete) are both integral parts of everything we offer, no matter how meandering the path can feel at times - as we navigate in and through culture.
That’s why I wanted to speak on POSTURE & PASSION going into 2022. Because they both have an important role in whether yoga actually works for a yogi.
So, I would like to share some of the gems I took from my years training and studying at the Gurukulam and merge that with the context of modernity…
The most 2 most essential things I would like every student of Devoted Yogi to know:
1. From a somatic perspective, it takes 300 repetitions to create body memory and 3000 to create embodiment. Embodiment isn’t just about being present with what you are feeling (although that is a HUGE PART of learning a new way of being) - it is about what you do repeatedly. Therefore, when we change our behaviors (speech patterns, movement patterns, thought patterns) and we REPEAT those changes we embody our lives in a new way.
Yogic Insight: Rather than focus on changing the way you feel, change a behavior (a movement pattern) and track the way you feel. If the result is good, Repeat it!, you are on your way to compounded confidence - which you will need as you swim up river against the cultural and generational norms you are here to break on YOUR journey of Awakening.
The soon to be released 300hr Yoga Teacher Training deals with this at length - but if you would like to read more on Embodied Leadership now you can check out this amazing book (which, yes, is part of the reading list).
2. From a yogic perspective, there is no point in bringing incredible health and balance to the body (for example, through comprehensive 5-Element Yin Yoga) if the end result is MORE attachment (aka. body-identification). Attachment inevitably leads to fear of loss, and fear has an impact on every major system of the body - leading to an inevitable return of imbalance in the body-mind.
Yogic Insight: If you increase your physical training - which most modern humans should (and why we suggest a 200-Hr YTT for EVERY student at Devoted Yogi), then increase your devotional/renunciation practices in tandem. Renunciation (Karma Yoga) isn’t about charity, it is about offering back our attachment to being the “doer” & “enjoyer” by making sacred our actions as gifts returned to the Divine Mother, or “infinite giver” - exactly because it prepares our hearts for the CAPACITY for unity consciousness - aka. releasing our nagging sense of separation from everyone and everything else.
This initial step of Devotion via duality and “offering our actions back” is essential for most yogis to cultivate a desire for spiritual aspirations. Remember, we are operating from a Market Economy Culture - our setpoint is to act from that place and desire from that place (nothing wrong in it) until it hinders our practice - or we are getting more of what we don’t want in life.
Eventually, we come to renounce even our “mistaken identity” as a separate self, thereby - lightening our lives 1000 fold.
When we mirror our training with devotion and release our false-identifications that keep us spiraling into more of the same - we get to keep the balance we cultivate.
We get to co-create with life itself.
It is our birthright.
We just have to believe it, and KEEP ON acting on that belief.
You see, our trouble isn’t gaining realization, it's in keeping it ALIVE (mothering it?)
With love, devotion and a mothering heart…
Jenna Devi