The Paradigm Project - Creating Integral Wellness

I’ve been practicing for over a decade now, both as a dedicated student and as a teacher.  In both scenarios I’ve regularly tried to explain the meaning of yoga to myself and students, and the reasons why I practice.  In all honesty, I find that a very difficult thing to do because my reasons for practicing yoga change regularly.

The ancient origin of the word ‘yoga’ in Sanskrit means to yoke.  That is, to yoke or join together one’s personal consciousness with the universal consciousness.  It is union, or the integration of one’s physical, mental and spiritual energies for harmonious wellbeing.

Sometimes it is simply a way to reclaim my body and find length through my limbs and spine.  Stretching out after hours of hunching over a computer, or a desk is in a word – medicine.

If I’ve been totally in my mind in an analytical manner, it can be a way to shake off the inner dialogue.  The inner critic and the to-do-lists can be unrelenting.  The ‘could-a should-a would-a’ scenario is so pointless and draining, but yet we all fall into that pattern of incessant over thinking.  What’s worse is that we often don’t even know that we are doing it. A daily practice provides the means in which you can practice “Svadyaya” or self-study.  Self-study means being aware of the inner dialogue, the words we speak, the thoughts we have.

The concept of Ishvara Pranidhana is a recent revelation into the real deeper connection that I have to this sacred practice.  It is to surrender all the fruits of practice to whatever it is that one conceives to be a greater power beyond one’s self. It is acting as best we can, and then relinquishing all attachment to the outcome of our actions.  This letting go focuses us on the process of the practice rather than on the goals of practice.
Only by releasing our fears and hopes for the future can we really be in union with the present moment. Today, for most of us, life is fragmented… absent from the living moment. We find ourselves living a concept of life – not life itself.

Guru Singh summed this up so potently in a lecture the other day.
“We have developed this life that isn’t life; with its food that isn’t food; amongst beliefs that aren’t to be believed and we are now controlled by feelings that aren’t actual our true feelings . . . they are composite drawings of some hopes and anticipations reacting to other fears and doubts. Life has become the anticipation of memory . . .a far cry from an experience of your existence that is intended.”

So I practice to live the best life I can live.  To meet my destiny and to experience the wonder and the mystery of that thing that is greater than all of us, that is the essence and the commonality within all of us.  To experience this moment, as it is with all of it’s unlimited potential with all of it’s limited bounds.  To be in this body, and this mind without the need to change anything, but moment to moment making the choices that are in alignment with the true-self.  The heart.