The Yoga Home sligo Perspective on Yoga*
Yoga is an exploration of the Energetic aliveness we inhabit in Body and Mind, in movement and in stillness, in all our thoughts and emotions, whether pleasant or painful, encompassing all our experiences from the the yoga mat to the activities of Daily life.
The hypothesis is that mindful and kindful attention to this experience of aliveness offers the possibility of harmonising its different aspects within our own being and in turn realising the potential for a similar harmony in the wider tapestry of life.
Along the way, you might strengthen your glutes and stretch your hamstrings, tone your biceps and triceps, reduce the amount of cortisol in your bloodstream, lower your blood pressure and digest your food more efficiently and get a better night’s sleep, but these physiological effects, while beneficial to our health and wellbeing, are not entirely the point. And yet they are not completely beside the point. It’s not an either/or scenario. It’s both. As One. That’s the Yoga. Yoga means “to yoke” We are yoked—body and mindheart, individual and universal.
Tending to the health of your body is not separate from the tending to the wisdom of your Mind heart.
The point is to know in and through your bones and your guts and your brain and your whole nervous system the unified interconnected “yoked” nature of all things.
Experience cannot be compartmentalised into sacred heartmind one one side and mundane physiology on the other because this is a invented division. What is more, to see the body as base while the mind heart is supreme is not simply divisive, it is a delusion. Body mind heart are not separate parts, they are different aspects of a great big Beingness. We simply have no way of knowing a mind without a body. Beingness is an embodied experience.
Yoga means both a state of union and the practices to discover this state of union for yourself
And what belongs in this “yoked” state of union? Your cranky hamstrings belong there, your gurgling intestines belong there, your anger and your aching heart belong there, your delight and your grief and even your boredom belong there. Yoga means that everything belongs and yoga is the way home to belonging. This is the hypothesis.
This hypothesis is not to be simply believed, it is to be tried and tested by each yogi bear. It is to be explored by each interested person in and through their own experience.
No one can do the practice for you, and yet we do not practice alone. There is tradition and community. But neither are to be blindly followed. Yoga is your active engagement with the teachings, liking and disliking and asking questions and looking for answers and understanding that all answers are provisional and must be examined for their suitability for the reality of every particular situation. Yoga is a dance of the universal and the particular.
The dance of yoga is not a perfectible thing. It is not rehearsed and it cannot be rehearsed because it is alive in each moment and responding to the inevitable changing conditions of life
Yoga is a Journey. There is no end to it and so you might as well relax and take your time. There are stops and starts and bumps on the road and grand vistas and moments of frustration and exhilaration and long boring stretches and sudden glorious revelations. There is no where to go and yet every step is an arrival at the destination of your aliveness right here and right now!
Yoga is an invitation to explore this very moment you are in
Right Now is always the first step on the pathway home
* Cathi neither belongs to one particular school nor has one predominant teacher. Rather her understanding has been shaped by a solid foundation in two particular approaches (Anusara Yoga And Insight Meditation) and then further exploration and training with a number of diverse teachers in various streams of the yoga and buddhist traditions. To get more details on this check out her bio here