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Take Your Practice Beyond the Mat

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Take Your Practice Beyond the Mat

Our Beginning Yoga Series Students have been doing great, and have accepted a challenge each week to take their individual practices Beyond the Mat.

It literally only takes a few minutes to do this. You will bring attention to your body and do some mindful movement, and with that you will notice the difference in terms of connection to your body and on the spot mindful regulation.

Here are a few of those Beyond the Mat ideas to integrate into your practice:

  • Breath awareness, being aware of the breath more often likewise makes a difference. It doesn’t matter how you breathe, just being aware shifts the experience and impact.
  • Be aware of your feet. Tuning into the feeling of your feet, your balance, your articulation as you walk helps keep you be grounded and more present.
  • Find neutral spine every day. This means you are aligned head to the tail in a natural way- natural includes curves. The best way to know it is to lie flat on the ground. Or to stand with your heels, hips, back, and head to the wall. You won’t be flat, you will notice the curves. Your posture is designed like a spring rather than a rod. This alignment is the visual for the mind/body connection and the basis of all meditation postures.

The point of these simple suggestions is that it is easy to get lost in all we have to do. And with that stress and disconnection accrues. I call this body driving head around.

Yet, the body experience is the anchor back to present moment reality and the power to adjust in real time, rather than ignore and be overwhelmed later on. By being aware of the body now, you are back in the driver’s seat.

All these formal practices: yoga, meditation, mindfulness are known as: Somatic Training. Where you are developing your natural ability to attune, attend, and respond- to balance physical, emotional, and mental energy and information, to relate rather than react …ie to self-regulate your nervous system.

Self-regulation implies that your nervous system can and will regulate itself, it is unconscious and autonomic function.  These functions though may not be optimal or accurate, and we can get into chronic patterns that generate unnecessary stress, pain, and illness.  Self-regulation gives you the power back, it simply requires some awareness and intention to slow down and notice what’s really happening.  It’s certainly not a cure-all, but it does make a subtle and significant difference in the long run.

So, to repeat:  Move and feel your body simply with curiosity, be aware of your breath more often, feel your feet regularly to shift attention from the head, lie down and align your posture on the ground.  This moment matters.

/by Natasha Korshak

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness or The Satipatthana Sutta

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The Four Foundations of Mindfulness or The Satipatthana Sutta

 

As mindfulness has come to mean many things in our modern usage, with the potential to be watered down into being calm, relaxed, or nice it is useful to reflect upon its actual roots in Buddhism.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, or the Satipatthana Sutta, is the classical teaching attributed to the Buddha which outlines a simple, direct way anyone may lessen and end suffering. Below is a brief overview of the foundations as I understand them, express them, and explore them as an interfaith practitioner. Interfaith here implies a respect for the world’s spiritual and religious traditions without identifying as one in particular.

The first foundation is the body, the physical, our direct sensory connection to the world.  Use your senses, your body, and your breath to bring you home.  It is simple and significant. This place you are is the only place you truly exist.

The second foundation is the feelings.  Being aware of your emotional reaction to the present moment.  We are always emoting subconsciously.  Literally, we are having a reaction whether we are conscious of it or not.  Mindfulness asks us to make it conscious, to see it clearly and to not be so driven by emotional reactivity.

The third foundation is the thoughts.  Being aware of the thinking process.  We are often lost in thought, convinced of thought, trying to think our way out of stress & suffering.  In reality, life does not yield itself to simple problem solving.  Awareness of thoughts as things rather than certainties gives us much more perspective and response flexibility.

The fourth foundation is more complicated.  It is sometimes referred to as awareness of mental formations.  I once asked a very experienced Buddhist friend to explain it more to me, she said “it’s everything else.” The energy with which she said this, as a devoted meditator, struck me.  This the launching pad into the mysteries of consciousness and the possibility for clear comprehension within the vicissitudes of this wild and precious life.

What is particularly interesting in this ancient understanding via the Buddha is that it matches our concept of the evolution of the brain- from biological instinct, to raw emotion, to abstract thought.  And it champions the ability we have to integrate it all anew; to live with more intention, care, and wisdom.   To lessen, and potentially, end suffering.

Simple but not easy.  Profound and Practical.  May it be so!

/by Natasha Korshak

Inner Peace – Six things to make it easier

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Inner Peace – Six things to make it easier

not being afraid of change

kindness toward others

honesty with yourself

intentional actions

self-awareness

Yung Pueblo, Clarity and Connection

 

I offered this Inner Peace formula by writer and contemplative activist Yung Pueblo in the July news. One of our thoughtful students took “intentional actions” as a point of inquiry asking me and himself, what is intentional actions? You may simply want to consider the question without reading on.  One of Yung Pueblo’s gifts is his economy of words.  Here is my philosophical and hopefully practical response to the question:

In mindfulness training, and yoga as well- the idea of knowing how to work with the impulses of the mind/body moment to moment is the key to ending unnecessary suffering…

Intentional action implies working as skillfully as possible with the past/present momentum of doing, relating, managing, fixing, controlling, willing…

Intentional action asks us to consider deeply. What is really happening within me and around me? What is called for (if anything)?

Much of formal meditation practice teaches us to harness the mind/body energy and purify it (so to speak);  so our presence and action can be use-full, help-full, care-full, beneficial, healing rather than reactive, aggressive, selfish, impulsive, harmful…

The Dali Lama has said “ My greatest protection (against fear and negative emotions towards the Chinese for instance) is my sincere intention.” This has always been an important quote for me personally.  A reminder that if I can be clear and sincere, to the best of my current ability, I am protected.

This brings to mind another related quote, by Mother Teresa.   She details many ways the world and people may judge and criticize your actions and motivations, making you doubt what you should do.  Her advice is, “do it anyway.” The last line reminds the person of faith, “ You see in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.”

And from another perspective regarding intentional action, there is also Victor Frankl’s famous statement adopted by the mindfulness movement: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Then again, it always comes back to daily life practice really.  Consider what it means for yourself in the next few situations you are navigating; how do I be intentional here? It might be as simple as being present, being connected to what you are doing, nothing special yet fully experienced.

Or more challenging, what it means when you are upset in some discernable way, wanting “it” to be different than it is right now. How do I be intentional here? It might be as simple as not doing what you usually do.   As the zen saying goes, “where there is awareness, there is wisdom.”

/by Natasha Korshak
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