Yoga Learnings

The book I’ve been reading this week has illuminated the broader world of yoga that I really didn’t know existed. The book is pretty awesome, actually, it’s called “Practical Yoga Psychology” written by Dr Rishi Vivekananda, though I think that’s his yogic name. His Christian name is Brian Thompson and he’s both a physician and a psychiatrist and has spent his professional life integrating the techniques of yoga with Western bodies of knowledge dealing with the mind, body and healing. He’s spent quite a lot of his time between Australia and the US, and I feel like his credentials are trustworthy. His introduction to yoga often refers to Western forms of medicine, psychiatry and science; into areas that most readers probably already have a basic foundation.  

So I'm going to do a bit of a summary to help me remember what I've learned. (Any nieces and nephews not down with the yoga explanation, tune out now!) Here's an overview of the parts that have stood out for me. There are essentially four branches of yoga:

·         Raja yoga

·         Karma yoga

·         Bhakti yoga

·         Jnana yoga 

Raja yoga is about the yamas (self-restraints) and niyamas (personal codes). The yamas are about social interactions:

·         Non-violence

·         Truthfulness

·         Honesty (including not stealing and non-acquisitiveness)

·         Non-possessiveness

·         Continence 

The niyamas are about our inner feelings:

·         Cleanliness

·         Contentment

·         Austerity

·         Self-study

·         Cultivation of faith 

Raja yoga is really different from the physical postures and exercise that I’ve known, and is really more lifestyle recommendations than a “practice” as far as I can tell.  

Karma yoga is a type of yoga that I really identify with, and essentially it’s being of service. It’s described as “dynamic meditation” wherein you take action with meditative awareness. The actions performed are done in selfless service for the benefit of other people and the world more broadly. Service should be performed with a positive attitude and without attachment or expectations and should be directed in a person’s appropriate life direction (which has to do with one’s personality and active chakras). Work should also be done efficiently, with equanimity, without ego, and with all activities surrendered to a higher power.  

Bhakti yoga is a path of devotion that can be performed through nine different methods:

·         Spending time with and reading about wiser and more spiritual people

·         Singing and dancing (to the higher being, of course!)

·         Being mindful of the inherent divinity in the world

·         Serving humanity and the world (so karma yoga is also a part of bhakti yoga)

·         Praying, rituals and offerings

·         Recognizing the divinity in everyone and everything

·         Humility and being a “servant of the divine”

·         Developing a close friendship with the divine and the higher power (I suppose this would be akin to people’s personal relationships with God)

·         Total surrender to being an instrument of the higher power 

Jnana yoga is the yoga of meditative awareness, the yoga of wisdom and self-knowledge. The main principles in this type of yoga are:

·         Non-acceptance and non-belief – so question everything

·         Self-analysis – they give a great example of this, questioning why you might react to something. “Consider the following example:

o   You are experiencing stress and you realize it.

o   Your ‘buttons’ have been pushed – what are they?

o   Which of your desires has been thwarted?

o   Which chakra quality or area of your personality has been rattled – security, pleasure, power, self-esteem, desire for love, social desire?

o   What happened in the past to make you vulnerable in this way? One way to find out is to get into meditation and ask! Just that. When you are ‘inside’, ask the mind and often the answer will come up out of the unconscious and appear on your inner screen.

o   Use the insight to analyze how that experience has, in the past, affected your strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and needs, and how these can now be modified in the light of your new realization about yourself.

• SWAN principle – strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and needs
• Non-attachment and right-understanding
• Awakening of intuition

I haven’t quite finished reading through the jnana yoga section or gotten to the techniques for evolvement just yet—but am looking forward to it.  

A big lesson I got from this book was about the chakras. I’d heard about the chakras before (who hasn’t?) but I’d never read about them and never understood what the fuss was all about. I’m borderline new-agey. I’m open to this stuff, but still skeptical. I’m looking for something to believe in, but will never put all of my stock and faith into a “God” or one, specific, higher power. I think I believe that there’s a greater power in the universe, or an energy that links us all together. But I wouldn’t fully commit to that. I wouldn’t even rely on the Myers-Briggs personality indicator, which, I was told, was characteristic of my personality. Go figure. But there’s something extremely calming and peaceful to yoga that I really like and enjoy. I like that there is a community of people who do yoga together, and I further like that there are these other types of yoga. I read Alain de Botton’s “Religion for Atheists” earlier this year and heavily identified with this search for community, ritual and meaning outside of a religious context. This expanded version of yoga is the most well-rounded and promising sort of path in life I’ve found that links me back into these things. Yes, I am a searcher for meaning in life. Not the meaning in life, exactly, but meaning in the madness.

But let me get back to the chakras really quickly. Here is a description of the seven chakras with their location and the personality aspects of each:

• Mooladhara – located at the floor of the perineum (there’s the perineum again!). Its personality aspects include security, money and material possessions and reproduction.      
• Swadhisthana – located at the sacrum. Its personality aspects include joy, humor, sex and seeking pleasure.
• Manipura chakra – located in the spine behind the belly button. Personality aspects include power, action and self-esteem.
• Anahata chakra – located in the spin behind the heart. Personality aspects include love, compassion, emotions and feelings.
• Vishuddhi chakra – located in the spin behind the throat. Personality aspects include communication and relationships. 
• Ajna chakra – located in the center of the brain between the eyebrows. Personality aspects include intellect, intuition, wisdom, and some higher powers and psychic abilities. 
• Sahasrara – located at the top of the head, and isn’t really a chakra so much as the culmination of the other six. Yoga mainly deals with the other six.  

The book goes on to explain how each person has certain degrees of activity in each chakra that result in our individual personalities and this governs our interaction and reaction with the world and with ourselves. I won’t go into detail about this part, but they also say that most people have a dominant chakra or two. Reading through the descriptions, mine was fairly easy to identify. “One sees relationships, possibilities for giving and receiving love, and opportunities for helping. Because of the compassionate nature of this chakra, the person may also selectively perceive all the suffering around and this can cause them a lot of distress.”  A feeler. People with dominant anahata chakra “are preoccupied with caring and compassion, and they are very concerned with and hurt by evidence of non-caring, either about themselves or others.” “The person with a highly active anahata chakra emotionalizes most aspects of their life.” “The person has a suitable lifestyle outlet for them such as the helping, nurturing or religious professions.” “Observing the needs of others and addressing injustices.” Somewhere it talked about advanced anahata chakra people heading up non-profit and humanitarian organizations. Bingo! I admit, some of this may be similar to horoscopes and fortune cookies;  they will apply in some degree to everyone. But that makes sense since everyone has activity in their different chakras. But what I read about the anahata chakra, the heart chakra, rings true for me. And it recommends that people with this dominant chakra do karma yoga (service) and bhakti yoga (devotional). No wonder I have an obsession with self-help books and volunteering. I thrive in mentoring relationships. Not just thrive, but I feel a hole in my life without them. While I don’t miss church, one of the things I do miss about it is the singing. Everyone singing in unison. The music, the harmony, the  union of a group of people coming together in song. It just feels good. Although I’ve found the chanting here to be somewhat challenging (reading Sanskrit, even in its phonetic English isn’t easy), I’ve also really enjoyed that not only people at the center chant together, but the neighborhood kids as well. And it’s not just singing—it’s actually blessing, praying and sending positive intentions out into the universe. I find that to be an incredibly powerful thing. Even if I don’t know what I’m singing…

Part of me is worried about being that crazy out there lady. And the traveler pants that I now love now will I’m afraid push me further into that category. (They're beautifully colored, ridiculously unattractive, and incredibly comfortable!!)

But. I’m still me. I suppose you could say I’ve somewhat skeptically accepted that yoga is a good path for me to evolve. Whether or not I’ll keep it up regularly has yet to be told, though I’ve looked up and found a number of places in Seattle that I’d like to try. I like this all-round yoga. The chanting. The singing. The postures. The breathing exercises to release energy. The meditation. I adore the yoga nidra, though I’ve got a long ways to go on quieting my mind. And releasing the tension in my eyebrows.  

This has been a good week. And while I won’t say that it’s totally changed my life, I will say that I hope I integrate the things I’ve learned here into my life to make it more well-rounded, peaceful and happy. I hope it helps me in my personal evolution. And it may just have taken me a step forward in finding meaning in life.