Ahimsa – choosing kindness

Yoga – or at least classical yoga – is built on ten principles – the five yamas and five niyamas that comprise the first and second stages or “limbs” of Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga. The ancient Indian sage, Patanjali, believed that we each need to go through these eight stages in order to reach our ultimate destination – enlightenment.

The yamas are generally thought of as social rules of conduct and the niyamas as personal rules of conduct. Over the following weeks I will explore these ten principles of yoga, offering ways we can develop them in our lives.

The five yamas are qualities we are encouraged to develop to change our behaviour and improve our relationships with others. But they are also ways of relating to ourselves and our ways of thinking about others so that our patterns of thought and attitude are positively altered.

The first yama is AHIMSA. It translates roughly as “non-harmfulness”. It is deeply meaningful that “non-harmfulness” or “kindness” is the very basis of yoga. In fact it’s the first of the basics, the very foundation stone of yoga – yoga being a whole way of living. (more…)

Breath is life

We all know that we can go without food for several weeks; we can go without water for several days, but most of us can’t even go a minute without breathing. So, in a very real sense, breath is life.

If breathing is necessary for life, why are there so many people with respiratory problems? Many people believe that respiratory problems are a natural part of ageing. But they’re not. Many respiratory problems can be alleviated and even reversed simply by breathing correctly.

The importance of breath in yoga is focused on the concept of prana. In Sanskrit, prana is both the body’s energy, and in action, it means to breathe forth. Because breathing is the vehicle by which prana is transported around the body, it becomes an intergral part of yoga. This is why breathing practices are included in every yoga class.

Let’s start with the basics and look at the physical aspects of breathing. (more…)

Meditation for well-being

Meditation is central to yoga, as it improves the well-being of your body, mind and life.

My favourite Swami told of the time that a neighbour asked her, “You teach exercises, don’t you?” Swami was most indignant and replied, “No, I do not. I teach yoga!!” For though yoga includes movements and postures (the asanas), it certainly doesn’t end there. In fact when I was doing my weekly yoga classes in Brisbane, my ever-patient teacher told us that the asanas make up just a tiny fraction of yoga! I – the “know-it-all” that I was – assumed that the teacher was delusional; after all, everyone knows that yoga IS the postures and putting your body into strange positions!

Well, guess what? It turns out – surprise, surprise – that the teacher was right! Fancy that!

A few weeks, and a few blogs ago, I mentioned Patanjali and his little book, “The Yoga Sutras”, the second verse of which is “Yoga is to calm the fluctuations of the mind”. In our fast-paced world, finding solitude is more precious that gold and diamonds; finding peace of mind can be like finding Heaven.

How many of the West’s health problems stem from stress? (more…)

Why am I doing Yoga, instead of the gym?

A few days ago I went for a late afternoon walk on the beach with my two dogs. As I reached the car-park at the end of our walk, I was drawn over to the grassy area by the voice of a fitness instructor talking to his class. I was interested to see what he was getting his class to do. I gasped as I heard his say, and then repeat, “one hundred squats!!” Now, they weren’t full squats, nor did the crew keep their backs straight, as in yoga squats, but each person was squatting while holding a weight!

I wondered if I could do a hundred of those – or if I’d want to! So that got me thinking – for the zillionth time – about the benefits of yoga compared with other fitness or health regimes. I feel that a hundred of anything is overdoing it! While I know that the gym instructor is emphasising the purposeful reshaping of the body based on muscle production, it is such a different approach to exercising the body than yoga.

This then, is the main difference between ‘gym’ and yoga – the purpose behind the exercise. (more…)

Is it OM or AUM??

This is the symbol ‘OM’, and there are many ways of writing OM, just as there are many ways of writing the letters in the English alphabet – just check out the number of fonts available on your computer! The most common way of pronouncing this mantra is OM, but more correctly, it is AUM. It is both a symbol and a mantra (as I spoke about in a previous blog, mantra is a sound or a collection of sounds that is/are spoken, sung or chanted).

It is made up of A – the waking sound of consciousness
U – the sub-conscious
M – the un-conscious

For this reason, using AUM rather than OM is more accurate, for when you understand the three parts that make up the sound, AUM represents the super-conscious.

As a mantra, AUM is a device which expands, liberates and protects the mind. It helps to free our minds of old patterns and conditioning, so that we can feel the deeper, more subtle parts of us. And when we repeat that mantra, saying it continuously for 3 or 5 or 10 minutes, the mantra becomes a meditation.

Chanting the AUM mantra uses the full range of vocal elements (larynx to lips) that produce sound in any language, so it is seen, therefore, as the essence of the entire range of the sound phenomena. This further explains why “AUM” is more correct than “OM”. (more…)

Yoga Music Morning

The Yoga Music workshop on Saturday was an absolute fun, fabulous and inspiring day! The ever-smiling Sangita helped us all to explore our musical hearts. She took a bunch of absolute beginners – musically-speaking – and after a few hours we were making beautiful, REAL music!

We learnt four chants (songs of just a few lines that are repeated several times), and we learnt to add different drums, rhythms, and then even harmoniums to the mix! The first chant we learnt was arranged by Deva Premal – she added her own music to the ancient words. It is a yogic daily chant sung in Sanskrit, which is the ancient language of India in which the vibration of the word matches the vibration of the object or action that it represents:

Om asato maa sad gamaya
Tamaso maa jyotir gamaya
Mrityor maa amritam gamay

Lead me from the unreal to the real
From darkness to the light
From death to eternal life

Another chant was in a Native American language and praised the sun (Let me be one with the infinite sun…) while the other two were sung in English and were written by the kirtan musician, Peia. (She’s worth looking up on YouTube – her music is absolutely beautiful!). (more…)

The sounds of yoga

As I write, there’s a little bird whistling, or singing, in a nearby tree. That’s all I can hear. At night I can often hear the rush of the waves onto the beach – the contrast of the quiet night with the music of the waves. Many years ago, Simon and Garfunkel sang “The Sounds of Silence”, and they were right – it is the silence that makes the sound audible. In music, it’s the silence between the notes that makes the tune.

Yoga has plenty of silence – which makes the sounds more meaningful.

Whether you are in a quiet yoga class, or you are a part of yoga music, the sounds of yoga are meaningful. (Compare that to a shopping centre: noises everywhere; so many noises that you can barely distinguish one from the others.)

One of the most meaningful sounds in yoga is “OM”. Almost everybody knows of the sound “OM”. Many people scoff, or make fun of the image of a yogi sitting cross-legged and chanting”OM” but they don’t realize the immense importance of “OM”.

“OM” is just a starting point. People who come to Yoga Alive classes know “OM” and “OM Shaanti” as the peace invocation which we chant at the end of every class. I believe that in chanting those at every class, we are bringing the energetic vibrations of peace to each of us who are there, and also sending those peaceful vibrations out into the world (more…)

Yoga Is….

Life
My life
All of life

The word ‘yoga’ comes from the Sanskrit word ‘yuga’ which means ‘yoke’ – as in the yoke that joins two oxen together that have to work together  –  working as one, united. So the word “yoga” means “unite”.

What is being united? Basically everything.

On an individual level, the physical practices (asanas), the breathing practices (pranayama) and the meditation practices unite to bring about another unity: the small, body-bound “I” with the larger, cosmic “I”.  However, I am assured by the enlightened ones, that all the large, cosmic ”I”s are united, and are united with the whole world, the whole cosmos.

So what we’re aiming to achieve through practising, is no small thing. What we’re aiming for is to become aware that we are united with each other and with all of life.

On the micro level, yoga is all of MY life. (more…)