Taken by Erica Mueller of Charlie Morris
How to make a yoga pose or posture into a prayer…it’s not hard to do…it’s just that it’s hard to imagine how something so strong can be located right inside of you all the time.
This week I paddled out to an island and found that in the shallows was a perfect place to do yoga. In the full light of the early evening sun, in about 10-15 inches of water I did yoga. This morning I went out into a field under the full sun and sweated heavily and could hear it falling down pitter pattering while I “did yoga”.
“did yoga”
What that means to someone, is where for me…real yoga happens or doesn’t happen. Because what is yoga? When you are “doing” yoga, what do you believe you are doing? Fitness is the number one reason that people begin yoga. I am not knocking that reason. It’s a wonderful reason. My back is broken in 3 places, I have a permanent disability rating from a physician when I first broke it and came close to being paralyzed…fitness and flexibility are great reasons for doing yoga. But that isn’t actually yoga…it is a fitness routine that we call “yoga”. To be most accurate I’d call it just literally what it mostly is-yogic poses, yoga poses. But to me that isn’t yoga at all. It CAN become yoga.
No one created yoga. Just like no one created T’ai Chi. No one invented meditation.
The same movements that people widely practice as yoga can all originate and will originate in a person when the correct flourishing conditions exist. Without any teacher, without a yoga studio, without anyone knowing about it….what we know as “yoga” poses or T’ai Chi movements or meditation will and can happen…even when a person has never seen or been exposed to such movements. But they won’t be poses, or postures. They will be from the literal same wellspring of natural movement that happened to the ones whose ancient movements yogi’s emulate to this very day. How is it possible?
Find out.
As a supplement to your studio or home practice you can find out. It may take a while. No one can show you how exactly. That’s the beauty of it. At the heart of your yoga is a mystery that no one can solve for you. It takes time. It takes knowing yourself and your body. It takes patience and commitment. It honestly may not happen, or it may happen immediately to you. But even one moment of it will surpass any structured yoga session or progression that you have ever experienced. It is like a ray of sunlight just for you.
Step 1-Sit in a setting that is as natural as possible. Outside is ideal. Alone is ideal. No one watching is ideal. Anything to make you aware that it is just you. This moment is just an uncovering and you are the only one invited. Have about 30 minutes set aside. Turn your phone off. If you are outside or even inside…lose the mat, leave it behind if possible. This is you making space and time for mystery to happen.
Step 2-Upon sitting take a moment to rest. Find a position of comfort. It may be laying down, or on your side. Listen to what is around you. Feel every surface of your body and what it is in contact with, including the air flowing around it. Let your eyes close.
Step 3-Ask your body what shape it wants to be in. Wait until you can actually see a shape or an image. Or wait and possibly receive no image at all. It takes patience.
Step 4-If you got in image of a shape or form that you can move into…then move into it as slowly as possible. Every movement matters. Each breath matters. This final part is the most important…remain in the posture until something happens. You will know what it is, when it does.
Step 5- Wait for the next image to arrive if one does…and repeat. Do not concern yourself with what school of yoga a pose may come from, or it’s name or purpose. Do not count breaths. Do not hold the pose if it hurts.
After my spontaneous kundalini awakening I went from someone who loathed yoga and avoided it…mocked it profusely…to receiving constant images of shapes my body wanted to be moving into. After I began listening and moving into the different shapes my yoga practice began spontaneously taking shape and has been ever since, for the last 7 years. I do not know the names of 90% of what positions my body is moving into.
We live in a culture where our orientation to nearly everything sacred to our humanity is learned from the “outside in.” We learn something from someone else that should otherwise be innate, inherent, automatic, inseparable. Thank God for the teachers…right? But there also is the rub. Having a teacher always makes one a student. Sovereignty can’t happen when you consistently elevate someone above you.
And pure yoga is sovereignty.
Fitness yoga needs to be distinguished from YOGA. Simply because fitness yoga is a really effective tool for staying in good physical shape…it isn’t yoga. Someone simply mimicking yogic structures physically doesn’t make them a yogi anymore than eating pizza makes you an Italian. Does it matter? Does the distinction really matter? If you don’t know that you are missing the mark, would you want to know? When you are at the base of the mountain but being told that you are on the summit…would you want to know?
It matters to me because I wish for all beings to be free. And ignorance is the greatest slavery of all. I am also excited though. Because what we have in existence right now is a situation where there is a multitude of people who practice fitness yoga…which means that there is at least a familiarity with yoga and therefore at least the underpinnings of how it is spiritually derived in origin.
It may be the first time that so many have the foundations for sovereignty. A solo practice, teacherless, pictureless, phoneless, non-selfie infused, and hopefully in nature outside…is freedom from fitness yoga. You don’t have to leave the studio or your yoga community behind. Just find the you in your yoga instead of making your body do someone else’s yoga.
Find sovereignty in pure yoga.
