Blog

Through yoga and meditation practice, we draw more into resonance with the Self.

As a result, we start our practice feeling one way, gradually drawn more in sympathy with the Self, and end our practice feeling quite different.*

We get the vibe!

*sympathetic resonance

I sit in your classroom, the classroom of the Self, every practice.

I listen to what you say and to how you say it, drawn into the resonance of your voice and your being.

Through the practices, we rise up from our firm or solid foundation, grounded, to align or resonate more with the Self, the formless universal energy.

Through the practices, we become more in resonance with this higher pitch or frequency, and we vibrate more in sympathy with it.

The vibrations of silence resonate with stillness.

Tune yourself to these vibrations… between breaths, between thoughts, between day and night… and night and day….

Slip into this silence.

With the practices, we refresh our posture in so many ways, again and again.

Renewing our spirit, they grace us with resiliency.

The witness is the all-accepting compassion of the inner smile.

There is no measuring up to the witness, because it does not judge.

It is the quiet center we find in yoga poses and meditation that is so refreshing and all-supportive.

It is this sense of the Self that remains with us as our self and everything around it constantly change.

Like the sky is to the clouds, the witness is not attached nor does it feel aversion for the events and emotions of life that come and go.

It is at peace, the witness of it all.

Through meditation and yoga, we come to know this witness and its peace, steady in itself.

When we refresh our posture, and find the balance point and its stillness in the midst of life’s ever-constant vicissitudes, we thankfully come to know this peaceful witness.

We all, at times, get in funks.

Circumstance can and will throw us off.

Yoga and meditation have an amazing ability to help us realign and regain our balance and composure, to resettle and steady us given the tumult of life–

to refresh our posture,

again… and again.

This going out of balance and drawing ourselves back into balance, it’s a process…

ongoing.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras define asana as stable or steady and easeful–a “seat,” as asana originally meant in Sanskrit, suitable for meditation.

This posture helps us align our personal self with the universal Self.

One way to look at yoga is a path to developing and maintaining a steadier and more easeful “posture” in life.

Such a lofty intention, yet such a beneficial one for this mercurial life… steady, stable, and easeful during easy times… during difficult times.

Yoga is the path to such a possibility.

In meditation instructions, we are often told to refresh our posture.

Through breathing, mantra repetition, asana practice, chanting, withdrawal of the senses and meditation, self-study, following precepts that treat the life force (treating people and nature) with love and respect–in short, practicing any and all the limbs of yoga, we can reach for this intention and refresh our posture in life… for the benefit of ourselves…

and for the benefit of all!

In meditation, we are told to refresh our posture whenever we notice it necessary.

All of us who meditate know the tendency to start to slouch and cave in on oneself after prolonged sitting for meditation, no longer in a steady and easeful posture.

In our daily life, as we notice ourselves not steady and easeful, we can consciously do or think something to recenter, to regain more presence to the moment.

Thus, yoga can become a practice off the mat as well as on…

a means of refreshing our posture again and again in this ever-turbulent and mercurial life.

When we slip, we can ask ourselves what can return us to a steady and easeful posture in this situation. This is yoga!