He tenido el gran placer de conocer a Luis, el director de la ONG Fundación Dharma y Dharma Travel, ayer en el Festival de Yoga 21J. Me parece que hacen unos trabajos muy dignos y importantes en la India, en Vrindavan, el pueblo nativo del Señor Krishna. Organizan viajes a la India, y dan de comer a más de 4000 personas al día. Tienen un temple en Monóvar, cerca de Elda, en la provincia de Alicante, España, donde enseñan el Bhakti Yoga, hacen ceremonias de fuego y honran los días festivos indúes.
El vínculo entre la religión indú y el yoga existe, claramente. Sin embargo, no es necesario tener ningún creencia religiosa para poder prácticar el hatha yoga. Pienso que cuando entramos en el Astanga Yoga – con todos los ocho miembros presentes en nuestra práctica, es ligeramente más difícil separar el yoga del induismo.
Quienes me conocen saben que el mantra es lo mío. He hecho todo una sanación a través del mantra, sobre todo el Gayatri. Pero, claro, cantar mantras sanscritos casi siempre significa nombrar dioses del pantheón Indico. Los mantras bija son menos “religiosos” y se considera que actuan directamante sobre los nadis y los granthis del cuerpo físico (piensate en los meridianos y puntos de acupuntura de la madicina china). Pero, el rítmo de los mantras sanscritos me llama más la atención. O mejor dicho, me ayuda más a orientar la mente en una sola dirección durante un tiempo determinado.
Pero no soy indú.
Hay todo un discurso hoy en día sobre lo que se denomina “cultural appropriation”, en inglés. Es el neo-colonialismo cultural. No sé que pienso de eso. Creo que el futuro de la humanidad reside en mezclar todas nuestras culturas para creer algo pan-humanista. No quiero ofender a nadie cantando unos mantras a Krishna, lo veo inofensivo.
Worrier to warrior
Most of us spend a lot of time worrying. Worry is perhaps the most futile mental activity imaginable. Worrying, sometimes called excessive rumination, is when we sit there turning the same thoughts over in our heads, envisioning all possible outcomes, all possible reasons, abstracting and having imaginary conversations and doing absolutely nothing – NOTHING – about the problem at hand.
No, worrying achieves nothing. Action achieves results. Planning your action is healthy. Worrying is not planning, though. It is worrying. My mother was a champion worrier. I learned from the best and spent many years perfecting my craft. The only thing I can say all this worrying gave me was the concrete and iron-clad desire to change the way my mind worked. To stop worrying. Don’t worry, be happy, y’know?
I had the good fortune to find yoga at the age of 27 and the good sense to keep practising. I was good at the postures from the start. Most ex-gymnasts can do most yoga postures, it’s true. But, despite appearing to practise yoga, I wasn’t really. I was doing “yogâsana” – yoga postures – but my mind was everywhere but on the mat. Shopping lists…things to do…arguments unresolved…oh wait…time to breathe.
Only once I got in touch with my diaphragm and my breath did I develop the ability to be present in my practice. With presence comes concentration and with concentration, meditation. And with meditation, peace. Yes, dear readers. I no longer worry. Would you believe it possible? I would not have, if someone had told me just like that. But, yoga is an experiential science. The sutras say “here is the road, go walk it, see what you find.” No spoon feeding here.
Here’s the magic part. When we stop worrying, we become brave. You see, with inner stillness one finds one’s purpose. And with purpose, one finds one’s personal power. From frailty we grow resilient and we will take on all adversaries. This is not combat mode like in capitalist echelons and hierarchies. This is about your mission. I have this unshakable faith in humanity and my experience is that when people find their purpose, it is very often much more altruistic than anything they had done before. We become a kind of spiritual warrior.
So, worrier (->yoga)->warrior. Wanna join in?
Why heal?
It can seem to be a bit navel-gazing, all this personal healing that we do. Your journey within is completely unique, mysterious and exciting. One can easily get distracted by the phenomena and surprises along the way.
We had the opportunity to examine this question in great depth, this past week. Some 27 students and 7 instructors gathered in Dénia to study the yoga sutras. I am privileged to be amongst that group. We turned over and around sutras 3:1-38, delving into the siddhis that appear when one practises samyama upon different points in the body. This is pretty esoteric stuff, and it is also information that is privy to the study group. But, it suffices to say that
, with the regular yet detached practice of yoga principles (yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara), one develops the capacity to perform dharana, one-pointed concentration on an object. Dharana leads to dhyana, and dhyana to samadhi. The practice of one-pointedness is called samyama. Our relationship with linear time is altered and we become able to understand the past and the future. (3:1-15)
Along the way, as the nervous system becomes purified and the sensibility heightened, whilst preserving detachment from the information sent to the brain by the sense organs, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and seeing, we become more sensitive to other information being subtly transmitted by the person or thing in front of us. This subtle information is unspoken, but it manifests in thought, action, deed and reaction. We find ourselves with the ability to see things that are hidden, or in the past or future. We find our intuition honed and receptive. We may perceive luminosity, sweet tastes and fragrances, murmurs of sound reverberate and are heard. These delights are real and reproducible – as is everything that Patanjali has thus far described. Practice makes perfect balance and union.
But! Beware. Do not identify with these powers. If the ego grabs hold of them, it only becomes stronger. Even the most purified mind, if there are still vrittis of rajas in there, is prone to fall into the trap of identification, exultation and emptiness. If you feel these powers manifesting in you, by all means use them. but use them for the good of man and womankind.
Which brings me to the topic of my post. Why heal? What is the point of all this consciousness-raising? What changes if we are healthier, suppler and more emotionally and mentally balanced? Well, everything.
There is only one way that humankind is going to get itself out of this eco-econo-fear-based decadence and back onto the path of the soul: join together, working for peace and understanding and harmony and an end to war, forever. How do we do this? By understanding, accepting and healing ourselves, we create space in our energetic field for the joys and sorrows of the other. By loving our neighbour as ourselves, by shining our divine light out and letting it meld with the divine light of the other, humankind unites in fraternity and sorority. We heal so that we can love. We love so that we can grow and throw off our shackles. We grow because there is no other way. If you don’t grow, you shrivel.
Heal yourself, heal the world.
The guru is in you.
Article in the Independent – The Busy Man's Guide to Broga
In the ever evolving world of occidental yoga, “broga” is making a thrust for the hairier sex with a longing to loosen up. Yes, those guys who call each other “bro“, probably knocking fists as they do so, are starting to understand why one can’t transition from a youth filled with high-intensity competitive sports like football (both varieties), rugby, hockey etc to a sedentary job behind the screen or the wheel and not find ones legs calling out for respite. Good, I am glad that they are on the lookout. Here is the Independent’s tale of Broga in the UK:
Now, before I look at the article, I will address the name. Broga. BRO-ga. brOOOO-gah. Hmmm. The Urban Dictionary link above definitely casts this term as pejorative. It sounds like a So-cal version of redneck. So, I ask myself, who would have coined the term Broga and then had the balls to actually go out and market it? Apparently, Broga LLC, that’s who. They are Robert Sidoti and Adam O’Neill. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Sidoti says:
People see the name ‘Broga’ and they think it’s just a bunch of idiots. But there’s integrity.’
Later, in what might be seen as a slight contradiction to the term “integrity”, we learn:
“What we want to do is start training more guys, basically cloning Rob and having instructors in other cities who can teach it,’’ O’Neill says…He bristles at the term franchise, but that’s essentially the idea they’re exploring. That way a Broga class in Dallas will be the same as a Broga class in Los Angeles.
Um, yeah. But, anyway, that’s the marketing. I am not going to jump to conclusions, but I don’t know if that many men self-identify as bros, if they’re not. Ya get my drift? And cloning your business partner. Umm, that’s kind of far-fetched, isn’t it? Perhaps the humour doesn’t come across in print.
OK, so back to the article in the Indy.
Let’s start with the instructor. He isn’t a clone of Rob. Maybe their technology has yet to catch up. Instead, he is a fitness guy who “fell into” the “sport” of yoga way back in 2011, after being named a Lululemon ambassador. Yep. Go back and read it again. A more glowing recommendation for a yoga teacher I cannot imagine.
So, you turn up at buff guy’s class and he yanks you into the bridge pose, (“We attempt the assisted wheel…with sweaty-ankle man supporting my shoulders as I rise, and Miller pulling up my hips, I make it.”) which leaves you hurting for two days afterwards (“Two days later, when it aches to type these words”). Sthira-sukha anyone? In YS II-46, Patanjali says:
sthira-sukham-asanam
Which, at the risk of offending any “… physically active man who understands very well the benefits of the downward dog but would sooner cultivate his horribly stiff hamstrings than walk into a room full of girls spouting mystical Sanskrit.”, translates to “asana should possess two qualities: attention and relaxation.” Yeah, that’s dandy Patanjali, but what about the SWEAT???
Did these people miss the point that one moves more deeply into yoga poses, not through muscular force but through muscular relaxation? I guess if you’ve only been practising for two years, you might not have reached a true understanding of this concept that is oh-so-foreign to western mindset. Yoga is an experiential science – follow the formula, observe the results. If you are unsure of your results, repeat the experiment until you are convinced. Proceed.
I really don’t want to trash Broga, or any, er, bro, who decides that yoga might help his hamstrings. And I really do hope that this first brush with yoga will set him on his path. And yes, yoga begins its work on the gross, physical plane, then gradually expands into the subtler planes of the breath, mind and purusha. But, I think that eliminating the philosophical parts of yoga steers us off course. The codes of behaviour, the deep psychology of yoga, it sets us free. I believe that the world needs more kind people, not more worked-out people. But, to keep my mind untroubled, I choose to trust that the Universe is unfolding as it should, and that all that we encounter in our path is there to teach us. I trust that yoga will do its work, yoga entrepreneurs notwithstanding.
Let us yog. The Guru is in you.
Why me? Why not?
When cancer strikes – or strikes again – a most frequent question is “why me?”. Almost universally, we believe that we live our lives well enough to stave off the tumours and lesions and lumps. Perhaps a death-wish 60-a-day smoker might be secretly pleased when the CAT scans show a mass, but most of us just say “why me?”.
My mother had a book lying around the house called “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” I never read it. But, I understood it to be an analysis of tragedy from a Jewish perspective. I saw it mostly when she was dying of brain cancer, but I am sure that she bought it after her bitter divorce. You know, why me?
A client of mine who has been fighting cancer in one form or another for thirteen years gave me a very good answer to this question. I asked her if she asks why me and she said
“No, I usually say: why not?”
Indeed.
Being face to face with the precarity of life, I ponder our relationship to the physical body. When we ask why me?, we are not only asking whether our past actions have brought this suffering to bear upon us. We are also asking why our life is to be snuffed out.
Did anyone give you a guarantee when you were born? Did anyone promise you that you would live 80 healthy years then die peacefully in your sleep? No? I thought not.
But, there is a pervasive belief in our Christian societies that suffering and death are a punishment, yet another, for our sins. I am not a Christian scholar, but was raised Christian and was quite insistent in my beliefs for some years. Like many, I got angry at God. Cruel and callous, presiding over all this suffering, how could this entity be the bringer of peace and the ultimate judge of humanity? I stopped believing in the doctrine I had been taught. I began to search.
My search eventually led me to yoga. Via yoga, I have been able to re-evaluate the core values I was taught in childhood. I do believe that the Kingdom of God is Within You. I believe that yoga gives us the tools to find the Kingdom of God Within Us. I believe that Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are like a spiritual how-to, laid out by a spiritual scientist, telling us to try it ourselves and live the results.
There is a strong thread of anarchy running through all this thought. I have been an anarchist since I first learnt the word. But, anarchy as a political system has to per forza de prefaced by the Human Revolution, in which each member of the collective (society) prepares mind and body for the honourable social responsibility that anarchy supposes. We forgo policing and state-based control when we become fully functional and responsible. Until then, we outsource our moral compass, putting it in the hands of politicians who, by their very nature, are both corrupt and power-hungry.
So, why me? Well, why not? The greatest obstacle to joy and peace is ignorance. Ignorance of our true nature. Patanjali posits that there is an eternal soul within the human being. The soul, Purusha, uses the physical apparatus of the human body in order to observe the world and continue learning. Suffering arises when the Ego identifies with the physical body, imagining it to BE the soul. But the body is not the soul. It is the vehicle. We must care for it because a long life allows us more time for learning. But, we must not identify with it. When we are ignorant of our true nature, we are in a state called avidya. Avidya leads to suffering, dukha. Suffering leads to wrong action, trying to alleviate or escape suffering. This wrong action is called karma. The Law of Karma is avidya->dukha->karma. Ignorance leads to suffering leads to wrong action which then reinforces our ignorance. So repeats the cycle, the much quoted but little understood karma….
Why me? Why not? This body is only a temporary home. It is not your last stop. You will inhabit many more. if it is riddled with cancer and pain, don’t ask why me. Ask, why not. Perhaps your mission in this incarnation is complete? Perhaps your suffering is the teacher you need at this time. Perhaps you will never know why and you must learn to be content in not knowing.
Why me? Why not.
El método y la meta
Ayer, tuve el placer de dar una clase en una Jornada de Bienestar y Salud, en Dénia. Habían unos 20 personas. Entre ellos, algunos novatos, y algunos que ya practican hatha yoga.
Es curioso como los que ya practican yoga piden casi siempre clases y posturas avanzadas. De un lado, lo puedo entender, este deseo de reproducir las posturas tipo espaghettis que nos venden en las revistas de yoga. En un momento dado, yo también tenía muchas ganas de hacer el Escorpión. Incluso, me caí de cabeza intentando bajarme las piernas desde sirshasana (el escorpión no se toma desde sirshasana…pero como era bastante neofita y sin profe, bueno…)
Pero luego, encontré el Viniyoga y, estudiando con asiduidad, llegué a entender que las posturas no son el fin de la práctica del yoga. El fin es tranquilizarnos la mente para encontrar la felicidad.
La posturas forman parte de método del yoga. La paz mental es la meta. Importante no confundir el método por la meta.
En Yoga Sutras Libro II, el sábio Patanjali describe el camino del yoga. Consiste en ocho partes, ó miembros. Las primeras cinco – yama, niyama, âsana, pranayâma y pratyahara – son el método. Es la receta para preparar la mente para la medtación. El sabio cierre el segundo libro con pratyahara, el retiro de los sentidos. Parafraseando, Patanjali dice:
Bueno, alumnos, ahora que, a través de nuestros buen comportamientos hacia los demás y hacía nosotros mismos (yama, niyama), a través de la práctica contínua y al largo plazo de las posturas y respiraciones (âsana, pranayama), habeis llegado al momento para sentaros, retirar vuestra atención del entorno (pratyahara) y contemplar.
Patanjali continua en Yoga Sutras Libro III describiendo el camino del yogi. Ahora, abordamos la contemplación meditativa. Dharana, dhyana, samadhi….concentración, meditación, liberación. Estos tres son la meta del yoga, Tambíen forman parte del camino, pero son realmente los frutos de la práctica. Repito: importante no confundir le método por la meta.
¿Y, de estos que te demandan las posturas avanzadas? Bueno, en el contexto de una clase general y grupal, no las vamos a abordar. Y punto. Iguál en una clase avanzada ó MasterClass se podría trabajar equilibrios avanzados. Con la preparación y actitud adecuadas son perfectamente asequibles.
Pero,¿como una profe puede satisfacer a la necesidad de esa gente de profundizar en su práctica? Porque, en su esencia, cuando te piden posturas avanzadas, lo que realmente te estan pidiendo es profundizar en su práctica. “He llegado a tal punto, me encuentro bien, por donde voy ahora?” Puede ser impaciencia (ojo!). Pero, puede ser la sed de él que busque pidiendo limosna. “Por favor, enseñame el camino que me lleva desde la miseria hacía la paz”, te imploran.
El Viniyoga dispone de muchas herramientas para esa gente. Nosotros los viniyoguis abordamos la respiración con una lucidez y coherencia que no se encuentra en otros lineajes (admito que no conzco de primera mano el método Iyengar. Lo aprecio como un método muy sano y coherente. Igual allí también dan a la respiración la importancia que merezca…). Las técnicas respiratorias son nuestras semillas. Vamos plantando semillas en las cabezas de estos yoguis sedientos. De que colores serán sus flores?
Como profes de Viniyoga, sabemos muy bien poner pautas respiratorias a posturas sencillas, dandolas el enfoque mental completo y absorbiente tán característico de una buena práctica de hatha yoga. Pausas (krama), retenciones (kumbhaka), y ritmos. Bandhas (cierres musculares), mudras (apretones), dristi (la mirada) y bhavana (enfoques mentales). Todas estas cosas aportan una dmiensión energética a la práctica, saciando a la más hambriente mente. Cuando las inquietudes mentales se suavizan, entonces, el alumno está prácticando yoga de verdad. Hemos relizado la meta, empleando las herramientas del método.
Sencillo, ¿no?
The guru is in you. Let us yog.
My personal yog: To thine own Self be true
My personal practice has been suffering of late. Time, but also boredom, has kept me off the mat. Granted, I have been practising a lot of yoga of daily life, being aware, present, joyful, honest and patient. Well, most of the time.
Then I read this article, about how to be an inspiring yoga teacher, in which the author says:
When you give yourself permission to abandon the rules, to listen and truly explore and celebrate your body through the shapes and then share what you discover with your students, the movement becomes medicine. My partner and Laughing Lotus co-founder, Jasmine Tarkeshi, always says that to be a good teacher you’ve got to be a soul scientist. You truly must go into a laboratory and investigate your sacred self through your body, every single day.
Heck yeah! I need to remember that sometimes.
The system I know and teach is called Viniyoga. The central tenet of this system is “the yoga adapts to the person, not the person to the yoga”. It is a system that can be considered the peak of Krishnamacharya’s life’s work and investigation. I believe wholeheartedly in that core message and have iron faith in my teacher, Carmen, and my lineage (Krishnamacharya -> TKV Desikachar -> Claude Maréchal -> Christina S. de Ynestrillas -> Carmen Sánchez Segura). And yet, and yet…lately something hadn’t been quite right.
I embarked on the second phase of my teacher training, the “Post-Formation” last autumn. The format was different than the first part (once every two months, a residential weekend away) but the content built solidly on the earlier teachings. Perhaps a bit too solidly…more sutras? more posture analysis? etc…Boredom has always been my bugbear, so I knew I need not heed that little voice inside saying “something new…something new…go and find something new…”
What was putting me off? Boredom, yes. But more than anything, a distinct lack of joy was bringing the whole tone down. I felt the need to knuckle down for the seminars rather than blossom out. In the meantime, I had enjoyed the wonders of Stretch Therapy and the deep relaxation of Yin Yoga.
I began to doubt…was Viniyoga too limited? Are the postural compensations too often, too indulgent, not challenging enough? Why is it that those who practice Viniyoga seem to do so for a very long time without ever developing the stunning and deep flexibility that other lineages develop? Why do my teachers, who evidently know a lot about yoga and have practised for years not seem to smile, not seem joyful (with the exception of Claude) ? The questions rolled round my head and I found no answers.
The second, then the third seminars dragged on. One of the group dropped out. Doubt, head-scratching, the decision to stay.
Then, I read this article and realised something both simple and profound. Having completed the teacher training, having practised solidly since 1999, I had earned the right to innovate, create, both in my personal practice and in my classes. Of course, I had always done this, I know that I am creative when it comes to sequencing, bhavanas, important details. But, still, I limited myself.
I think I will grant myself a little more leeway from now on, find out how Viniyoga adapts to Rachel, not Rachel to Viniyoga.
I still believe that the training I am pursuing is the highest quality teaching I can receive here and now. It is I who needs to transform. OM. May you find your own path, too. The Guru is in you.
Los 9 obstáculos en el camino del yoga
Musings: who's your intermediary?
I have reason to contemplate the why’s and wherefore’s of my profession. Why did I choose to teach yoga? What do I hope to achieve?
I began my healing journey long. long ago with a single thought: I am not happy where I am. How can I change? At the time I was 18, just going back to high school after a two year hiatus of parties and low-wage jobs and high ideals. Embracing vegetarianism four years earlier with nary an idea of what this might mean for my body (I was much more concerned with ethical eating then), I had gained an enormous amount of weight. Yes, dear readers, a high carb, low protein, low fat diet will make you fat. Or rather, podgy. I was a podgy 175lbs and unhappy about it.
I decided to change and joined the gym – the YMCA to be exact. And I don’t mean once in a while I went to the gym. I went about five days per week, every week, in addition to being a full time student, working in the evenings and moving only on foot and bicycle. I was active and I instigated the change I desired. It took a long time, but I have great faith and even greater willpower. More than anything, I believed myself to be deserving of this attention. I was also scared – my obese father gasping in pain from angina, wired up in the hospital bed after coronary number one, shuffling ever more slowly after heart attack number two, gave me all the motivation I ever needed to try to live a healthy life.
When I “became” a “healer” (masseur), I saw that most of my most faithful clients are the ones most unlike me. Many people who put themselves in the care of alternative health professionals are using this as a substitute for self-care. That’s ok, we’re all on our own journey. But, a part of me could not stop there.
I chose yoga because it is a discipline that demands the student participate fully in her own healing journey. The student is the one who awakens on dark winter mornings to practise. The student is the one who holds the exhale even though fear screams loudly from the depths. The student is the one unafraid to critique himself and his motives, steadily digging out the ego and its tricks. Yoga asks a lot of the student and I chose to teach yoga because I admire those who are willing to take their own lives into their own hands and make the changes necessary. Or, be brave enough to fail doing it.
Yoga as liberation
I see some professionals adopting messianic attitudes. Stick with me and you will be well! This in both allopathic and complimentary medicine. Yoga is the path of liberation. The ultimate goal of the yoga teacher is to make herself redundant. We want to foster a steady home practice, making the student ever freer and more independent. This is why yoga, unlike other disciplines, appeals so much to me, a confirmed libertarian. (I used to be an anarchist, but I like libertarian humanism much more…no violent undertones).
Yoga as liberation makes it dangerous. How so? Well, just as the Vatican objects to the yogic notion that a person can commune with The Divine without the intervention of a priest, some professionals (like physios or doctors or even dare I say it chiropractors) might object to the notion that a person can heal themselves. I don’t actually think that no help is needed. In fact, accepting our common need for interaction and the melding of human energy fields is part of the path of self development. But, the fact that we need human touch doesn’t mean giving up our own healing power.
So, dear souls. Believe in change, be strong enough to pursue it and set yourselves free. Kaivalya.
Musings: The unsung note
I had the great pleasure of returning to the stage this Thursday past. Yes, dear yogis, in my spare time I am a singer-songwriter.
I began this odyssey years ago. In fact, I could say that I have always been a musician. As child I played the oboe, and the recorder. I used to sit there with my tape recorder, registering a harmony to then play the melody on top. Too bad I only had one track! I gave up classical music, as most teens do, only to then buy a red Yamaha bass at the age of 18. I played in a band, and enjoyed mild local success, before shyness and nerves forced me off the stage. Life continued apace. I began writing more and more, diaries, poetry, laments, and soon, songs. It took me 10 years to buy a guitar and another four before I could tune by ear and play with some fluency. At this point, I bought my lovely Taylor 414CE cutaway and began composing the songs that I still play today.
How does this relate to yoga?
Vishuddah chakra and overcoming fear.
Singing is related to the throat (vishuddha) chakra. Mine was most definitely blocked. I used to speak in a whisper and was plagued by the sensation of something in my throat. (In TCM, this is called plum-pit throat and is related to the Liver Qi). I bought a couple of books (Finding Your Voice, Zen Guitar), took a workshop (The Healing Voice with Jill Purce), but, mostly, I just sang. Over and over, through smiles and tears. Overcoming my incredible fear, I took to stage in open mic nights and small gigs in and around London. It was terrifying but I knew it did me good. Still, the fear was being pushed down, not truly overcome. But, I think that in yoga we have to push past our fear, be brave and have great faith, in order to grow. So, that was one phase of my growth.
Control of the diaphragm
Another phase of my work was taking control of my diaphragm muscle. The diaphragm is fundamental to the singer. My yoga teacher gave me a short personalized practice in which I did krama in the exhale. This means, the exhale was broken up into two or more parts, and then the breath retained with the lungs empty. For the first time in my life, I could actually locate my own diaphragm. My colleague Santi, a fantastic osteopath, adjusted my diaphragm and pericardium, loosening the tendons and leaving my breath much freer.
Control of the perineum
By now, my voice was vibrating nicely in my chest and abdomen. It was mellower and sweeter and easier to control. But, still, on the high notes, something was missing. In my ongoing reading – I am voracious, and practically only read on theme – I came across a few lines in The Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by H. David Coulter.
A famous conductor…once shouted…”No! No! Squeeze it in – push it up!” He may not have known it, but he was telling them to seal off and control the anatomical perineum – the base of the pelvis -and thereby cultivate what we have been calling abdominopelvic energy. All trained singers have learned that the purest and richest sound originates from this region. In the language of singers, the base of the body “supports” the voice.
Wa-hey! that’s the secret. On the high notes, all that perineum work I’d been doing in yoga would pay in by holding my voice up in a clean, sweet note. Hallelujah!
Believing in myself
Yoga teaches us that within each and every human being there is a tiny spark of Divinity. We don’t need any mediators when we talk to God because God is within. When we first learn, then internalize this, our faith in ourselves grows and grows and we begin to value ourselves for who we are instead of what we do. Through yoga, I realized that my music, my words, my beliefs and my message are not only valid but beautiful and even Divine. And having that behind me, I take the stage with courage and honesty, and never try to emulate the music or sound of anyone else. This is freedom. And now, the fear is not being suppressed. It is no longer there. I offer it all to God with the simple mantra, Ishvara Pranidanah.
There is karmic cleansing here. My grandfather went down to London in the 1920’s and played his clarinet in the earliest SoHo jazz clubs. From my limited research, there was only a handful of jazz clubs in the UK at that time, so both he and my grandmother – they met on the jazz scene – were well ahead of their time. They married, and moved up to Yorkshire where dreams of jazz music were replaced by granite houses and the family woolens mill. A frustrated musician to the end of his days, Grandsir, as well called him, would get drunk on G&Ts and pull out the clarinet at Christmas, even as his dentures popped from his gums. My mum sang. In the choir, in Gilbert and Sullivan productions, in the singalong Messiah every Ottawa Christmas. My father was the greatest music fan. He wept and danced and collected music. His LP collection filled the basement of a huge Saskatchewan house by the time he died. I come by it in honestly. Music is in my blood. But yoga helped – and helps – me realise it in a sane and safe way.
When our karma (work) and our dharma (lifepath) unite, we find liberation (Kaivalya). Let yoga guide you towards Self-realization. And don’t think for a moment that Self-realization means isolation in an ashram. For some, maybe, but not for everyone. Sri Aurobindo’s contribution to modern yogic thought was the idea that liberation can be found here and now, in daily life, not only when the soul leaves the body. Be happy here and now. Bless y’all.