The other day, a student left the yoga class with a smile and a celestial voice, saying to me, "Marina, how wonderful it is to unite Yoga with Tao! It's simply marvelous." Her eyes sparkled and my heart warmed... It's true that ever since I began to unite Yoga with Taoist philosophy in my daily practices, I have fully experienced the benefits of Yoga. The feeling of peace has become familiar, and the world has gradually begun to shine around me.
What does it mean to follow the Taoist philosophy in your Yoga practice? How is it different?
Applying the Taoist vision of the world to Yoga is when you can understand and feel the true essence and teaching of Yoga...
The practice of Yoga becomes more conscious, less pretentious, more attentive to listening to the body, effortless, flowing, understanding the body as a unity.
Studying the Tao Te Ching, the book of the way and virtue written by Lao Tzu more than 2500 years ago, we learn to live in the here and now, fully enjoying this existence. Its study invites us to conscious breathing, meditation and inner work. Thus, it will be easier to explore the other branches of yoga and, above all, to dedicate more time and in a more disciplined way to morning meditation. Yoga is not only the Asanas, the physical part and best known in the West. It is a complete teaching that guides you towards a renewed attitude towards yourself and others. In reality, all the teachings of Patanjali, the philosopher who introduced the Yoga Sutras, the foundation of yogic teaching, resonate perfectly with the Taoist vision.
Tao invites self-discovery, effortless effort, surrendering to everything that happens to us, accepting that one day my body is more flexible and the next less so, celebrating the small achievements and trusting in the constancy of practice so that step by step my body becomes more flexible. The flexibility of the body leads to the flexibility of the mind and the flexibility of the mind to the flexibility of the body.
For me, Tao gives concrete unity to all the pieces that make up Yoga.
Tao helps us to recognize, accept and embrace our emotions, our sadness, our insecurities, our limits. It invites us to enjoy existence as it presents itself, with all its challenges and its beauties.
How? Simply by inhaling and exhaling as the mountains and trees do, with the purity of children who base their actions on the first and only thought, who do not know how to judge or worry. They simply feel. Yoga then, together with Tao, invites us to a mystical experience of body and mind where beliefs and structured mental formations give way to the unexplored, and there we become like the floating dust crossed by sunbeams. Open to all experience.
Thus, the same experience of Yoga becomes a journey towards yourself, fluid in mind and body, life flows through you and you live it fully, without attachment, knowing that each experience can stay for a while and then go. It is the philosophy of the open heart, the free mind and the loose body where movement and breathing are catalysts for all experience. And thus, the Yoga practice lived in this way accompanies you to face life outside the mat.
Enter the posture with full acceptance, in deep perception of your tensions. Be present, abandon all tension accompanying the opening of the body and the flow, and use conscious breathing to release, feel, accept, embrace.
Let the body and mind become one during practice. Tao says, "Nothing in the world is as soft and flexible as water, yet to dissolve the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard, the gentle overcomes the rigid."
Become water then, removing all rigidity... I invite you then to practice Yoga in a new way, drawing inspiration in your practice from the teaching of Tao, thus allowing Yoga to be the catalyst for a deep inner transformation that introduces you to enjoyment and peace.
To explore in depth the union of Tao with Yoga, I invite you to join this summer's retreat:
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