How to reach a sense of Union and stillness in everyday yoga practices.
Daily Yoga practices can really make a difference in our attitude towards the world, situations, and surroundings and towards ourselves. It can really transform old patterns we are trapped in, into other possibilities guided by open heart, freedom, and joy. Through the practice of the asanas (or postures) we are able to unlock tensions accumulated in our body. And what a tension is? A tension is an energetic blockage into our physical and energetic body. Something is not allowing our energy to circulate and flow freely. Stagnation of energy if unlistened and unobserved can generate important physical and mental issues that then it is harder to recover from.
By releasing the tension with the body movement of a yoga posture guided by the breath and our full presence, we are able to stimulate our senses. We then become more present, more adaptive, more sensitive and we are able to let go.
Very often an energy blockage comes from a trapped emotion…if we release the tension, we let go of the emotion. We get our freedom back!
What we immediate reach through constant yoga practices is a sense of peace of the mind. We feel more adaptive to changes, we are more flexible. Many time what impede us to enjoy life is the resistance to changes, is trying to have things and situations happening the way we want or think. That things shall happen this or that way or have this or that result we have in our mind. That is made by our believes, culture, studies, experiences, life context.
But if for a moment I ask to myself: ‘who am I to be able to decide that?’ It sounds a bit arrogant, doesn’t it? If situations arrive or things go differently from the way we thought, is probably because there is another order behind, a higher awareness and knowledge. Was there planned an experience for us to learn something? How do we accept this way of thinking? How do we surrender to life that unveils in front of us every single day?
Yoga can help us in getting in union with ourselves, with the Devine and this bigger Plan made for us. And to get in union with the others. Separation is the big dilemma of our existence. And everything, starting from the Society we are living in, is trying to lead us to more and more isolation. Separation create sufferance in ourselves and the others. It creates difficult relationships with our dearest, with friends, colleagues, persons we just cross in the streets, the offices, the shops…
Slowing down each day to a more natural rhythm of life, dedicating a time and space to ourselves with the yoga practice, allow us to face situations with more calm, to see things how they really are, not blurred by emotions or thoughts of a past that is gone and a future that is not there yet.
And through conscious breathing, the observation of our breath, we tune to the cyclic nature of our breath. We are not accelerated anymore; we let the breath and oxygen reach every single corner of our body. We inhale, we open up to new experiences, we exhale we release what we do not need anymore: our fatigue, sorrows, worries, frustration, incomprehension…
And we learn a fundamental aspect. That in between inhalation and exhalation, in between this arising and dissolving, there are pauses in which we can rest. In between ups and downs there is a stillness that is the background of all events. And if the ups and downs do not move too much away from stillness then I will keep my focus and center and I’ll feel home, in the freedom from emotions and conflicts, in the flowing of life, accepting, receiving, adapting, enjoying each one of the aspects of what unfolds in front of me.