Sunday, August 31, 2008

Memory letting go and inspiration

Welcome sutra 1.11 I love that you restates that my mental activities are neutral. Here I’m told that memory is a mental activity that retains living (conscious) experience. It can help me progress and it can be an obstacle! I relate to this in my asana work. Remembering how the pose is done can help me get deeper into it, but remembering what I, for example, cannot do, can hold me back from experiencing that I’m new and so are my possibilities today.
I worked with this sutra in my classes in several ways, by giving time to work with the mind, doing a sunsalutation but not actually moving the body, by talking about memory and by letting go. Letting go, is one of the tools for me – to balance the memories that holds me back. So, for me, it’s so many great things to learn from letting go in my yoga work to rub off into my everyday.
It’s a balancing act – again. I love that I just have to try and than… try again :-)as Solomon burke said about his love life at the concert in Malmö ”If practice makes perfection – I’m perfect now!”. I’ve attended some great classes at my colleagues and I get inspired. I decided not to get down on me for getting a bit rigid, but just trying a whole lot of new stuff. Grateful for receiving inspiration! It’s a true position for me.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Deep sleep and heaviness (sutra 1.10)

Well it’s perfect! After some weeks of confusion and unusually bad sleep, I found the releasing ending and the nakedness of a new beginning – and suddenly I can sleep again!
Yoga sutra 1.10 tells me that “deep sleep is when the mind is overcome with heaviness and no other activities are present”. I love that one of the mental activities is a “non activity”!!! That’s my experience, sometimes the most powerful and demanding act is to do nothing. So this is my practice this week (and last week). Sit on my hands and let things go. Watch it pass.
In this “don’t act!”-practice; I find how my daily yoga+fellowship +philosophy +spiritual- acts is carrying me and being my center when everything is unstable and confusing. GratefulJenniSunbeam. I love that that Bouanchaud calls deep sleep a meditative state, in which I’m just not conscious! And that there are people who believe that, when sleeping, we are with our greater power, getting nourished by this power and therefore are so refreshed after a good nights sleep. In my class (only hold one this weekend) I planed to take time to do a yoga-nidra, but since it was even longer time since we made a pranavidya, we did that. It affected me to use words like “bring wholeness”, “bring harmony”, “bring heaviness” and “release any blockages”. Grateful for my work! My personal attention, every night for some time, has been on; what am I letting go, into the stream of life today?

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Fantasy, creativity, sutra 1.9 and stones :-)

Last weekend I had several different focuses. On Saturday I told a friend to tell me what to dedicate my class to, and he wanted it to be about stones. Their quality of wanting to get grounded (get down) and stability and peace. I found that my students are the stones on top of the mountains and I’m the one helping gravity to get its way. It was a gift to me to work with, since my relations seems to be filled up with confused persons, several of them :-) so I get to be the stable stone to balance out the confusion. What a gift.
I also had access to a car for years, this arrangement have been changed lately, I was very concerned when it happened- I thought about my girls and how to get out of this big city… But it turns out that asking if I can borrow the car gives me the gift of feeling gratitude and him the gift of feeling generous (my guessing) gratitude is a great, true place to be.
Yoga sutra 1.9 tells me that; imagination is the comprehension of an object based only on words and expressions, even though the object is absent. Well the text asks me to consider how imagination/fantasy unfolds in my life – I loved that! I’m so rich in this area, there are soo many ways, and today my mind is set free from the idea that creativity has to be connected to some form of art! I mean fx; I’m creative hanging up the laundry in a beautiful way, I’m creative arranging my home, and in solving problems. This sutra restates that the mental activity (here imagination) isn’t in itself good or bad, just an activity. In my life creativity is a gift, it’s a flow. So I worked with flow and on Monday I also tried to work and play with the concept in the relaxation, but it wasn’t all good… So flow and connection and letting go and explore what happens was good experiences for me. And it was great to take out some time and review my daily life for the unfolding of creativity in my life. Tak.
Namasté
Jenni Saunte