personal practice and starting point

First my weeks celebration - I want to celebrate all Iyengar-yoga-teachers for so consequently pointing out the importance of personal practice!! Thank you - you all seem to agree on this and you bring this message to me from all over the world and it is a beautifull experience.
Oh I'm tired, autumn has really set in - dark cold nights, bicycle lights and warm yoga rooms :-)

I love my 90 days on a chair (after-daily-practice-asanas). My first great experience -after 11 days- comes from kapotasana, I get to be able (even though it's only for a while after the practice) to lift my chest and no part of the movement is brought about from the lower back! tak!


Sutra 3.8 "The state where the mind has no impressions of any sort and nothing is beyond its reach (nirbija samadhi) is more intricate than the state of directing the mind towards an object (samadhi)" (Desikachar translation)
So we are moving in towards a centre. Desikachar writes; "this state is simply transparent". This is a promise to us, that we can get to experience a state with no resistance, where we are completely free from past impressions.

We have heard of it before, in sutra 1.51 it is defined as the highest state of yoga; nirbija samadhi.
Desikachar writes that samyama is only possible at our individual levels. There can be no universal gradation in choosing the direction of the enquiry. I relate to this as being present is the way to go I'm whole including everything in this moment, I don't have to change a thing.

Contacting and working from the now And the "here" which I understand as the specific personal place that each and every one of us have - seems to be utterly important. Last sutra Iyengar used ink on it and this sutra Desikachar writes about it. I hear, see and sense you!

Doing the asana from your own capacity, getting to use the breath in your own tempo, putting the hands and feet in adho mukha svanasana to celebrate and experience the length of your back - not the length of the mat or an idea of "how far apart your hands and feet should be". Right here right now... happyjenni

To me it is a practice of truth - or authenticity; we are not on the same level all of us, and we're not even at the same level at all times,
we bring different capacities at different times to start with. Starting where you are strengthens the contact to reality which is vital to practice.

Iyengar writes that this transparent deep state comes naturally like sleep. "The soul surfaces on its own accord"

This as well is a promise to me. I just meet up in trust. Trusting the process, not forcing it. I cannot force me to fall asleep, but I kind of surrender to it. Iyengar gives me a promise as well as a guideline for good practice.

Namasté

Jenni