finding stability, balance and neutrality

Sutra 4.15; Desikachar translation: "The characteristics of an object appear differently, depending on the different mental state of the observer."

I can relate to this in several different ways :-) For example when me and my sister discus things that happened when we were kids, we often have very different ideas of what happened, we have been in the same situation but our stories couldn't differ more. But I also recognize this in me myself. A situation can appear clearly hopeless in the evening and when I wake up the next day it seems like nothing and no problem at all.

So in asana practice this brings me to observe the mental state, that I'm practicing with, the glasses of the day, just to see through which filter am I experiencing the asana today. But it also means that I need to stay in the here and now. My teachers have from the first day I came into a yoga room, banned the words "I cannot..." and "I will never...". They've told me it's ok to not do an asana or an suggestion today, but leave it here and see what happens tomorrow; tomorrow.

A loved person in my life told me he couldn't enjoy the beauty of Grand Canyon, because his mental state were obscure from having an argument with his girlfriend. I guess that's why so much in yoga is about finding stability, balance and neutrality, so that we can experience the reality and not just our minds stories about reality.

Namasté
Jenni Saunte

clear, clean and free...

Sutra 4.12
"The existence of the past and the future is as real as that of the present. As moments roll into movements which have yet to appear as the future, the quality of knowledge in one's intellect and consciousness is affected." (Iyengar translation)
So the "past and future are woven into the present". This I can relate to. They are real, but they are real now, not at another time. Everything that happens or have happened is here and now as a form of a dormant state.
Iyengar writes that "The understanding of time, releases one from bondage", and when I go along with this suggestion; that past and future only have existence in the now, I'm free to have an other childhood, past experience or future at any given moment. I consider this one expression of ultimate freedom.

Time has both positive and negative effects. It can allow development or acquisition of knowledge to take place, a broadening of the horizon. But intellectually it can be used as a story of being robbed of spiritual knowledge and time can be used to position us into pride (asmita). Emotionally it can create attachments to pleasure and aversion to pain, and instinctively it can bring us a clinging desire to live.
Iyengar writes that this sutra gives us the promise that we can be set free from this and rest in the present and become "clear of head, clean of heart and free from time".

It inspires me to work with the "set a side - prayer" (great reality, let me set aside everything I think I know, so that I may have an open mind and a new experience)and searching for a new experience with an open mind in every asana and every class.
It inspires to explore being new, because in being new, however frustrating this is for the pride-position :-) it's the most clear, clean and free I know right now.
Namasté
Jenni Saunte

into an other dimension

Iyengar translation of sutra 4.11:
"Impressions and desires are bound together by their dependence upon cause and effect. In the absence of the latter, the former ceases to function."

This reminds me of Van Morrison singing "it's not why, why, why - it just is", (yes I've quoted this before, but it's a personally important wording of an experience for me). So when the "why" disappears the effect disappears too!!! This is my experience.
When the story of why I'm being mad/angry/sad/victim... disappears, the state of being ... also disappears. (I can't help all the exclamation marks, this is personal strong spark - propelling forward in a divine direction.)
The stories are ego-stories, built to be limited and thereby destroyed. The new direction that builds within is a divine direction that has no cause and no effect in jenni-words. It just is. As I told you - I've been asked to notice what is and what is not. Well this is one of the "is's" :-)

I know I'm fortunate, because I've been given back to life, from an experience of dying, so I don't have to use my intellect to decide whether there is a greater power or not, that can release me from the chain of cause and effect.
I'm one who can use the path that includes help from God; Desikachar writes "There are many ways, including the help given by God." But he also states that the atheist who cannot use God for help, can find help in the first three chapters of the yoga sutra.

In yoga asana work, I also have stories about why I can or cannot do certain things.
I know that; even though I might not be able to do a specific asana from one day to the other (even if this sometimes happens), I can get set free from the story of "not being able because...". This makes me absolutely present in the moment. When the stories of "why I cannot do a certain thing", lets go, then I can do/act/be at the place I'm really at right now.

Relating to the last weeks sutras, it's about being set free from dualities, or polarities. About moving from "good and bad" into an other dimension of actions that are "pure" or "something else". I find help in a greater power here, I put the judgment over in the hands of great reality, and thereby I'm set free from the judging position. In the yamas and the niyamas, we're asked to do a daily inventory of our conduct and life. I find that this inventory practice brings me into this "other dimension", this is such a paradox! By judging my day, reviewing it, evaluating or inventorying it - all judgment ends.

Namasté
Jenni Saunte

longing for imortality

Both Iyengar and Desikachar gives me a cosmogony, when they unfold their understanding of this sutra. I get to read about a world view that describes how we humans came about and were... put together..

Here is the sutra 4.10, in Iyengar's translation:
"These impressions, memories and desires have existed eternally, as the desire to live is eternal."

Desikachar writes that this eternal desire to live is "what inspires the instinct for self preservation in all of us" . Just like our eternal longing for immortality, so is the memories and our desires eternal.
Since there is something destructive in the urges that are built upon these impressions and memories, I relate to this sutra by my life experience. I have both the destructive and the constructive powers in me. Iyengar writes about how yoga can set us free from oppositions (black and white actions) polarities of pleasure and pain. Hereby we will not be driven by past memories and the fears and desires they lead to and we will get free from experiencing joy and sorrow. Maybe destruction and construction end here, like time ends here?
Ok, I'm gonna let me go there :-) maybe the circle of destruction - construction - or karma, if you want - gets so close that we suddenly cannot see a beginning or an end and suddenly there is no time any longer, the autumns chestnut falling of the tree is the birth of spring.

This is a great meditation, to try to rest in the pause between breathing in and breathing out, to try to find the exact moment where one breath is transformed into the other. Impossible and great meditation.
I also love the meditation to experience breath as a giving and a receiving. As soon as I think I've got it figured out (for example; "inhalation is giving") it turns up side down and into it's opposition.

Ok, this sutra inspires me to search for freedom from being driven by "wants" and "fears" in asana work, to go for neutrality. But it also inspires to work with whatever brings vitality to me and pass this on. Right now it's to work with chest full and abdomen hollow. Rotations and chest openers brings vitality to me, so this is a focal point.

Happy new(?) year :-)
Namasté
Jenni Saunte

to distinguish, see clearly and to be in the now

Desikachar translation: "This clarity makes it possible to distinguish objects even when the distinction is not apparently clear. Apparent similarity should not deter one from the distinct perception of a chosen object."

Iyengar: "By this the yogi is able to distinguish unerringly the differences in similar objects which cannot be distinguished by rank, qualitative signs or position in space." (3.54)

The first thing I have to do - is to remind myself of "what" is this sutra referring to... It referres to last weeks sutra and how we can be set free from our stories about time and get into the clarity of the present moment.

Oh!! I'm having a revelation right now :-) This is why it is so important to share a moment with someone!!! in the moment we are clearly at one with whatever we are experiencing and as soon as the experience is "over" there is only a subjective story of an experience. If I have traveled to a place with someone this experience is alive in the now when we meet afterwards. If I saw a concert with someone the concert is alive in the moment we meet.
Well this sutra gives me some words to why it makes such a big difference to be together - it is in the clarity and authenticity in the here and now.

In my asana work this brings about why it is so vital to go to a teacher and to take classes - to share the experience - and no story about these can replace the direct wordless being together.

In asana and teaching it moves me into working with the "here and now" the wordless experience and the search for clarity.
Letting go of old stories and fear of coming stories.

It fit well (again) since I just borrowed a bunch of books and Cd's on the subject mindfulness. I have only tried a little of this, since every time I try it I can't figure out why this should be something other than yoga. But now I finally decided to educate myself a bit :-)
Namasté
Jenni

Moment and movement...

This feels like a very important and dense sutra.
As I read it, its about being in the present moment and reality.
Desikachars translation: "Samyama on time and its sequence brings about absolute clarity."
Desikachar gives us two definitions: "Clarity is the ability to see distinctly the difference between one object and another and to see each object in its totality without impediments." "Time is relative. It exists only by comparison of one moment with another. A unit of time is.. a representation of change." Change means that one characteristic have been replaced by another. We need to meditate on and integrate the link between time and change.

This is the why and the how of "a daily practice". We need to have a daily practice to be able to study, meditate on and integrate the difference between what changes and what is still. What is undisturbed and what is affected and transient. (new word for me - a good one!)
How to have a daily practice in the present moment is described by Iyengar: "One of the reasons why, as a teacher of asana, I'm so intense, and was in the past even harsh, is that I wanted to give the students one and a half hours of present life in a lesson." I recognize this, both as a teacher and as a student, when the demand and the challenge meet my ability and possibilities I land in the present moment - always in my teaching, and most times when taking classes. (I've only once left a yoga class because it was,,, well bad, and only very few out of hundreds have been boring, and this might just as well have been my state of mind as the teaching..)

I can relate to the description of the "now" as a timeless, changeless and sacred moment; "Moment comes between rising impression and their restraints and vice versa: it is a quiet intervining state, auspicious and pure, and is to be stabilized, prolonged and expanded so that consciousness becomes absolute."
It relates to my experience on meditating on the breath, the point in between inhaling and exhaling, and exhaling and inhaling. Where I start of with the quest to find the exact point in time where we go from one to the other, and by this is given prolonged pauses between the rise of the inhalation and the falling of the exhalation. I also have this amazing experience with meditating on the space between two thoughts. It also relates to the hatha-yoga teacher training I first took, that accentuated every pause between two asanas - gave time to experience the effect of the asana done and the neutrality on the inner palate, to be ready for the next asana.

Iyengar writes that; "Movement is timebound, transient and ever-changing", that movement of mind creates psychological time, and movements of moments creates chronological time (past and future..).
In yoga we are to stay attentive to the moment, not to the movement of moments.
The promise is that this will make it possible for us to stay undisturbed.
We need to stay undisturbed to see what is reality and connect to it.

So for this week - to be in the stillness between movement and stay attentive to the moment and not the movement.
Namasté
Jenni

to understand instead of being understod

Sutra 3.33 “Anything can be understood. With each attempt, fresh and spontaneous understanding arises.”(Desikachar translation and counting, Iyengar 3.34).
I resently took a class where the teacher passed on the word from Iyengar that “as long as we’re trying we haven’t failed”. I guess this makes sense to me. I’ve had some time to follow the guideline of “trial and error” what’s right will always survive, what’s true is still true after any test or tryout. Only the false and … wrong, will vanish or disappear (I love the later).

Godfrey Deveraux repeated to me that the birth of new cells and the new generation of cells, make it so vitally important – this attempt we’re in right now! right here.
To me this connects into this sutra.

This sutra also relates to Saint Francis of Assisi’s prayer; (grant me;) to understand instead of being understood. An authentic position for the “I” maker is to try to understand, it’s ok that it is a “trying” not just “doing” it :-) I’ve had some difficulties about the position as “trying” which ment for me, not to succeed but I’m another place now. Trying is just as true a position, alongside succeeding or doing – trying to understand, is just as fine as understanding. The balance or tension between these two positions is a spark, a transformative power.

Iyengar writes; “As day follows the dawn, impulsive nature is transformed into intuitive thought through which the yogi possesses universal knowledge”
Starting to trust, having an intuition is fantastic, nothing less, and doing this in a fellowship among others on the same path is even better, having a guide to share with; who has gone through the journey is a blessing. I get more real, sharing my experience and I get more connected to My path, My truth and clarity.
My path and truth becomes clearer when I listen to others expressing their truth and path.
When we are in very different worlds I get to reinvest in what’s working for me, free from “agreement” and safety of consensus. I get to play I choose my path as something different and as independent. When I listen to someone who’s having the same path as me, I also become more real and rich (this experience is just more pleasant for my ego ;-)

So this week; attempt and facilitate new understanding. Keep on trying and keep on living it – moving towards and being already there!!!
And experiment in practice, with trusting new intuition.
Namste
Jenni

insight and awareness mmmm

Sutra 3.5 “From mastery of samyama comes the light of awareness and insight.”

Iyengar writes that in samyama “the knower comes closer and closer to the known, merging in it, loses his separateness.” When I take these two ideas together, I get that it is by loosing my distance, my identity, my “separate from” that I get to experience light of awareness and insight.

I relate to “insight” as a eureka-experience, it suddenly makes sense or I suddenly get the bigger picture. It is a deep sensation of contact to a purpose or meaning. It is an awakening, I never worked my way to it, my experience is one of suddenly arriving at this insight-point.

Desikachar writes about how samyama brings comprehension and knowledge. This gives me that insight and awareness is true knowledge and comprehension is in it’s essence insight, not this school-good-girl thing that I, sometimes, have going on :-)

It inspires me to go for awareness and light in my teaching. In my personal practice it awakes my attention to the experience of insight. To be in my every breath and every moment. It awakes my desire to move towards complete awareness.

Love and light
Jenni Saunte

integration

Sutra 3.4 “The three together – dharana, dhyana and Samadhi – constitute integration or samyama.” (Iyengar translation)
Ok, first for me, find out what integration means on a semantic level, Merriam Webster:

Definition of “Integrate”:
1 : to form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole : unite
2 : to find the integral of (as a function or equation)
3 a : to unite with something else b : to incorporate into a larger unit
4 a : to end the segregation of and bring into equal membership in society or an organization b : desegregate

So I’m back at the subject of unite and oneness a unified whole. When I read Desikachar and Iyengar I understand that samyama is a describing concept of what goes on.
I relate to samyama as a description of a process in which dharana (removal of obstacles, concentration), dhyana (staying in focus, meditation) and Samadhi (unification of the seer and the object, absorption) is not always chronologically connected but happens in the now as a movement and a stillness. They happen at once. There is an evolvement but it is more like the breath, expanding and contracting.

Iyengar describes it as a depth, where dharana brings stability in mind, dhyana develops maturity in intelligence and Samadhi acts to diffuse the consciousness. “The intermingling of mind, intelligence and consciousness is samyama of the three.” At the deep level, within the mind, the intelligence and the consciousness is the seer.

(Iyengar also writes that a samyami is a person who subdues her passions and remains motionless. It relates to a theme of abstinence and ahimsa, which is growing in me, so I had to write it in. I think “motionless” was my personal hint/spark/jenniplace)

Somehow this makes my daily practice more steady, I don’t have to have all obstacles removed before I can practice, I don’t have to know where it’s going, I just have to do it and look at the results.
In teaching it reminds me of how we say “observe the state of your mind/thoughts/feelings” not that the student have to be in a certain way to be able to do yoga but just awareness to what is, is a start on this integration.

Namasté
Jenni –who’s cold and fever, gets medicine from Iyengar yoga treatment this now ;-) thanks for Janet MacLeod

Do we dare to say we have had an experience of samadhi?

Sutra 3.3 “[When]… the individual is so involved in the object [of meditation], that nothing except its comprehension is evident. It is as if the individual has lost her own identity. This is complete integration with the object of understanding – Samadhi.” (Desikachar translation)

Samadhi is a word I first met in school. I was told that samadhi is the heaven of Hindu and Buddhist religion. This have somehow stayed with me, even through yoga-teacher-training and studying philosophy at the university. Sure, I got that it was something that you could reach through meditation and that it was a release from the bondage of earth – but here the reference to heaven and my old ideas about a Christian God (which also have changed through the years) took over.

Today it feels like wakening up. Samadhi becomes a whole new landscape where I actually have some experience.

A couple of years ago I had a professor at the university who said that we cannot have any experience without educating our intellect. Without experiencing it as an subject- object relation ( a subject who’s amount of knowledge grew). This is a part of the theory of “lifelong learning” (livslang læring) and “knowledge society” (videns samfundet). This was such a provocation to me and everything I had experienced – so I started to find academically honored theoreticians who have proved her wrong. And all they said is the same as Patanjali stated here 2500 years before!!!!

Anyone who has experienced losing oneself in art/nature/challenge/meditation (both in the creating and the receiving act) has tasted this unification, that Samadhi guides us towards.

My experience with this makes it clear, that there are some situations where intellect and sensation is lost and there is no “I” and no “object”.

This is where Iyengar takes it to the next level.

“For the yogi, however, whose “art” is formless and whose goal has no physical expression like a painting, a book or a symphony, the fragrance of Samadhi penetrates every aspect of her “normal” behaviour, activities and state of being.”

My favourite example is cutting cucumber, becoming aware of the sensation, the rhythm, the beauty and suddenly it makes it self, there is only a now – nothing else matters and it is self-fulfilling.

This is it – Yes. The process and the goal of the process becomes one. Moving towards perfection and being perfect is one – not oppositions but inclusions… hmm lack of words here.

Yoga as unification and the movement towards this unification becomes one – it is already done. Like praying/searching -well aware that everything is already given/found, and knowing that the prayer/search is still right, is still a true position.

This inspires me to go for the unification in class, breath and movement, body, mind and soul, the goal and the process of moving towards it. The limbs and the core. The front and the back. The here and now! It’s essence of change, move towards perfection knowing it’s already here. Open and courage is main focus as well, taking in that I get to teach and inaugurate this new yoga-space. Bring the sunlight in – Gayatri mantra :-) love and light

Namasté
Jenni Saunte

every end is a new beginning...

We are at the end of chapter 2 :-) and I’m at the end, having my last class at my old work-place and at the same time moving into the newborn yoga-space at Yogacentralen.dk
The last sutra 2.55 “Then the senses are mastered” (Desikachar translation), can seem so little, but oh! What a long way to go – to let go of the “needs” and the “must haves”, the “I don’t wanna” and the “it hurts”.
But when it all is done – by the practice of yoga, then this sutra promises us total freedom from being driven by our senses. “The senses cooperate in the chosen enquiry instead of being a cause of distraction.” (Desikachar)
Chapter 2 have brought up the self inventorying, the practice of the body and the breath, the art of living together in society and the cleansing acts to impurities. How to get focused and how to maintain balance.
Now we can move toward “the internal quest of yoga” (Iyengar)

Maybe that’s the walk of the last seven years of teaching… From construction work, in some kind of control trying to build up poses, to go for the nuances, to let go of the control and be of service to the group as a teacher, to discover how impurities –wrong sayings, tensions or disturbance from outside (or my head) – get cleansed, not by me, but by focusing into the practice we are working with –right here right now!
More and more the nuances appear to me, the subtle differences that make a world change.
More and more I get to step into a certainty of teaching, which is evolving through me and to be a god enough teacher is perfect(tak Winnicot). Always improving is true, not a threat, a promise of there is more :-)

Things are changing in so many ways for me, and I can’t control them, I can’t fix them and it’s not about me. It just is. Welcome!

I wish I could tell you that “I” control my senses – this is just not my experience. I do relate to this sutra, as a sadakha (aspirant) I feel that yoga, the power of daily practice and the power of this practice masters my senses. That my senses follow along and I become more whole, more unified.
But I know several yoga-teachers that have the experience that they can master their senses – to this I say: “beautiful!! – good on you!”

Being free is my focus. Every ending is a new beginning is my focus and this is written to you with paint-spots on my fingers – from painting the lovely yoga room, where we can meet and get access to some of this caring, harmonious power of yoga!
Namasté
Jenni Saunte

changes and stillness

2.20
My kids got back today!! I have some trouble thinking about other things :-)
“The seer is pure consciousness. He witnesses nature without being reliant on it.” (Iyengar translation)
I read, my inner seer witness change and have peace with it. My inner seer (feminine Danish form: “seerske”) is always present. The position as detached observer is always a possible position.
Thanks. That’s a relief to know.
Iyengar makes me aware of intelligences as part of the material world, and therefore also changing. Or maybe the other way around? Since intelligence and perception changes it is a part of material world, which is dominated by change.
Desikachar makes me aware of that the seer always perceives through the mind and senses and is coloured by the state of my mind and senses. I guess that it explains why I cannot think about other things, I look so much on the change (kids returning back from ozzy-ground) that there is a bigger identification to the perceiving senses and intelligence than to the firm inner seer :-)
I always find that yoga have a purifying effect, the tea after an yoga-class tastes more, the sounds gets more distinct and colours intensifies. I have the same experience with being connected or with meditation. It takes me to a state where my senses are more tuned… I lack words for that experience, but you’ve all probably tried it.
I’m inspired to go either to search for the steady, firm observer and the changing perceiver in my classes or to go for the purifying effect. Maybe I do both haha
Can there be something unchanging in a dynamic serie of asanas… can change be experienced in a static asana? I already know something still in the midst of changes in life, and I know changes in my opinions, attitudes, experience of a static situation.
Love Jenni

to avoid future pains... back into practice

2.16
“When pains that are yet to come can be and are to be avoided” (Iyengar) through yoga and practice in the here and now.
Let’s try that, devote ourselves to the practice in today, and see if the pains, that are yet to come can be avoided. I love that, as an experiment :-)
I see evidence of this both physically, yoga gives me the smoothest, happiest body ever, and prevents physical illness in so many ways. But I love the consequence for my mind and spirit… If I really dedicate myself into the now, all future problems and pains are gone – immediately. That is my experience of the absorbance of the moment. Sometimes when I go to teach or take a class, I can be filled up with fear or resentments of what will come after class or next day or even the upcoming 90 minutes (I’m too tired or not motivated enough for the class). But as soon as the first asana starts it’s all gone – magic and wonders in my everyday life!
Desikachar writes that it’s through increasing clarity we anticipates, prevents, reduce or accepts painful effects. For me that’s the same as Iyengar writes.
To my teaching it increases my priority of talking about the present moment, and what ever can move us into this precious space. To me personally it confirms that it’s true that pain is to be avoided :-) but there is one way out of all pain (perseverant practice), not one ego-way for each fear/pain. I still love the gayatri mantra – it calls for this clarity that leads to being free.
Namasté
Jenni Saunte