The Jade Roller

I love jade as a stone. I think that the combination of jade and yellow gold is very *art deco*. Not only Jade is a beautiful semi-precious stone, it also has got healing properties. Jade roller (regularly used by my acupuncturist) feels like oil on the face without being greasy or pore blocking as many oils out there. It is also refreshing, smoothing and improves facial circulation. I really recommend it for a natural, non-surgical facial lift. 

A Yogic Union

I am here with an impromptu post as I have just learnt that Victor & Angela got married! What a marvellous news! I studied a workshop with them last year and they inspired me so much that I decided to apply for the teaching training. Since then there is no class I take without applying Angela's non-teaching: feel the connection with the earth and the centre of the earth and listen to the inner movements and shift happening at a deep level. She is such a cool yogini and woman. It is exactly how I would like to look and be at her age. I think she is so organically beautiful and radiant. He is also very charismatic and charming. It is with him that I did handstand for the first time in my life. I hope to have the pleasure to study with them again, ideally in their Greek retreat. Here a few photos in all their splendour.

On the Subject of Desire

Photo by Nan Goldin

What is the nature of seeking? It is wanting to feel good. Good feelings are pleasures. Becoming aware of how this mechanism works can help create a shift in consciousness that will make your relationship to pleasure more realistic as you become aware of the potential consequences on you, the environment and the world.

Desire can encompass diverse needs, from sensual or aesthetic experiences to more cerebral satisfactions. The feelings can be increased or diminished by thinking about them, but they quickly fade into memory. This is the reason why we seek more and greater pleasures. Desire is endless. And even if realised, the desire might not bring the expected enjoyment. We are pretty bad at predicting what will make us feel good.

But desire fosters change and prevents stasis. It is an essential drive of evolution. Dissatisfaction fuels pleasure seeking. So desire can bring the motivation for change and the pleasure of anticipation.

The problem with desire is not that you desire, but what you desire and how desire can be manipulated.

Although it is healthy to prefer pleasure to pain, the latter plays also an important role. Life is change, and one changes either by growing or by becoming more rigid. Real growth involves periods of confusion, discomfort, pain and even suffering before a new direction evolves.

In seeking, you seek the known: experiences we remember, have heard about or imagine as pleasurable. You can only seek the repetition of the old. However, there is the potential for sorrow in repeating familiar pleasures as in seeking the known and dwelling on a past feeling you remove yourself from the potential that the living moment holds for you, and you end up feeling inadequate as you are unable to engage with life in the moment, which is where joy, communion, love and creativity lie.

Beliefs bring you security and certainty. Every time I cling to beliefs that make me feel superior, I negate life as I cut myself off from any real connection that you and I might have.

Desire of be desire-less is but another desire.  Letting go of unrealisable desires can make you feel better and can be useful to free yourself from old programming. The risk is removing yourself from the creative momentum of life. 

It a constant conflict: if I try to get out of it, the trying itself puts me back in. So what to do? In the moment you become aware on how this whole process works, you could try to step out of the conditioned habits that pleasure and desire can generate and come into contact with their nature, without judgment... I have heard that when something reaches your awareness, it will never stay the same... Sooner or later change will happen... Slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, but it will...

The Passionate Mind: Expanding Personal and Social Awareness by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad

Yoga Methodologies

Today we look at the various methodologies of early yoga traditions and we answer the question "how", "how can enlightenment be attained". 

All forms of yoga adopt meditation as their primary technique to attain a higher awareness, a state beyond disturbance, but each school places a different emphasis upon it, which is prompted by a different weltanschauung.

Buddhists and Jainists agree that life is ultimately a source of pain and sorrow. Suffering arises from the frustrated desire (tŗşņa) to keep a comfortable life. The only way to liberate the self from the eternal cycle of birth, death (= suffering), rebirth (samsara) is to stop creating karma. Jainists practice self control, renunciation, discipline and observance as a means to reduce karma to a minimum (the less you do the less you create). This requires a great deal of inner strength and concentration which builds up heat (tapas), which, in turns, enlightens the soul. The Buddhists’ approach is more moderate. They believe extreme renunciation is a threat to the body's wellbeing and therefore an obstacle to spiritual development. Right understanding, intention, ethical action (i.e. positive karma) and meditation (samadi) become the values of the Buddhist *middle way*. Without turning their back on society, Buddhists use meditation as their prime ascetic practice to achieve nirvana, the extinction of all phenomena. 

Karma yogis arrive at a new awareness: they appreciate that there is nothing wrong with actions per se and that the problem is in the ego becoming the main matrix. Thus, if an action is egoless, it can still lead to enlightenment as it does not produce karma. Karma yogis introduce a social dimension to the yoga practice. Bhakti yogis identify a divine quality in all things. If god is everything, then everything is god, human beings included. Through meditation based on love and devotion to god, Bhakti yogis get closer to their own divine essence and thus to god.

Unlike its predecessors, Tantric philosophy is integrative: for the first time, all social classes are welcome and, although it is still a male-dominated environment, women make their appearance. The Tantric tradition inherits the Bhakti’s worldview whereby the universe is regarded as the divine play of god. Liberation is therefore possible alongside social involvement. The accent is shifted from the action to the experience: it is not important what you do or what you have, the key is how you deal with the various aspects of life including the material aspects. If you behave ethically without harming others, you can still reach transcendence through *expansion*. Three branches of yoga arise within the Tantric tradition: Laya, Mantra and Kundalini Yoga (precursor of modern Hatha yoga). 

In Laya, the ego expands through dissolution into the universe, thus entering into a blissful dimension. Mantra yogis use chant’s vibrations to achieve a higher state of deep concentration at which the divine form becomes manifest. In Kundalini, metaphysics made an important discovery: the potential lies in our body, made of matter and subtle energy. The serpent’s vital energy (kundalini-shakti) is latent in us and needs to be awakened. The body should therefore be respected and nurtured as it is the tool for self-transcendence. Āsanas, bandhas, prāņāyāma, meditation and mantras are the various techniques deployed by modern yogis to stimulate the vital energy, whose movements affect our mind and expand our consciousness.

The Origins of Yoga

I continue my mini-lectures on the philosophy of yoga as I learn it myself with an overview on the origins of yoga. The question is how old is yoga and how does it evolve?

The origins of yoga can be traced through the sacred Hindu scriptures. 

In the Upanishads, texts belonging to the late Vedas and composed around 800 BCE, life is perceived as an arena of suffering and grief, and this notion is exacerbated by the process of samsara (eternal cycle of reincarnation) through karma. The goal is to be “freed alike from pleasure and from pain” through the practice of self-control, renunciation of worldly desires and meditation. This latter is defined as a process of separation and discernment. “This calm of the senses and the mind has been defined as yoga”. See my Yoga Methodology post, to understand how freedom is achieved.

Śramanas, wandering sages of Jainist, Buddhist and Ājīvika religions (the latter now extinct), adopt the path of austerity, discipline and contemplative life to achieve liberation while renouncing household life. 

Jnana yoga (yoga of knowledge and discernment), Karma yoga (yoga of selfless action) and Bhakti yoga (yoga of devotion through love), unlike the above-mentioned ascetic practices, share a degree of social involvement. The Bhagavad Gītā, the equivalent of the New Testament for Christians, dated around 3^rd century BCE, chronicles these concepts of selfless action, love and devotion.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is a systematic compendium of the study and practice of yoga written in the 2^nd century BCE. Patanjali does not really add anything new to the ontological research, but his merit lies in the compilation of an accessible and organised teaching system, which inherits the same meditative approach to enlightenment and worldview of its predecessors, with an emphasis on renunciation. In chapter 2 (Yogash Chitta Vritti Nirodhah), Patanjali defines yoga through elimination: when we separate from our mind, the mind becomes self-aware, and we become pure consciousness. 

A straight line of continuity can be detected from the Śramana/Upanishads to the Jnana and Sutras philosophies. The Bhakti and Karma traditions, as narrated in the Bhagavad Gītā, undertake a different path: the path of extroversion (pravrtti), which will be further deepened by the Tantric tradition (from the 9^th century onwards). Mind is divine consciousness, and desire is no longer a devilish temptation or a waste of energies. Transcendence is possible without renunciation.

Is Yoga a Religion?

Because this is how I spend most of my free time, when I am not working or blogging, I thought I would share an edited version of my contemplations on the philosophy of yoga. After all, yoga is a life style and one that can radically change your outlook to life. I very often get questions like "is yoga a religion?" or "what is the difference between yoga and a religion?". So, here a succinct attempt to answer this question. 

The various yoga traditions share the same ontological concern that preoccupies religion: the transcendence of the limited human experience and the attainment of immortality. Yoga however, unlike organised religions, does not require an  aprioristic faith and does not label a non-believer a sinner or a non-dogmatic a heretic. In yoga, the practitioner is invited to undertake a spiritual path with an open heart and inquisitive mind, which may lead to the discovery of faith and devotion through personal experience. So, you can be a yogi and a Christian, a yogi and a Muslim, a yogi and a Hindu or even a yogi and an atheist as it doesn't matter what name you give to god, or if you believe in one to start with.

Photo from Kizie Blog