Start Slow

Start out slow this year. My plans on growing my Yoga teaching practice is to go slow. To start from the beginning with all of you who wish to join me. One of the things I had come across in my journey from beginning to where I am now is that there often is not a lot of time dedicated to showing people what to do. Most jump right in and don’t even really know why they are doing it. This often makes people feel lost and then they quit. Let’s not quit.

Working out the details feels a bit messy to me at the moment. Starting something brand new can get complicated quickly so I also have to take my time. It’s almost certain that I will come across things that I probably won’t like or understand BUT knowing that shouldn’t make not want to keep moving forward. And it shouldn’t stop you either.

The last few years have been anything but easy for everyone no matter where you live in the world but according to Patanjali in the Yogi Sutras, Yoga is meant to “calm the fluctuations of the mind”. Which is precisely where I started so many years ago. To take it a little bit further, Yoga according to the Upanishads or in what I have read so far, Yoga means “meditation” or to “meditate on god”. It is also known as “unity” which can have several different intentions but the root value of “yoga” is to find oneness with yourself aka your divinity, your god-self.

What is the Self?

According to the Upanishad’s and Vedas, finding oneness with yourself is to become Brahman, in short, it is to recognize your truest self as God, or as Brahman as it is known. To know you Atman, the truest nature of yourself as it is to the nature or truth of substance. In other words, to honor yourself as god is to know the truth of yourself.

In many modern ways of thinking, this idea of self being god (or just a piece of god) is considered narcissistic or vein or in general to mean that a person thinks of themselves as better than others. The truth of this matter is nothing like that. It is meant to say that in the great schism of what we can and can never know about god/brahman/the Universe…, that all things living and non-living have never been separate from Brahman yet somehow people choose to separate themselves from god in exchange for worshiping their truth on the outside instead of within.

Connecting yourself back to your spirit is Unity, this unity comes from meditation, mediation slows the mind enough to see your Ataman, your Atman cannot be seen through the senses and in every case, Brahman is only gleaned through tiny moments where you sense it with another “sense” just enough to know it exist knowing full well that for most of us, nearly every single living being on the planet that ever was and ever will be, will never truly ever touch it UNLESS you turn off your “senses” of matter that makes up your physical being and attain it through a “sense” that you might not know you posses.

Therefore, with all the chatter that goes on in the mind, Yoga through physical discipline is meant to focus your mind and also improve your body. These two work together giving you access to the ‘space between space’ where in that space you catch just a glimpse through your Atman of Brahman. Even just a glimpse of Brahman is enough to know it’s existence in ways that no person sage or otherwise has ever been equipped to fully convey in words or symbol because to see it is a lie, to explain it through your senses is a lie BUT it doesn’t mean we lie because we try. It only means we aren’t capable of telling you exactly what it is because that requires words and labels or is in a language of sorts that we don’t posses so we say it is this and that and not this and not that because that is and is not what it actually is. Easy enough. lol

Join Me

For all that I think I know there is so much more that I do not know and Yoga, even after 20 years still continues to teach me something new. As the saying goes, ‘that’s why it is called practice’. In my view however, don’t practice to be perfect, practice is to continued learning. A master who doesn’t practice is not a master but a student who practices even at the beginning achieves more than the one who decides they are better than practice itself.

I hope to maintain a steady flow of videos through out the year starting with “how to yoga” videos where I cover 2-3 poses (asanas) in each one starting from the very beginning and where most will start out in any practice no matter how advanced a yogi is. The purpose is to follow along and build your foundation from the beginning so that when you are ready, you can truly make the practice your own or join a community and not feel like you don’t know what you are doing.

Keep in mind that all bodies will look a little different because while we are made up of the same “stuff” our forms look different. Also keep in mind that there are several variations to the same asanas so if I say something different from someone else, it doesn’t mean either are wrong, it only means we learned a different way and that is good. Yoga practitioners also come is a variety of shapes and Yoga truly is meant for all bodies. Any body that practices yoga is a yoga body. Don’t let looks close you off to yourself. As we progress together, I will keep building; progressing from tutorials into short sessions into longer full sessions of practice.

My hope is that I can make a difference in your life and how you feel about yourself. That through working on your bodies, your bodies in turn will work on your mind and together you will realize your spirit, your true nature, your Atman and your divinity as a piece of the All, God, Brahman, the Universe, Om, the Spirit… whatever you call it.

Happy New Year.

Namaste,

Sandy

Links to videos are on the top menu under “YouTube”.