I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • Happiness Prescription

    In Deepak Chopra’s book, “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, he writes;

     

    ”The roots of unhappiness are often invisible. This is especially true of the conditioning that creates toxicity in a person’s life.  The most powerful conditioning exists at a subtle level of the mind.  It begins in the first year of a child’s life, as the infant brain learns how to think, feel and behave from influences in the home.  Conditioning becomes he dominant feature in all of us by the time we are toddlers.

     

    This is when we set lifelong patterns into our brains. Even today you are replaying scenarios you learned when you were two or three.  Consider a small child out with his mother.  He sees a giant lollipop and wants one.  What does he do?  The most common pattern is the following: First he is nice, asking in a cajoling voice if Mommy will buy him a lollipop.  If this tactic doesn’t work, he tries the opposite, acting nasty.  He whines and cries and makes a scene. If this doesn’t work, the next step is to become stubborn and indifferent.  He refuses to pay attention to his mother, who wants him to stop being unhappy and difficult. This is a subtler approach than nice or nasty.  If stubbornness fails, the last scenario is to play the victim- poor me, no one loves me enough to buy me a lollipop.  When the mother finally gives in, her child becomes conditioned, thinking he’s discovered something that ‘works’.

     

    Simple as this emotional cycle might sound, millions of adults continue to act it out, using the same belief that their tactics “work” to get them what they want. The problem with this conditioning is that my manipulating others, you never really get what you want, which is greater love, peace and joy. Because conditioning trains the brain into a false sense of happiness, you are actually manipulating yourself.  You become the kind of person who doesn’t know how to be anything other than nice, nasty, stubborn or a victim.

     

    Conditioning is the subtlest form of toxicity.  You cannot reach true happiness without escaping your mental conditioning.  In our society there’s a wave of interest in leading a life that’s more natural, free of toxic substances.  Purification of every type can be beneficial.  But the secret to detoxifying your body lies more in the mind than anywhere else.  There are seven steps to ridding yourself of toxin at the subtle level.

    1.    Take responsibility for your present response.

    2.    Witness what you are feeling.

    3.    Label your feelings.

    4.    Express what you feel.

    5.    Share what you feel.

    6.    Release the toxic feeling through a ritual

    7.    Celebrate the release and move on.

     

    These seven steps apply whether you are trying to change a toxic emotion, habit, craving, or relationship, because your past conditioning lies at the heart of all of them.

               Deepak

     

     

     

  • Feminine Self

    My 40th yoga session followed right behind a two-hour Oprah interview with 4 sexual predators and a book I was reading called “The Flying Boy” by John Lee.

     

    As I began yoga and on the Standing Head to Knee pose, as I went to pick up my left leg, which is weak and unbendable the thought came to me, “my feminine side was crippled or broken” and tears began to flow.

     

    It was like my body felt relieved that I could acknowledge this.  I felt such compassion for the wounded feminine parts of me as I lovingly stood there on one leg holding my left/feminine side.

     

    This alone would be a huge gift on day 40, but on we go. 

     

    I get to the Balancing Stick pose and as I raise my hands above my head and I begin to breathe, another profound thought comes in, “I am only responsible for love and trust,” and again tears come and a huge lightness to my shoulders.  As I was breathing in I was feeling only being responsible for bringing trust and love to my relationship with my abuser, my father.

     

    I am innocent of being responsible or guilty for the abuse.

     

    I then proceed to hold the pose of Balancing Stick for all but the last one, for on that one, again I was eager to tell you about this, and lost the connection.

     

    Those are two gifts this yoga gave me today, the realization that my feminine side is damaged, but with good reason, and that I am free of carrying the weight of guilt and shame or blame.  My shoulders literally felt lighter yet again.

     

    As I went into the floor Separate Head to Knee, where my left hip usually screams, I told it, “it is okay I understand your hurt,” and I was able to do this without pain, not perfect, not farther, but with ease and more tears. 

     

    It is like I am recognizing the physical manifestations this body has held.

     

    An overwhelming sadness came in knowing that I have lived so long without this side, this softness, this trusting openness, how hard and stiff it has left me, struggling to be stronger, tougher, when what I needed was to be more relaxed and soft. 

     

    Bikram is right, “you have no idea what yoga can do for you, Yoga makes you you.”

     

    As one predator stated, “I killed the person she could have been.”  And he is right.  But they only win if we don’t bring her back!  I intend to return to my full healthy loving trusting feminine self!

     

  • Ultimately you are the one in control.

    In “Reinventing The Body and Resurrecting The Soul, Deepak has a chapter called, In Your Life: Creating Your Own Epiphany.  Here is part of it. It is long but very interesting to read.

     

    “ It’s unfortunate that the word epiphany is limited to a religious context.  People assume that epiphanies are about God and occur only to saints.  An epiphany is really a mini-breakthrough.  One piece of conditioning is shattered.  Instead of being a victim of a rigid belief, you feel released.  What causes such a mini-breakthrough?  You have to shift your attention to the soul, because that is the aspect of yourself that is not conditioned.  The soul represents higher awareness in that sense- it is free from all conditioning.  Or, to put it the most simply, the soul never says no.  Anything is possible.  Whatever can be imagined comes true.  If you can keep your attention on your soul, you will experience an epiphany every day.  Instead of no you will experience unlimited yes.

     

    To get beyond the power of no is crucially important.  No is very convincing.  People reject all kinds of experiences because they believe it’s right to reject.  They oppose because they can’t bring themselves not to.  The spell of no holds them so strongly that little else matters.  Some concrete example will help here, then we will see how each one can be reversed.

     

    Getting past no.

     

    ·     You must break the spell when your mind:

    ·     Tells you that people can’t change

    ·     Keeps you trapped in rigid habits

    ·     Traps the mind in obsessive thoughts

    ·     Creates craving that cannot be appeased

    ·     Puts up fear as a threat if you try to break free

    ·     Forbids you to have certain thoughts

    ·     Makes natural urges seem illicit or dangerous

     

    It takes mini-breakthroughs to get past the power of no because there is so much negativity to overcome in so many areas. But in each area the same principal holds:  to make life easier, you need to stop doing whatever it is your doing. I know this sounds terribly general, but in reality if you were doing the right thing, you would be in contact with your soul already, and your life would be unfolding day by day, on the principal of yes.  So you have to stop what your doing and shake things up. 

    Now let’s look at the specific areas where the power of no needs to be dislodged.

     

    Negative belief #3:  Obsessive thoughts are in control.  Most people don’t think they are obsessive. They identify obsessions with mental disorders, when in fact an obsessive-compulsive disorder is just an extreme variation on a universal condition.  Obsessions are yet another way that the power of no removes your ability to choose.  At any given moment you might obsess about keeping safe, avoiding germs, getting angry in traffic, spending money, disciplining your children, defeating terrorism- the possibilities are endless and ever-changing.  You can’t assume that a thought becomes an obsession only if it’s immoral, wrong or irrational.  One can obsess about things that society approves of and rewards.  We all know people who obsess about winning, or getting back at those who wrong them, or money, or ambition. By definition, an obsessive thought is one that’s stronger than you are.  That’s where the power of no does its damage.

     

    From the soul’s perspective, thinking is an expression of freedom.  The mind isn’t compelled to prefer one thought over another.  Much less is the mind a machine programmed to repeat the same message over and over.  What keeps us trapped in repetition is the belief that “I must think this way.”  Other alternatives are closed off by fear, prejudice, self-interest, and guilt.  To break out of obsessive thinking, you must examine this deeper level where “I must” holds sway.

     

    ·     Don’t struggle against thoughts that keep repeating themselves.

    ·     When people tell you that you keep doing the same thing, believe them.

    ·     Don’t accept that always winning, always being number one, or always doing anything is productive.

    ·     Don’t pride yourself on consistency for consistency sake.

    ·     If you feel trapped by an obsession, ask yourself what  your afraid of.  Repetition is a mask for anxiety.

    ·     Stop rationalizing.  Put your attention on how your thoughts feel, not what they say.

    ·     Be honest about the frustration you feel with have the same idea over and over.

    ·     Don’t defend your prejudices

    ·     Take active steps to reduce stress, which is the major cause of obsessions.  Under stress, the mind keeps repeating the same thing because it isn’t relaxed or open enough to find an alternative.

    ·     Through meditation, seek the level of your mind that isn’t obsessed, that has no fixed ideas.

     

    Negative belief #4 Cravings can never be appeased. 

    When cravings keep returning, they force you either to give in or resist (the futility of this struggle was touch on earlier) The power of no insists that you have no alternative.  Once again, a repetitive pattern imprinted on the brain overrides free choice.  Your craving takes on a life of its own, and if taken to extremes, it becomes an addiction.  The difference has to do with just how limited you become.  Someone who craves chocolate can’t resist eating some, but if addicted, they would eat nothing else.  Even in its milder forms, however, craving can make you feel that you have no other choice.

    From the soul’s perspective, a craving is another example of a shortcut imprinted on the brain.  The person who always eats chocolate has made an implicit choice that chocolate is the best kind of sweet, and therefore, instead of his bothering every time to consider a variety of sweets, he chooses chocolate automatically. But setting your mind on autopilot doesn’t mean that you can’t change it.  The option to reset your reactions always exists.  Under the spell of no, you willingly gave up that option, but anything you give up you can also reclaim.

     

    ·     When a craving arises, don’t make it an either/or choice.

    ·     Instead of either giving in or resisting, do one of the following:  walk away, postpone your choice, find a distraction, pause and watch yourself, or substitute another pleasure.

    ·     Don’t’ think of defeating your craving. Think instead that you are gradually erasing an imprint.

    ·     When you feel discouraged for giving in, be with your feelings instead of pushing them away.

    ·     Realize why appeasing a craving never works: you can never get enough of what you didn’t want in the first place.

    ·     Find out what you really want, whether it’s love, comfort, approval, or security. These are the basic needs that cravings try to substitute for.

    ·     Pursue your real need. If you do, the craving will automatically lose its grip and in time will vanish.

    ·     If for any reason you can turn away from your old craving, seize the moment, even if your craving soon returns.  Every small victory imprints your brain in a new pattern.  Don’t see this as a temporary victory – see it as a sign that you can find the switch that turns your craving off.

     

    Negative Belief #5: Fear keeps you from being free.

    The power of no uses fear as its enforcer.  Like a hired gun, it holds a threat that is merciless and indifferent.  Under the spell of no, the mind finds any and every reason to be afraid.  The simplest things become objects of anxiety.  The most unlikely risks loom as dangers that can befall you at any moment.  When you find yourself in a defensive posture, you have denied yourself the most basic freedom, which is to be safe in the world.  It’s not the external threat that creates this situation.  We project our fixed beliefs onto every situation, so feeling safe or unsafe becomes a personal decision.

     

    From the soul’s perspective, you are always safe.  The universe cherishes your existence.  Nature is designed to uphold your well-being.  If you find yourself under threat, it can be quite realistic to assess the danger and escape it.  But if you are paralyzed by anxiety, the threat becomes inescapable.  Some one with fear of heights, for example, finds it impossible to climb a stepladder.  The danger of falling doesn’t prevent other people from climbing the ladder, because they are free to access that the risks are small.  But a phobia takes away the freedom to access danger realistically; fear acquires absolute power, the power of no.  To get beyond a phobia, you must call its bluff and reassert that you are safe.

    ·     Don’t fight your fears when you are actually afraid.

    ·     When you feel calm and safe, call your fear to mind so that it can be examined.

    ·     Fear is convincing, but that doesn’t make it right.  Make sure you can see this distinction.

    ·     Anxiety tends to obsess about reasons to be afraid, stoking its own fire. Don’t be fooled by repetition.  A situation doesn’t become dangerous just because you keep thinking it is.

    ·     Separate the energy of fear from the content of your experience.  Instead of worrying about the thing that makes you anxious, go directly to the feeling of anxiety and move the energy as you would any other, through physical release, toning, meditation, and other techniques.

    ·     Realize that you are not basically afraid.  Fear is a passing emotion that can be released.

    ·     Know that you have a choice to either hold on to fear or let it go.  If you feel anxious, take immediate steps to let go. Don’t dwell on fear or try to reason with it.

    ·     Avoid blaming yourself.  Fear is universal.  It is felt by the bravest strongest people.  To be afraid doesn’t mean you are weak.  It means you haven’t yet let go.

    ·     Be patient with yourself. Fear and anxiety are the biggest obstacles for everyone. Be thankful and congratulate yourself every time you overcome fear.

    ·     Don’t consider it a defeat if fear returns. The time will soon come when you can sit calmly and move the energy of fear.  Ultimately you are the one in control.

    Deepak Chopra

     

     

  • I realize I am me.

    What I have been marveling at for the past few days, is how time goes by no matter what we are doing, and we use up energy trudging in one direction or another, but depending upon where you are heading, you will get different results.

     

    You all may have discovered this, but for some reason when I made changes to what I did physically, instead of just mentally, the results can’t be denied.

     

    Not only do I feel different, I am beginning to look different.

     

    Doing workouts for mental wellness and to balance your self emotionally inside, doesn’t show up outside.

     

    There are of course subtle differences, which others feel radiating from you, and you feel different, but your body size is the same etc.  There are no before and after pictures to show.

     

    As shocking as it is to find myself so out of shape physically, it is nothing compared to how out of shape mentally and emotionally I was. 

     

    This challenge seems easier to walk, I become prettier as I go, where digging in the mess, it seemed I found aspects of my self that were horrifying and my past behaviors so blatantly dysfunctional.

     

    The term ‘Self-Realization’ always seemed like a sacred term, where one would find them selves equal to the Divine God; smear free without an error or a speck of guilt, standing perfectly perfect, certainly not imperfect.

     

    But to me there are two ways to self realize; one to see yourself behaving badly, and two to see yourself treating yourself kindly.

     

    Own your actions.

     

    My first 46 years were actions that reaped love and approval from my parents, but neglected my self.

     

    Martha Beck would call that living as a Social Self, in her book, “Finding Your Own North Star.”

     

    When I discovered that I was supporting their lives, but not living my own separate life, I then realized I didn’t know my essential self outside of their system.

     

    What I am certain of is this yoga unveils the Essential Self. 

     

    When you lock you knee, you will be able to stand against the ‘social self’ the one that seeks approval and love of others and be strong in voice and action for the Essential Self.

     

    Each day that I bring myself to yoga, I will uncover more of my essential Being.

     

    Who am I? 

    What is my Purpose? 

    What is the reason for my Birth?

     

    It is so exciting to have a life of my own.

    I am who I was born to be!

    I realize I am me.   

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    Day 23

     

  • Seeds For A Better Tomorrow.

    Bikram writes in his book, Bikram Yoga about the ‘Intangibles’ of yoga.

     

    “These are some of the most important ways that yoga acts on the body to create perfect health.  Keep in mind, though, that yoga is not reducible to a quantified number of medical benefits.  Even as yoga makes measurable changes in your muscles, organs, bones and spine, it also is working on what we call the ‘subtle anatomy,’ renewing and reviving you at the cellular level, invisibly taking care of every atom and molecule. There’s an emotional and psychological aspect to the healing process as well – the mind/body connection.  As much as I like describing things in terms of cars, yoga doesn’t just give you a mechanical tune-up.  This is soul-stretching we’re doing, mind-restoring and Spirit-building.  The unquantifiable improvements in your quality of life and your attitude toward life make themselves felt in every cell as well.  When you’re well, they’re well.

     

    One of the yoga’s most miraculous effects is the way it actually increases your energy, rather than depletes it.  After practicing 90 minutes of postures, you’re not dragging and exhausted – you’re raring to go.  Your feet barely touch the ground!  How can this be?  First, you are in tune, so you operate and process fuel more efficiently. You can go further on less gas.  We also believe that through the breathing exercises, you are generating vastly greater amounts of prana, life energy, so naturally you feel more energized.  On a medical level, you are taking in more air, oxygenating all your cells and charging them with energy.

     

    My guru quantified this effect; he taught that one complete Hatha Yoga session infuses the body with enough energy for up to 16 days of health and increased longevity.  Practice again the next day and you gain another 16 days, while using only one.  It’s like putting money in the bank for future use. Put that money in the bank every day, and watch it add up, with interest.”     Bikram Choudhury

     

    That sounds rather impressive and it seems about right, for what it requires of us in those 90 minutes.

     

    This is serious yoga with serious quantifiable results; just learning to grasp the beginning of each pose will result in huge payoffs.  Maybe just arriving on the mat each day is a victory against long held past routines.

     

    It seems like it can go either way, until I am standing ready to take my first yoga breath, I then know I am on the next day’s session.

     

    It is not guaranteed that I will arrive each morning, but I don’t worry or stress about it in between. 

     

    I have intentions of continuing, but you just never know.

     

    My lack of self-trust is showing, my past behaviors out number the good ones.  My endurance to continue being kind to myself has not been a steady pattern in my life.

     

    It seems ‘something’ always comes in and knocks me out of my good intentions.

     

    Each day that I do one more yoga, I am building a history of successes.

     

    Dr. Phil says the biggest predictor of future behavior is past.  I am planting seeds for a better tomorrow. (21 days)  

     

  • The Bond Strengthens

    A little bit of trust is showing, a tad of self-control, and even some owning of determination, I have completed 19 days heading in the direction of reinventing this body into becoming a physically strong and healthy one.

     

    I am just on the beginning curve, just rounded the corner, and I am feeling that I can do this, that IT is possible. I caught a glimpse of my soul in my eyes today; we are taking back this body.

     

    While reading Deepak Chopra, “Reinventing The Body, Resurrecting The Soul,” he states;

     

    “Without a doubt, the body needs reinventing. To have a meaningful life, you have to use your body – you can’t experience anything without one – and so your body should be meaningful, too.  What would give your body its highest meaning, purpose, intelligence, and creativity?  Only the sacred side of our nature. This led me to the phrase, “resurrecting the soul.”  I am hesitant to use religious terms because they are loaded with emotional baggage, but soul is unavoidable.  Ninety percent of people believe they have a soul, and that it gives their lives ultimate meaning.  The soul is divine; it connects us to God.  Insofar as life contains love, truth, and beauty, we look to our soul as the source of those qualities; it’s no accident that a perfect love is called a soul mate.

     

    There is constant feedback between the soul and body. We invented the separation between the two, and then came to believe that separation was real.

     

    You may object that you’ve never felt ecstatic or sensed the presence of God.  This simply reflects our narrow conception of soul, confining it to religion.  If you look into the wisdom of traditions of every culture, you will find that the soul has other meanings.  It is the source of life, the spark that animates dead matter.  It creates the mind and emotions.  In other words, the soul is the very foundation of experience. It serves as the channel for creation as it unfolds in every second.  What makes these lofty ideas important is that every thing the soul does is translated into a process in the body.  You literally cannot have a body without the soul.  This is the forgotten miracle.  Each of us is a soul made flesh.”   Deepak

     

    I love the line, “You literally cannot have a body without the Soul.”  Yet for so long I wasn’t aware of my soul, or that my soul had a life that was separated from that of my parents, their beliefs and life patterns. 

     

    Bikram and Deepak are in agreement, that the body runs the best when the Soul is in the driver’s seat, when the mind takes a backseat.

     

    My Spirit is tentative at the wheel; unsure and wondering, having rode so long silently in the back.

     

    Who knows where we will go, what we will do, what experiences are yet for me to experience, but how awesome to be with this delightful driver!

     

    “Life is meant to be a complete experience.  People keep struggling with problems both physical and mental, never suspecting the root cause:  that the bond between body and soul has been severed. I wrote this book in the hope of restoring that bond.  I’m as eager and optimistic as the first day I used my scalpel to uncover the mysteries waiting under the skin, only now my optimism extends to the spirit as well.  The world needs healing.  To the extent that you wake up your soul, humankind is waking up the world’s soul.  It may yet happen that a wave of healing will sweep over us, a small wave at first, but one that could swell beyond all expectations in a single generation.”  Deepak

     

    I am feeling the tentative hold of my soul and body connecting.  Each time I do yoga, the bond strengthens.

     

  • Yoga Is On Your Side!

    Mastering the Mind.  By Bikram Choudhury in his book, “Bikram Yoga”

     

    You will also require the will to insist on going- even when people are telling you you’re stupid to do so – and the discipline to make yourself try over and over again, to never give up no matter what the obstacles, until you reach your goal.  You need both mental toughness and physical toughness.  In all there are five qualities of mind that you have to instill; faith, self-control, determination, concentration and patience.  Like the eight forms of yoga, they operate interdependently and simultaneously.  The good news is that you’re already learning them.  As you continue to improve your body in Bikram Yoga classes, you will also naturally increase all five Raja Yoga powers.  And your mind will be tested and toughened under the duress that only my Torture Chamber and my unrelenting Dialogue can supply.  You will become distraction proof, emotion-proof, mood-proof, attitude-proof yogi, because you have entered into cosmic consciousness.  Here’s how.

     

    First, understand that the mind is at once the most important and the most complicated subject in human life.  With a foundation of mental strength, you can truly accomplish anything.

     

    Without control of mind, you can do nothing.  You have something, but you don’t know how to use it.  The greatest challenge we face as human beings is controlling and properly using our own minds.

     

    The mind is the communications system between the physical body and the Soul or Spirit; its primary responsibilities are to control the body and supply the Spirit with immediate and exact information.  When the mind instead gives distracted and wrong information, the Spirit cannot govern properly – in fact, it cannot assume control at all.  The ego-driven mind has had to rule for itself, and now it does not want to give up its ultimate authority over your life.  This is a bitter, perverse fact about human beings, but it is the truth.

     

    Without proper training, the mind will continue to give you the wrong information and divert your focus from your Spiritual goals.  The way it does that so successfully is with fear and desire – its primary weapons.  Like a drug dealer, the mind gets addicted to these two opposite but conjoined emotions, and when we are constantly reacting to our attractions and aversions to people, things and situations, we can’t see what really is and reopen the channels of our true Self, the Spirit.  That’s why I say that the mind has become our worst enemy.

     

    To overcome this will not be easy. The weak mind is ever growing, constantly feeding on your fears and negative habits.  And as my Guru taught me, the natural human attraction to something negative is NINE TIMES more powerful than our gravitational pull to toward the positive– another inconvenient fact.

     

    In the philosophy of yoga, we say there are five big negative behaviors, or Don’ts, which collectively are call Yama (in Sanskrit).  They are: harming or injuring others; stealing; lying; possessiveness or greed; and neglecting or rejecting the Divine.  The five Do’s, or Niyama, are keeping the body and mind pure; self discipline; training the senses; studying the Divine; and surrendering to it.  Now think of our own life:  Why are you so often drawn to the Yama, things you know are bad for you?  Why is it so hard to resist them, to get off your fat, lazy butt and go to yoga class?  The power of negative attraction.  Negative attitudes and emotions are like black holes in space, so powerful that they swallow everything that passes in front of their mouths, so even light cannot escape.

     

    Resisting them demands much mental strength and supreme control.  By regularly practicing Hatha Yoga and developing your faith, self-control, determination, concentration, and patience, you can break those powerful distractions…..”  Bikram Choudhury

     

    If you take nothing else from this section, know that each time you are about to change an old negative habit you are going against something 9 times stronger than the positive change you are making.

     

    I know this is true, coming from where I have walked; it literally felt like I was going up against an army of negative voices, to one solitary positive force. 

     

    But little by little you find your faith in your Self and your Spirit is walking with you cheering on each time you wrestle another choice from the mind.  It is once again the two choices, mind or you.

     

    Yoga is on your side.

     

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  • It Will Respond In Kind.

    Below is an interesting view of your awareness and your body, perhaps this will help us as we continue towards 50 more days of yoga.  Our bodies are our partners, 100%!

     

    (from Reinventing The Body, Resurrecting The Soul)

     

    "Relating to your body calls for the same basic attitudes that go into any intimate relationship.  Tending to them every day keeps the relationship healthy.

     

    Trust

    Consideration

    Honesty

    Mutual cooperation

    Loving appreciation

     

    These are all aspects of awareness. People focus too much on the physical choices that the body presents – whether to take vitamins, how many calories to ingest, how much to exercise. Without awareness these considerations tend to be fairly useless.  Your body knows if you fear it; it rebels at being disciplined like a disobedient child; being ignored makes it grow dull and inert.  The whole purpose of consciously relating to your body is to provide the kind of foundation that is really needed.  After that, you can take any physical measures in the right spirit, and that will bring the best results.

     

    Trust.  Real trust is implicit.  It doesn’t depend on shifting moods.  It doesn’t need to be tested or proven.  Most people only trust their bodies so far. They anticipate a time when the body will bring pain and the distress of aging.  If you are on the lookout for what can go wrong physically, you are relating out of distrust, the opposite of what needs to exist.  So reframe the situation.  Think of the millions of processes that are being carried out perfectly in billions of cells every second.  Compared to that steady, faithful, perfectly coordinated functioning, the few times that the body shows distress are minuscule.  It’s far more realistic to trust your body than mistrust it.  After all, you trust you mind even though it occasionally breaks out in irrational reactions and is susceptible to moods of depression and anxiety.  Your body stands by you without asking for any reward, and its steadiness far exceeds the shifting winds of the mind.

     

    Consideration.  Your body doesn’t demand consideration, but it will reward you amply if you show some.  It’s considerate to walk away from stressful situations.  Stress puts enormous pressure on the body’s coping mechanisms, and that includes the stress of loud noise, congested work environments, excessive physical demands and emotional upset.  You may consider it recreation to run a marathon, for example, but you should consider your body’s viewpoint.  Another basic consideration is rest and regular daily rhythms.  Instead of waiting until you are too tired to go on, provide rest several times a day to your body – all it takes is a few minutes sitting quietly with your eyes closed.  A predictable routine for meals and exercise also shows consideration.  If you are used to irregular habits, it may bore you to adapt new habits, but if you persist for only a week, you will notice a positive response from your body.  It will be more relaxed and at the same time more responsive and energetic.  Even the most minimal effort at exercise, such as getting up from your desk and stretching every couple of hours, injects a bit of personal attention to the body.  Keep in mind that your attention is a basic nutrient that your body needs.

     

    Honesty. In personal relationships, it’s a strain to keep up a false front, and the same is true for relating to your body.  In both cases the falseness usually comes down to self-image.  You look at your body and want it to match your ego’s desire to look good in the eyes of others.  People spend thousands of hours in the gym, not for the sake of the body, but to satisfy an ego-ideal of beauty, vanity, strength, and security, and to fit in with someone else’s expectations. Body image is a huge problem for many people, and classically woman are the most distressed about it.  You can reframe the whole problem by comparing our body to the person you love the most in the world.  Do you really care what that person looks like in the mirror?  Do you denigrate that person for not fitting the image of a supermodel, not being at their ideal weight, not having biceps or big enough breasts?  Does growing older make that person less valuable in your eyes?

       The reason those considerations don’t matter is that you are relating to a person, not to an object that must match an ideal image.  Now think of your body as a person who is just as intimately related to you.  You don’t even have to call this person “me”.  By any name your body has been relating to you as the most faithful of friends, and once you regard it that way, ego image becomes irrelevant.  In short, learn to personify your body, and they you won’t be so tempted to objectify it.

     

    Mutual cooperation.  You can’t expect your body to serve you if you give it nothing to work with.  The body of a middle-aged executive isn’t out to sabotage him when the man decides to shovel a foot of snow from the driveway. But if he has ignored his heart for years, there is a danger in sudden hard exertion, perhaps fatal danger.  The key to the body’s reliability lies in cooperation: only ask for as much as you have given.  Compared with other intimate relationships, your body asks for a fraction of what it is willing to give in return.  This is another area where it helps to personify your body instead of objectifying it. Think of your body as a willing worker who wants only a meager salary, but who cannot survive on nothing.  The salary it asks for is paid in personal attention. If you genuinely want to cooperate with your body, paying it a little attention makes proper diet, exercise and rest easy – you will be providing those things because you want your willing worker to be happily employed.

     

    Loving appreciation.  Your body is going to serve and uphold your interests for a lifetime.  It’s only fair to appreciate it for this service, and if possible to appreciate it with genuine affection.  Most people are far from doing that.  Instead they look on their bodies like old models of cars that will need more repairs and cause more trouble as they wear out.  This causes a serious disconnect.  What they want from life-a future that’s more comfortable and fulfilling-is mismatched to a body that grows more uncomfortable and disappointing. The mismatch isn’t the body’s fault, however; it’s the product of beliefs and assumptions born in the mind.  We all relate to loved ones who grow older, and if we’re lucky, we relate to them better as they age.  Familiarity breeds fondness in this case, and appreciation flows more naturally.

     

    The same should hold true with your body. Being a familiar companion, you can grow fonder of it over time.  The two of you settle in to a shared life, knowing things about each other that no one else can possibly know.  If this sounds like a marriage, that is rightly so.  The highest aim in life is the marriage of mind and soul, and since the body links the two, it deserves to be part of a more perfect union as the years unfold.  This isn’t a fantasy that tries to compensate for the advance of physical aging. It’s a realistic way to approach you own awareness.  If you aim to be more aware, wiser, and more fulfilled in the future, invite you body to join that future as an equal partner.  When the body, mind and soul are matched, the results will be far different from when they are alienated from one another.”

               Deepak Chopra

     

    So, as you head into our studio for your next practice, just remember, you are not alone, but with your closest buddy ever, your body!

     

     

    Imagine the attention, love and appreciation we are putting into our bodies each time we do our yoga. 

     

    It will respond in kind!

     

  • A Soul Full Body.

    I am reading a book called “Reinventing the Body, resurrecting the Soul, by Deepak Chopra.

     

    I gulp it down and then go back and read it again, for what he is saying is so very interesting.

     

    He was speaking of the different Ego Agendas, there were many, and I had flavors of a few, here is one.

     

    Criticism and perfectionism constitute another variation on attacking before someone else attacks you.  In this case, the critic fears being seen as imperfect.  There’s an underlying sense of being wrong or defective. The sense of being never good enough is projected outward: “nothing can be right with you if I’m not right.”  When our ego adopts this agenda, it thinks it’s protecting us from anxiety and humiliation. Perfectionists hold up impossible standards so that nothing can ever be good enough, thereby proving that they are right to feel that they can never be good enough.  There’s obviously an element of anger here as well, since the critic and perfectionist are attacking their victims, much as they always protest that “it isn’t personal.” It’s always personal…..to them.

     

    He goes on after listing all the agendas, “To expand in awareness, you must see past these ego agendas and learn to be honest about your motivations.  There’s a sort of negotiation constantly going on between your ego and your body. When you become aware of what your body is trying to tell you, then your ego can’t keep reinforcing its agenda.  You have physical proof that you are blocking the flow of experience, which should be easy, carefree, and spontaneous.  So when you see yourself falling back on fixed ego strategy, see it for what it is, and stop.  You must catch yourself at the very moment you begin to act self-important, dependent, or overbearing.  Your ego will kick into a prearranged behavior automatically; like muscles, behaviors have memory.  Once you trigger them – even slightly- they jump into action.

     

    Simply by being aware, you can check on your body.  There will always be signs of an underlying emotion.  Feel that emotion; be with it.  Contact allows the physical sensation to dissipate naturally; your discomfort lessens as your body lets go of distorted or stuck energies that you have been holding on to.  Only in this way can you melt away your defenses.  Unless you are aware, change is impossible.  But when you bring awareness to your body, you can start becoming undefended.  Reality starts to be more acceptable as it is, not as you try to force it to be.

     

    Congratulate yourself for being willing to change.  Awareness is capable of overcoming the most restricted boundaries; because every boundary is made of nothing but awareness that has decided to contract instead of expand.  Also, appreciate your body for its honesty.  It has been letting your soul shine through when your mind refused to.  You are making a connection to your body, and each connection, however small, brings you closer to your soul as the level of life where you can reside permanently and with total ease.” Deepak

     

    “…appreciate your body for its honesty.  It has been letting your soul shine through when your mind refused to.”

     

    What I love the most about this body is its honesty. 

     

    The body is only a reflection on what we put our awareness on.  The ego’s agenda or the souls, pick one.

     

    I love the ‘pick one’; it makes it so much easier.

    I pick soul. 

     

    I love how only the soul gets to speak using the body.

     

    My soul always shined through; first it shown with pain and fear, then with joy, love and peace. 

     

    I know that it is capable of shining the worst darkness and the greatest Light.  How incredibly awesome a soul full body!

     

  • Planting health.

    It has been roughly a year since I consciously looked at how what I ate affected me, from what I carved and then how my body felt after I indulged.

     

    This year I am going to see how I behave affects how I feel after, by doing a 60-day yoga challenge.

     

    I want to see what happens if I do the action first and then sit in the land of feeling how it affects me.

     

    Last year I allowed myself to eat as much sweets as I wanted, but the rule was I had to be conscious of the feeling after.  It took about 30 days for me to fully grasp that it wasn’t what I ate, but how I felt after that mattered.  I wanted to be numb, sleepy and shut down, to escape feeling alive. 

     

    It made me aware of the feeling I was looking for, not that the food itself was the addiction.  I then made choices based upon how I wanted to feel. 

     

    To feel awake and alive, I had to eat foods that were whole, to feel numb and a non-participant it was the dead foods.

     

    So I will try for sixty days to be present with this body, to consciously feel what doing yoga each day will do, how it will affect my body, mind and soul, my life.

     

    To see what it feels like to pay attention to the physical body, to be present with it in its present condition.

     

    My knees, hips, elbows and shoulders are stiff and painful.  I am not as fluid and flexible as I was when I did lots of yoga.  The strength in my legs, back and arms are weak and fatigue quickly or cramp.

     

    The size of myself isn’t really an issue for me, I have gotten used to me this size, and so it will be interesting to see if the size gets smaller.

     

    I am eager to set up a space for my conscious bodywork, to breathe, and bring my mind back to my body, for an hour and a half each day.

     

    Thanks to the Oprah Magazine’s January issue for their article on the 60-day Bikram Yoga Challenge. 

     

    How will I feel after 60 days?

     

    What changes will happen inside and outside, emotionally and physically?

     

    I feel empowered to get ahead of the body, to give the body what it needs, instead of waiting for the pain signals. 

     

    To live ahead, like sowing good karma, and planting health.