loving yoga principles

loving yoga

gentle ~ spiritual ~ energetic

www.trylovingyoga.com

shelley masar M.S. M.A. C.Y.T

It is my great pleasure to be teaching for my friend, the gifted life coach, Sandra Ahten.
Sandra, ever-creative, came up with “Loving Yoga” to describe the approach she wanted for her clients.

	My favorite teacher* says that Yoga was invented by people who were sitting in meditation for long periods of time. “When you meditate for 8-10 hours you are MOVED to move.” The original Yogis took a break from their silence and intuitively stretched and breathed and balanced.

In addition to meditating, stretching, and balancing, they also chanted, focused on images of the ideal,
and called out to the beings of light who hear and soothe the cries of the world.
If this seems esoteric, let's look at it more simply.

What do YOU have to do to participate in the Yoga experience? First you SHOW UP. To the class. To the mat. Then you let go of the thoughts and obligations of daily life, work, family. You RELAX.
You SURRENDER to the suggestions of the teacher, allowing his or her voice to become your voice. With one ear following the flow of instructions into and out of the postures, you simultaneously witness your own experience. You are FREE to adapt a pose, to slow the pace, to express the poses in your own way. And you will learn more and more about what that means.
As that most-favored Yoga teacher* says, “The point is: Find a way to do the poses so that you LIKE doing them." Together with your teacher you begin to be aware of new things about your body, your energy, your talents, your willingness and resistance.

As you hang in with your teacher, with yourself, you are practicing staying present to the experience.

In so doing you are also practicing compassion by being compassionate with your self.

You do not sneer at yourself when you feel awkward, when you can't hold a balance, when you get confused.

You allow yourself to feel pleasure and progress. You understand when you struggle, or get restless, or bored. You are amazed when something relaxes that you didn’t know was contracted.

I have been a serious student of movement for a very long time now. I went to colleges to study Modern Dance. I went to universities for advanced degrees in Modern Dance. Then I discovered that what I was really interested in was not a performing art at all, but rather the personal practice of a meditative movement experience.
	In the almost 30 years that I’ve been studying Yoga the path has always unfolded and the ancient wisdom presented itself as I become ready and willing to receive it.

There are many branches of Yoga.

And many teachers. As I understand it, Yoga moves us toward becoming more physically at ease while opening to deeper levels of wisdom and compassion. That said the most important moments in a Yoga class are the meditations at the beginning and end and the quiet pauses sprinkled through the heart of the class.

One of my teachers Indian guru tells her:

“Beloved Child, break your heart no longer. Every time you judge yourself you break your own heart.”

That’s loving yoga in a nutshell. It is not about doing the postures perfectly. It is not about getting better at anything. It is all about being more deeply and comfortably exactly as you are.

I hope to see you in class.

Namasté,

Shelley

* Erich Schiffmann. See his book: Moving Into Stillness. Buy his DVD, Yoga for Beginners.
** Amy Weintaub. See her book: Yoga for Depression. Buy her DVD, Yoga to Beat the Blues.

Also recommended: The Spiritual Practices of Rumi by Will Johnson.