Immersed

We often fall into delusions and fantasies, preconceptions about what the practice is all about. What we expect from all of it, what is going to be delivered to us, the qualities and the abilities we acquire from it, projections about how the practice will deliberate us from the mind, anxiety, depression and fears.

We think that when we practice mechanically, we are going to have a resilient, positive, creative mind and we are going to be able to tune into the world.

That our lives are going to be more abundant and richer.

Of course the practice can really help. Indeed it can be an amazing tool to deal with our addictive thoughts and habits. This practice has been sold in many ways, as a tool that can solve all of your problems, and if you do it with discipline and devotion, liberation will follow.

So, we practice for years and all of a sudden we realise that every fear, aggression, limitation is still there; for years, it might have been hidden by the excitement, or even changed forms. And then, we start looking for something else to distract us from our minds, to keep our heads above the water.

Because we didn’t even realise that spending all those years practicing and throwing ourselves to a physical addiction, we never tried to be in the state of full presence; in a meditate state, a state of being. No practice, no sequence, no ritual will deliver us to that space, to the state of being where there is no desire, no sense of resisting, to a place where you can draw yourself into and release.

The promise of yoga is extraordinarily beyond what the mind can think. Things appear to you in an unexpected way.

It is not about the physical experiences that you take, but rather an art of nurturing where you can hold, unfold, open yourself- a place where you can be fully transformed. Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is a practice where you can ground yourself through deep breathing. But if you are not tuned in that, then it turns out that every time you are throwing yourself to the edge.

Through presence and awareness, through our meditative state of mind we can actually embody the bliss of what yoga is. To fully accept our feelings, to let everything arise just as it is, to see that anything that comes up is part of our being, is having an adult mind, feeling beneath and moving through.

You allow your emotions to rise, to unfold, to be, to immerse and then to dissolve.

Feel the sorrow, feel the anger and you will see it transformed into compassion; feel the anxiety as the goddess trying to be seen by Shiva, be completely immersed. You shouldn’t see yourself or your practice as a product of self improvement, but as a space of meditation where you can exist in an unexpected way. Beyond anything the mind can see...