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Saluting the Sun

12/13/2021

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Saluting the Sun

‘I need to clear my mind
Sometimes I have these voices in my head, I don’t know where they come from
What can I do?’

So you live on this beautiful planet
So, I stand on the ground, feel the earth beneath my feet. Close the eyes and feel. Feel how the Earth is always supporting me.
As I exhale I exhale out of the soles of my feet and give energy back to the earth, to thank my Mother for always supporting me. I breathe away the energies that no longer serve me, returning them to the Earth that knows how to recycle.
After a few breath cycles I feel the energy of the exhalation extending down, down through a powerful root network that reaches to the very centre of the Earth. I feel myself connected to this rooted, stable centre. I breathe in the generous support of Mother Earth with gratitude and I feel a buoyant spacious energy moving up through all parts of my body, all the way to the crown of my head.
I visualise the beautiful golden light of the Sun above me. I feel its irresistible rays shining down and inundating every cell of my body.
As I exhale now I feel this golden light infusing me and nourishing the root netweork that reaches down to the crystal core of the Earth. Breathing in I feel that rich support and buoyancy. Breathing out I feel my whole being inundated with the golden light of the rays of the Sun.
I continue like this for a few breath cycles.

Now, breathing in I feel the space of my body and the energy it exudes. Breathing in I feel and appreciate the subtle lateral expansion across my body. Breathing out I feel elongation and space the length of my spine.

I give thanks to my body, to the breath of life.
I give thanks the earth for holding me. I give thanks to the sun for nourishing me.
I remember that I have so much to be thankful for.
May I walk here with kindness and bring to life the gifts of my birth.

I move with reverence, embodying gratitude for my senses and for my body and for my home, this beautiful earth.
This day, let me do all I can to honour life.
This day, let me move to make life more beautiful, let me be generous, let me be ready to share, ready to receive, ready to bless and be blessed.
My movements my prayer, my speech a song of praise, my song my celebration, my work my expression of honour and gratitude.

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Killing me softly

12/11/2021

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Photo credit @julialehmanfineart

Killing me softly
 I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him, and listen for a while
And there he was this young one, stranger to my eyes
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

In a certain sense, yoga asks that we ‘kill ourselves’, that we ‘chop off our own heads’. When we recognise that we are not living in as integrated way as we might, and we’d like to do something about it, we can represent this as ‘dying’ to limitation so as to be ‘born again’ in a fuller realisation of our truer selves. 
Yoga begins when we own that we do not know, that we don’t quite have it all figured out, when we recognise that we are not living in as integrated way as we might, and that we could do something about it. Stated another way, we might say that yoga asks us to make ‘killing ourselves’ a practice. Not in a violent way, but softly, gently even, shedding the skins that no longer fit, that no longer allow the appropriate expression of our soul’s essence, so as to make space for a wholler self to emerge. 
This process is represented and encoded symbolically in many spiritual traditions. It is one of the symbolic teachings of Jesus dying on the cross. At Golgotha — place of the skull — where the blood from the crown of thorns runs down to the roots of the earth, Jesus is crucified and Christed. His limiting sense of himself is dissolved in the recognition of his indwelling divinity and he rises again in Christ-consciousness. Amidst the symbolism of the cross is also that of the place of yoga, where are resolved all polarities and where all pairs of opposites meet and draw forth each other’s complementary potential. One example from the yoga tradition is Vināyaka having his head chopped off to become Gaṇeśa. 
These archetypal representations are dramatic and memorable. They are often distilled into condensed, symbolic renderings, but they encode an ongoing and cyclical process. Yoga is a practice, we have to keep doing it. And anything we are going to keep doing for the long haul, we have to learn to be able to do it softly, gently almost, in a sustainable, nourishing way. Steadily, we invite more and more recognition of our deathless essence. Eventually, we reside in the recognition beyond limited identity. 
Yoga, always practical, recognises that we learn from the pairs of opposites. Imbalances teach us about balance. The experience of discord can help us tune to our true centre. Yes, we can learn from pain and from the hard times but we can also learn from pleasure and good times.
Life is short, but yoga plays the long game. This is time-tested wisdom, not the one-step-forward-two-steps-backwards of the Babylon system. One leap forward, several steps backward is inefficient. Of course, those superficially unprecedented steps forward and those eye-catching, attention-grabbing, miasma-inducing leaps forward can be very distracting-beguiling-deluding, but if we want genuine change, lasting transformation, then it’s slow and steady wins the race. Which is why we have to ‘kill ourselves’ softly. Why we have to invite the transformation of the accustomed, previously established mind-ego complex identity to dissolve, relatively speaking, ‘pleasantly’.
 I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him and listen for a while

We need to listen, not just for a moment, but for a sustained, long while. Constancy and steadiness are foundational in yoga. One thing this means is that the discipline of practice needs to come from love, from alignment, from congruence. If it is forced, it will likely break and falter under duress, will likely be forgotten or neglected when things are going really well. Practice has to be what we feel genuine devotion for.
Practice works because it is its own reward. When we invite ourselves into a place of deeper joy and greater being, it brings forth an affirmative quality. When we experience greater congruence, the tendency or previous habit of incongruence is shown and proven to be less than optimal, less than healthy, less than satisfying, in the direct view of our integrated system. With this direct experience, we come to know now that a different way of feeling and experiencing is possible. What we need next is to continue inviting this type of experience. The clinging to previous habits is likely linked to survival instincts and the protecting of old wounds. To overcome that we need to build confidence, trust and faith. Regularity, constancy, steadiness is the recipe for this. 
It is not that we are conning ourselves, rather, exposing ourselves, regularly, to new possibilities, to new vistas of being. We may begin dipping our toes in the water — mmm, it’s alright — we start going in deeper, up to our knees, up to our waist, up to our necks. After a while, putting our heads in feels more tempting than intimidating. With continued regularity and steadiness, we come to a point where we dive in freely and continue to invite our whole being to be infused with the flavour of savoured, lived, integration: the type of experience which slowly, steadily, softly ‘kills’ off more and more of our limiting, divisive, false beliefs, which acclimatises us to the mystery of the deep, that helps us learn to breathe easy in the not knowing that is intrinsic to our human condition, while opening us up more and more to the oceanic perspective that is our innate potential.
I have also previously spoken on this theme in the YOGA Top 40 on the jamesboagyoga youtube channel 

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On puerarchy and bully boys

12/10/2021

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'I strive for an education that teaches us to think, and against an education that trains us to obey...

I saw this on the wall of a school building in Puerto Escondido, Mexico earlier this year.

I have thought to share it for a while. One idea it prompts in me is about the puerarchy we need to dissolve... what do I mean? In recent years, many people talk about 'the patriarchy', but often in ways I don’t find entirely convincing. I would suggest that we do not really live in a ‘patriarchy’. For me, that would imply responsible fatherhood, patrimony, the respectful passing on of culture, building on inheritance in positive, evolutionary ways. Instead, I would suggest, we are dominated not by a paradigm of the mature masculine, but of immature, boorish bully boys, a puerarchy. The mentality of throwing weight around, 'dominating' others to ostensibly 'show off their strength', but really to mask their fear and weakness.
One of the playground bully's classic tactics is to get others to do things that don't make sense, that make the bullied victim look (and feel) stupid while validating and pumping up the bully's sense of power and domination. As the bullies humiliate and terrorise the other, they syphon some of the others’ power and this adds padding to the bullies’ armour.
'Why am I doing what I am doing?'
This is one of the most important questions in yoga practice.
It is also the question prompted by one of the most important lessons of my schooling:
'Because s/he told me to',
'because everyone else is/was doing it’, are NOT good reasons to do anything.
'Does it accord with my conscience?' 'Is it the right thing to do?' These are the questions we need to check in with.
How to deal with these bullies?
Do not comply with their impositions.
Do not dance to their tune.
Do your own dance, fearless, looking them in the eye and letting them know that your will is not subject to being dominated by a fear-driven bully, so craven that he has to throw his weight around to feel safe. Demonstrate that you will not let your power be siphoned off to prop up their false, deluded construct of dominion. See through the bullies’ veneer, their sickening schtick, see the scared little boys. See them with firmness, with pity, with compassion, and with unshaking resolve to stay true to the pilot of your conscience.

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