reflecting on the pause

There are many things I love about Anusara yoga, of these is the life affirming philosophy. I love how Anusara teaches you to see beauty everywhere and in everything. This includes our asana poses. When I started yoga, whenever I was in a pose in the back of my head I would think: what am I doing wrong? Am I doing the pose right? The practice has taught me that I cannot do the wrong thing, so my pose would be good. In my mind it was either you were doing the pose correctly or you weren’t.... However, Anusara says that no matter where we are in our pose (as long as we are not pushing into pain) we are beautiful. We are doing good. The practice and the fun begins by seeing how we can enhance the beauty that is already in our pose.

As I wrote in earlier posts, I have been doing a course from certified Anusara teacher Elena Brower. On the first day we were told to notice the difference between expansion and contraction in our physical body. We learned that almost every contraction comes from the negative states of either rushing or doubting. We learned that if we can fine tune our attention to notice when we start to contract we can pause and breath and allow our self to experience the freedom of expansion over the limitation of contraction. I really love this. It reminds me of spanda, of this pulsation that under lies all life. John Friend once said that, “the whole universe is just one big pulsating ball of bliss”. We, you, me, your neighbor… are all intimately connected and apart of this blissful ball expanding and contracting. As I was initially thinking about this my mind wanted to think that when I was contracting that was a bad thing. Just like I used to think if my pose wasn’t perfect it must be completely wrong. Then I started to think about this life affirming positive thinking aspect of Anusara. I realized the contraction isn’t a bad thing at all. First, if there wasn’t any contraction there would never be expansion, but also the contraction is bad. The contraction is hiding our greatness from our selves. So we are always great, we are always powerful, we are always perfect, and we are always whole….However it is when we contract that we forget and we think we are bad, we are weak, we are undeserving, and that we are missing something… But just because we have forgotten as we contract does not mean that at that moment when we are so tight, so closed in, even in that moment we are magnificent. When we pause, when we breath, when we remember that we expand!

This was the theme for my class this morning at Flow Yoga EMC 9:15-10:30am. The class was great I have been out of town and missed the past few classes and I was so surprised and happy to walk in and see a room full of familiar faces and friends (many Anusara students which is always fabulous) who came with me for the one class I teach at flow before I leave for one last trip (rafting down cataract canyon). We had lots of fun we focused on expanding (inner) and contracting (outer) spiral.
Tonight teaching at the yoga center 5:40-7pm.

Can we experience the expansion and contraction of this pulsating ball of bliss? As we notice that we contract can we not get discouraged and think we are bad, but can we remember the pose we are in, and who we are is perfect!