The Radiance Sutras...Effort/Stability and Ease/Freedom

I have reading Lorin Roches lovely book: The Radiance Sutra also called Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. This name loosely translates to mean “the terror and joy of realizing oneness with the Soul”. Each sutra is a way of looking and feeling into the essences of simple life activities. Lorin put it beautifully when he said “meditation is diving into your entire sensorium so fearlessly that you go beyond it into the core of your being and rest there. This is yoga of delight, awe, and wonder”.

These sutras all remind me of sutra 2:46 from Patanjali’s book “sthira sukam asanam”. This sutra is about how we should live our life and practice with a dynamic balance between effort (sthira) and ease (sukam). These two words remind me of something we talk about and practice in Anusara all the time. Stability (effort) and freedom (ease). As I read Lorin’s book every sutra is showing us a way of enjoying and experiencing an activity in our life so fully that we can merge with the divine. In order to do this we have to have disciple, effort and stability. We have to focus our mind so we may pick up on all the sensations so fully that we feel the dance and pulsation of life. However if we get to rigid, too hard, focused too deeply we will get stressed, we will tense up and we will miss this blissful experience. In order to prevent getting overly focused we need to be relaxed, and at ease so we may experience this gift of embodied freedom. However, if relaxed too much we wouldn’t have the containment we would miss the sensations and the invitation of experiencing the delight of life.

(I had so much fun teaching today. I didn’t stress too much about planning. I have 5 people come to a new class I am starting 12-1 at the yoga center only 4$! The students were of all different abilities and each one loved it. I think they all grasped this idea of needing stability, discipline and effort so they may soften, and experience freedom)
Theme: effort/stability/muscular energy and ease/freedom/organic energy
Childs “in childs notice the dynamic balance between effort and freedom. If you don’t use any disciple in your will spin off and if you use to much effort the pose inst enjoyable”
Tadasana-> 1/2 moon stretch
Variation of Sun with Lunge with 1/2 moon stretch 2x
Parsvakonasana
Trikonasana
Navasana -> rev. table
Handstand work:
L at wall, L at wall leg extended, L at wall with pumping, kicking up to wall, kicking up to wall but not hitting wall (the students honored where they were in the pose, many of them made it to a high level then they thought. It took effort on me to end the hand stand session because the students were loving it so much and smiling, so we went longer but not to long because I didn’t want them to get hurt because they were to tiered and were pushing to hard)
Forearm balance
Twist
Happy baby->compass
Forward folds
Savasana
We also focused a lot on being aware of our breath and taking the invitation the breath offers. The first activity offered in the sutras is a focus on the breath. The breath is an activity that we are doing constantly. We normally don’t have the stability to focus on the breath, and the softness to enjoy it. But when we focus intimately and softly we can experience the freedom it offers.

The very first sutra offers us this invitation to the breath:

“Beloved, your question requires the answers that come
Through direct living experience.
The way of experience begins with a breath
Such as the breath you are breathing now.
Awakening into luminous reality
May dawn in the momentary throb
Between any two breaths.
The breath flows in and just as it turns
To flow out, there is a flash of pure joy –
Life is renewed.
Awaken into that.
As the breath is released and flows out,
There is a pulse as it turns to flow in.
In that turn, you are empty.
Enter that emptiness as the source of all life”