FAQ

HOME . Workshops . Yoga Classes . Yoga Calendar . Massage . Psychotherapy. Resources . Links . Search

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to frequently asked questions are being added to continuously, so drop in from time to time or send us a question for inclusion on this page or to add to our answers below.

Answers on 1. Embodied Meditation; 2. Sankalpa in eating disorder; 3. Tantra Yoga; 4. Karma Yoga, 5. Conflict after meditation.

1. "What do you mean by embodied meditation practices?"

Body is just slow mind. Locating our awareness in our body requires slowing down and slowing down even more than is normally comfortable for the mind. Slowing to the pace at which we can know the sensations that underlie our thought process takes a lot of practise, or involuntary paralysis, or a near death experience. Best of all, considerable good fortune in growing up in a family and culture that supports body awareness and a balanced brain. So its practise for most of us, and lots of it.

When asked to meditate the temptation for a busy, acquisitive mind seeking calm is to go out of body, chemically alter the mental state, become disembodied like kids watching TV, or dissociate entirely. Meditation cannot arise without a body. Disassociation happens without a body. You're not associated with anything, not even with intimacy. Just as break throughs or the turning points in a previously stuck intimate relationship occur with embodiment of a feeling, so too is meditation entered through sensation and feeling. Mental experiences of beauty, awe and wonder are incomplete unless accompanied by the body. Some weep, others sigh, some just get overwhelmed with feelings of excitement or universality.

So that's the good news. The hard part is that the body is a store house of unfinished experience. Because it is slow, the mind can hide parts of itself there and if the person is busy, the mind can know it won't have time to examine those recesses. In the practices that lead to meditation, the mind gets a chance to notice its own hidden contents. Mind is as vast as the imagination and creativity that nurtures us. Consequently, being embodied means feeling physical and emotional pleasure and pain. The road to meditation leads through those places without craving for relief or delight. Thoughts and dreams may arise as well as long forgotten memories or body sensations. Some of these are delightful full bodied recall of childhood wonders or the not so delightful lack of them. Being embodied in meditation requires a dispassionate witnessing of the unfolding process of body/mind as it grows toward balance.

'The body is not the ultimate truth and attachment to the body causes suffering .... yet if we inhabit our bodies with the finest degree of awareness, we experience the body as permeable, borderless, empty space...' Introduction to 'Being Bodies - buddhist women on the paradox of embodiment' edited by Lenore Friedman & Susan Moon shambala 1997. 'Being Bodies' is a collection of women's stories of the struggle to stay with the body and not leave it behind, even under the extremes of experience from birth to death. "The absolute is here in each embodied moment - when we breathe, when we sweat, when we bleed, when we feel desire" My [Ziji] personal story starts with traumatic birth/maternal death of which I am reminded, in my body, each birthday, so I'm drawn to this book's discourse at least annually:- "To create life on this earth some woman has opened and cried .. whether by cracking, by slicing, by oozing, by tearing or by pushing. Some woman has opened, some woman has cried.' from the chapter 'Birth' page 59 in 'Being Bodies'

Some thoughts on meditating in asana practice

Rotation of the pelvis is a condition which leads to uneven pressure on the sacro-iliac area and lumbar spine. Probably 80% of people have this. You can often diagnose your rotation by lying in advasana and feeling the crease at the front of the hip bones. One is almost always higher than the other. When you bend your legs to prepare for dhanurasana you can feel this continue, and can also use your intelligence to open the tighter side. This is a great way to be your own therapist for your body.
You can work with the abdominal side in sphinx or cobra. It is a good idea to start cobra from the pelvis, pushing the pubic bone into the floor. This opens the front of the hip bone and draws the stiffer side down.
In standing positions rotation occurs as well. In tadasana (step 1, arms by the sides), it is an engaging meditation to feel which hip is closer to the front. You might like to try this standing a few inches from the wall, facing it, and use it a reference as to which hip is closer. You can also do this with your back to the wall, heels just a few inches away from the wall, and sway back to the wall. Often you will find one buttock touches before the other.
It is then quite a deep meditation to keep an even rotation of the pelvis in druta utkatasana and trikonasana.

2. "Should I teach Sankalpa in my Yoga class for Eating Disorders? I'm concerned some might use it to resolve to become their ideal or perfect size, which is life threatening for a person with Anorexia."

It is in response to questions like this about high performance compulsions, which are self-injurious, that we wrote the article on the Sankalpa. There you will discover that in working with the sankalpa you have to both allow growth in the resolution to have, for example, 'a perfect body, only 38 kilos' and the desire that ultimately stands against it for example, 'I don't want to die'. Often one desire is approved of by the intellect, the other by the heart and body. The intellect may see the heart and body as saboteurs of the will. In our workshops we show ways of including that disavowed part of ourselves, even of nurturing that place in us so that it may join in the light of yoga. Too often our unrecognized saboteur or shadow, sneaks up on us and undoes our resolutions just as they are about to be fulfilled. It is easy to hear the sense of that when the saboteur is potentially life saving (do I want to die?) and the resolve is life threatening, but not in every case is it so obvious. It takes kind, patient, self inquiry in meditation to uncover both our true sankalpa and the core belief which stands against it.

Kindness is not the main game in high performance compulsions and so that too is a challenge. We cautiously recommend Tonglen as a way to enter the realm of kindness to oneself. It is also a challenging practice, but more likely to save a life than destroy. Take care with these suggestions, they are not a quick fix. It takes years to build up the duality with the saboteur. It's like a partnership and one of the most intimate as it is life and death in many high performance, compulsive behaviors. The saboteur may run a mantra, like an audio tape humming in the background, such as 'I am no good'. That story also needs to unfold, be cared for and treated with compassion. Sometimes this will not happen in the absence of an external relationship of trust, congruent safety and a tough love containment of the powerful emotions bound up in that place.

Response from the questioner to our answer:

Thank you for your answer to my question about Sankalpa and my teaching yoga to young women with eating disorders. It is a very loving and wise answer which has brought up a number of issues for me which also relate to your teachings of the weekend. At the weekend I realised that I had used my sankalpa much more like the affirmation cards on the desk that you mention in your writing. Why? Because they were what rose to mind quickly and easily and I assumed them with an attitude of 'that'll do for now until I can figure out something better'. An insight is unfolding that the 'affirmation card' allays the fear of having nothing, the thought 'but what if I haven't got one at the core of my being'. The 'affirmation card' is a holding pattern which I now recognise stops me from ever seeking something deeper. One of my reactions to reading your teachings on sankalpa was that it was far too long and complicated a process to find one's sankalpa. Now I am realising my mind's grasping for the quick and the immediate, and that a practice of loving patience is required. Another one of my insights about sankalpa relates to my own experience of bulimia.

When I had bulimia I made promises or 'affirmations' to myself almost daily - manifestations of will to control my eating and other perfectionisms I aspired to. These self-promises were invariably broken with the binge, and what gets internalised is 'I can't keep a promise to myself', 'I can't trust myself', 'I can't trust my body'. I think this experience has made me very wary of making 'affirmations', and I haven't yet distinguished between the sankalpa and the iron will of the eating disorder. So your comment about the intellect seeing the heart and body as saboteurs of the will resonates loudly for me, and that the duality with the saboteur is still there. The saboteur has something to do with my resistance to going deeper. I have had enough experience in yoga and therapy to draw up what I can only describe as a large 'mud map' depicting the big and the obvious. Now what is coming is the invitation to know the subtle. My question about sankalpa and eating disorders just casually popped out one evening at yoga. I was not something that I had been pondering on, but now I am recognising the surfacing of deeply held issues. Teaching what I also need to learn is one of the great challenges and also enrichments of being 'the wounded healer', the yoga teacher.

3. "What is Tantra?"

Tantra comes from two words: 'Tan' meaning expansion of consciousness, 'tra' meaning liberation of matter. The expansion of mind allows the individual to experience beyond the limit of the senses. It is as if we release the power within the atom. Matter is de-constructed from it's formed state, into it's essence. Einstein expressed it mathematically as e=mc2, or the energy equals the matter moving at the square of the speed of light. Tantra says that energy is released when we are able to undo the binding of matter. The amount of energy released is tremendous, like the atomic force.

Swami Satyananda has described tantra as 'indulgence with awareness'. Any matter can be used, any act can be tantric. It is the awareness that we bring to the experience that makes it tantra. Traditionally, tantric practices have included intercourse, eating meat, drinking wine and meditating in cemeteries. Swamiji would say 'don't think you are a tantric and can handle sex. wine and meat, and then run away from the graveyard'. They are practices of inclusion, beyong judgement. All events are grist for the mill. something that can be used on your path of growth.

Yoga Nidra, Tonglen, Antar Mouna are tantric yoga practices. These have nothing to do directly with sex or ecstasy. There are 72 tantras in all. There are also 18 puranas or legendary tales, which are mostly tantric practices in allegorical disguise. In the shakta purana it is asserted that the creator of the universe is female.

The intention of all tantric practices is to awaken the shakti or feminine energy. Without this awakening it is held that shiva or consciousness can never manifest. Tantra is a method of purification so that energy [the shakti principle] can be released from matter to unite with and expand consciousness [the shiva principle] and thus create homogeneous awareness. It aims to introvert the senses and turn the mind inward.

Shakti represents the subtlest of energy manifestations and is said to lie coiled like a serpent at the root of the spine. 'Shiva' resides at the crown 0f the head. However, due to the solidity and inspissation of the body/mind, ruled as it is by the senses, these two powers remain dormant or aestivated in the average person.

Surprisingly and unintentionally, the Hollywood movie 'City of Angels' is a classic exploration of tantra. Tantric practices invite the unfolding or decoupling of those energetic knots that bind us to the world. The shiva hero [Nicolas Cage] bound himself to the world by falling to the earth in a construction site. The shakti heroine [Meg Ryan] uncoupled them by rising to heaven like a kundalini when she slammed into a truck load of forest timber. During her ascent the kundalini shakti passes six energy centres or chakras, which if you read the film in this way, you will have realised was Meg's journey in the story. The Nicolas Cage character had unearthly senses in his realm. On the beach at dawn he could hear celestial sounds but not feel the cold water of the ocean.

In the yogic tradition these obliging knots are considered to be in three locations in the body and they are named: Brahma, at the base of the spine, being our binding attachment to the physical body. Vishnu, at the heart centre, being our bonding attachment to our emotions and relationships, and Shiva at the eyebrow centre, being our incumbent attachment to ideas and concepts. Meg passed through each of these, the first one when she could finally sleep when the angel was beside her, and the second as she allowed herself to love.

The nearest thing we have to a tantric site in the west is the emergency room of a public hospital where the 'City of Angels' begins its tale. A little girl leaves behind her grieving parents and the heart wrenching crises of the emergency room and calmly walks off with our hero. He asks her 'what was your favourite thing? and she says, 'my pyjamas', which she is wearing. Here we see the unbundling of the ties that fasten us to the physical, emotional and mental bodies.

Tantra allows for the development of each individual regardless of their stage of development without strict adherence to a set of rules. There is a path for you, which you have to discover. Only you hold the key. 'The proof of a tantric's prowess lies in their ability to remain undeterred. They do not become overwhelmed by experience nor ridden with fear'. Quoted from page 5 of 'Tattwa Shuddhi - the tantric practice of inner purification', written under the guidance of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Bihar School of Yoga 1984. We recommend Swami Satyananda's book 'Kundalini Tantra' 1985 Bihar School of Yoga.

For a view of the range of understandings and misunderstandings of the word tantra, follow a few of the links here.

4. What is Karma yoga?

 Karma is something we are all involved in., inextricably. The word karma means activity and our relation to it. For example, I am wedded to my work if I think about how to do it better and get anxious if it goes badly. This identification of our self with an activity has an effect throughout every level of our being. Emotionally we respond with elation when things go well and depression when they go badly. Physically our bodies respond in accordance with our emotions and our thoughts as well. We are a permeable, fluctuating system of responses to the circumstances we are in. We carry this from situation to situation, frequently re-creating the same outcome by our responses. We may carry this from life to life as well. It may be one of the explainations of the differences in identical twins. Certainly, parents often say that their children were born with a distinct personality.

The scientific equation of this is in thermodynamics, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Meaning, in yogic terms, that if we give out love,. it will return in the opposite direction towards us.

Karma yoga is using this principle in everyday life. When troubles come to us, we can be sure that they will be re-created if we respond with violence. We can be sure that the direction of the trouble will be influenced by whatever spin we put on it. I have been reading Victor Frankl, who survived years in the Austwitch concentraion camp. In 'Man's Search for Meaning', p86, he writes 'when a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task', much as one accepts one's work in the world. It is the manner with which we respond that lead us to immersion in the mire, or to transcendence even while we are alive.

The joy of this is that any activity can be used as expression of one's soul.

5. Inner and outer conflict can dissolve the peace of meditation. What am I doing wrong?

Question: After a meditation session that usually lasts 30 mins, I feel very aware and clear. My thought process is almost non existant and I just do what needs to be done next. This is very freeing for me as I have always analysed and used lots of energy trying to work out what was going to happen next etc. So I am peaceful, however when I pick up my kids from school I begin to get agitated fairly quickly. The bell rings and it seems so loud. The kids come out and the noise is deafening. I feel as if everything is grating on my senses and it can become uncomfortable. I guess I am comparing with other peoples experiences - but I am wondering what good am I to others if I am intolerant? I hear of people meditating and feeling so wonderful that nothing at all disturbs them after. Is it practice or perhaps I am clinging to the effect that causes this conflict within. What are your opinions.?

Answer: I suspect that this kind of occurence is quite common. Many people begin meditating to find peace from their minds. For example, from anxiety, irritation or incessant planning. In my early experience of meditation I used it be able to maintain my beliefs about how the world, myself and others should be. This made me able to maintain a slightly distant and superior air, that I was treating others from a 'spiritual' perspective. My relationships might have been taken as condescending or patronising. I was meditating continually, in a way that meant I was connected more to my mantra and less to other people. I approved of that as a state of pratyahara, sense withdrawal. It meant that I dealt with my troubles with other people in my own meditation, and not in relationship with them. This lasted years. It was supported by many spiritual teachers.

Eventually, I became cognisant of this distance. The distinction between supression of a response and witnessing a response can be difficult to ascertain. I know I had a big investment in getting over the emotion and not having a fight with other people, and that had been an incentive to get me started on this path. Finally, I began to experiment with different responses to it.

The one I'll describe here is 'antar mouna', a meditation practice taught by Swami Satyananda and described fully here on our web site. It begins with establishing a sense of witness, through listening to sounds and then to thoughts from the same attitude. Then you choose a thought and take it to it's end. When you reach the end, you stop the thought with no recycling of the issue. you then put balm on the mind by going back to the beginning of the thought and placing a positive thought there.

It gave me an opportunity to get real with myself in a kindly way. It gave me a way to go back into relationships with a progression of the problem that was a positive contribution. I went from covert to overt, even within my mind. I had access to work with my issues. My spiritual work became world work as well as inner work.

With due respect, knowing that I am only dreaming into your world, I will let my mind do this process with your story. 'the bell rings and it seems so loud'. If I extend that, it might take me to...I am always being interrupted, I have no time for myself. Going back to the original thought, a positive thought could be 'I will feed the kids and while they are relaxing after school I will sit down with my book for half an hour.' Or, the positive thought could be 'I have been strained caring for the kids for a while now. I really do have to get the balance back into my life. I can do that in this way...' Taking your thoughts seriously may lead to a shift in how you live. It may lead you to greet the kids with joy, if you find a way to take better care of yourself.

You mention 'people meditating and afterwards feeling so good that nothing bothers them', I guess the distinction I am making is being unbothered while being connected to the events and people, or removing yourself from the contact. The final view of removing yourself from the contact is moving towards an autistic state. It is like the difference between sleep and meditation. In sleep we are disconnected from the senses but are unaware. In meditation we are disconnected from the senses and are bright in our consciousness. The day we shine internally, when in situations we don't like, is a real example of our spiritual connectedness.

An element of this is relaxation. A deep letting go, and letting God. When we connect with something deep inside ourselves, other things don't seem so crucial. Surrender to this is a time of deep transition. It asks us to release our sense of ego, of having our way in the world. It is a great place, but 'you', your ego, can't go there. That is the big ask of this process.

My heart is with you in this process. It takes every part of us to get there.

Love be with you and from yourself to yourself

Avinashananda

 

N.B. Patanjali talks about this in 11.3 to 9, about the kleshas (sorrows). These are

avidya, spiritual ignorance
asmita, ego or pride
rage, desire or attachment
dweshwa, hate
abhinivesha, love of life and fear of death

You can read more about this in 'Four Chapters on Freedom', published by Bihar Yoga Bharati and distributed by Satyananda Yoga Ashram. This is the translation of the sutras of Patanjali, written about 500 BCE. the mind hasn't changed!