Being What You Seek. The Power of YOGA in Healing & Balancing All Aspects of Self - Body, Emotions, Mind, Heart & Will.

Every time I come to my yoga mat I am pleasantly surprised at the way that all levels of my being are coaxed into balance - not only does my body feel more at ease and stronger, but my mind reflects that change too. In this post I intend to pass on something of the benefits of yoga through the written words here - maybe you will be able to feel some of what I am sharing more than you will be able to logically receive it.

magic soul

For most of my life I have been a 'thinker', in that I have always had a busy mind that is constantly thinking, questioning and being inventive. This is something I like about my mind but it has it's drawbacks too. My health has always been challenged in numerous ways and that is part of why I have focussed so much into learning holistic healing in the last 10+ years. I learned early on that while we can surely learn great advice and truths from other people, there is no substitute for direct experience and reaching our understandings in our own way and that is what I do. For example, if I hear someone say that meditation is helpful for healing, then I will not go and read 20 books about meditation, instead I will maybe read half a book and then dive in and discover the rest myself from meditation. What meditation taught me quickly is that when I stop my mind completely, I actually come closer to what I am searching for - we literally are a fountain of divine wisdom when we are in balance and able to view the depths of who we are instead of creating a splash on the surface constantly with our thinking.

benefits of yoga

Yoga is meditative

It is not true to me to say that yoga IS meditation, since yoga requires a degree of concentrated action and thoughts - which are absent from the meditation that I value. However, yoga definitely IS meditative in that it promotes us coming into a state of being which makes meditation simple. As I move through the Asanas (Postures) of Astanga Yoga, I gradually slow down my thoughts until quite quickly they are almost gone and I am mostly just left with body presence, feeling, breath and motion.

A main feature of yoga is a focus on the breath and in breathwork. It is not wrong to say that if we are not breathing in a yogic way then regardless of the postures we are performing, we are not doing yoga. Yogic breathing has many benefits, from oxygenation of the body, through to calming the nervous system and balancing the mind and emotions.

Yoga is Strengthening

The more I continue to use yoga exercises, the stronger I get - and fast! We will generally find that, as with all exercise, our first few sessions will be the toughest - as our body is simply not ready for that kind of stretching and activity. However, every session gets easier and within only a few days it is likely that what once seemed challenging will now be relatively easy. Yoga certainly does amp up it's intensity though and with the Astanga form of Yoga it is common for people to stay on the same Postural Sequences for a relatively long time, since the more advanced postures require a really great strength and stamina to maintain which needs to be built up.

How many 90 year olds do you know who can do what the lady in this video does?

Yoga is Balancing

This, for me, is the real core beauty of yoga and of us as beings - it is through balance that we truly find our strength, power and vitality. Just a small change here or there can be enough to make a dramatic shift in our state of being and mind. A powerful engine may be crippled by a single grain of sand in the wrong place and so it is with us. A single belief or misaligned limb in an asana is enough to significantly lower our ability to act and thus our power. Contrary to pop culture, POWER is not a dirty word - if you look up the word 'power' in a dictionary, you will find it is simply describing the ability to act and nothing more. We need power just to type or move our body - the problem form of power is 'power over' and this is where imbalance is introduced and thus dysfunction. For example, if I have power over another human, then they are not free and my mind becomes a controller of their will.

This 'power over' is a key problem internally within us as individuals too - in that it is very common for our own mind to have power over our body and feelings/will. We have often thought that it is essential that our 'brain mind' 'runs' our body and controls our feelings for 'safety' and 'politeness' - yet that is not balanced at all. A balanced human system is one where all aspects work in total harmony and where no one part overpowers another in any way.

Yoga means 'Union'.

It is no accident that 'Union' is the process of yoga itself, since that is what we most need to achieve to be healthy. By unifying our aspects into balance, we are the complete being we were meant to be and can become free, strong and an empowered creative force in life. A result of union of self is that life becomes an effortless flow of creativity, response and heartfelt action - with the action itself being 'right action' for each moment. How we determine if an action is 'right action' or not is simply by understanding whether or not that action is in alignment with heart's truth - in other words, does our action cause balance or imbalance; our heart is a balancing centre within us and if we go against that felt balance then we are causing problems for us and others.

Sometimes I slip back into my old ways of allowing my more electric 'brain mind' to control my life and actions and every time I then return to yoga I quickly let that go and able to return to a more eased and balanced state of being that feels nice and which actually results in me achieving my goals quicker and to a higher degree of effectiveness.

Intention makes the difference

We, as beings, embody a will and it is not enough to just mentally decide we are going to do something or be a particular way - we need to intend in a felt way and through our heart, that we are going to fully manifest and be that version of ourselves. My advice is to learn to intend to heal, balance and evolve - these three together form a basis for successful life.

Work smarter, not harder? How about not working at all?

It is certainly true that working smarter is better than working harder - yet when we are totally balanced, life is literally effortless! Effort implies imbalance and few of us have truly experienced the total effortlessness in which we create what we intend without any difficulty at all and so we are trapped by our own beliefs into constantly creating more effort and thus making life more and more difficult for ourselves! How very creative of us! ;)

My suggestion is to open to the ideas of the heart that allow deep understandings of who we are to be more accepted than would otherwise be the case when we are being dominated by our own thoughts from our own artificial persona. We are cosmic beings experiencing a created cosmos and we are not intended to do so in a powerless way or in a difficult way - the universe comes alive for us as we ourselves come alive and ALLOW the universe to help us instead of struggling against life as if it is an opponent.

Some Yoga Videos for You

There are countless instructional yoga videos online and some of them are great. I will share here some of the ones that I like to use from time to time - but don't forget that video is not a replacement for a skilled teacher. The postures have subtle nuances which make big differences and it is not possible to identify them yourself from videos. I highly advise finding a teacher that has learned from a lineage of teachers that is old, rather than just finding the nearest local person who may have no deep understanding of what yoga is. Yoga is NOT just an exercise routine!

30 Minute Heart Opening Session: