Yoga as A Practice of Personal Refinement
Yoga is one of the most dynamic and versatile practices on earth. It is, originally, the practice of self-refinement and spiritual development. Exactly what form this takes is really up to you. One of the most important things that you could do in your yoga practice is to ask yourself “What am I trying to accomplish? What do I want to cultivate and what do I want to change?”.
Asking and answering these questions for yourself can add a profound degree of depth and direction to your yoga practice. Knowing what you are trying to do will give you a ‘big picture’ view of your yoga, it will help you to define your overall direction as you do your yoga day after day, month after month, year after year.
The first and foremost thing to cultivate is your physical health, so that your spiritual practice has a dependable foundation. If your physical body is ill or imbalanced, it will be hard to progress emotionally and spiritually. On a physical level, try to determine what needs to change in your physical body. For example, do you have tight areas that are causing you discomfort? Do you have areas of weakness that need work? Are you in overall balance or are some parts of you imbalanced?
Look at yourself and be honest and write down what areas need work. Then comes the hard part: you must do the work. In your yoga, consciously address these areas and see if you can make some improvements. Sometimes just becoming more conscious of problem areas can start you on the road to healing them. If you don’t know what to do to address your problems, seek expert advice do you don’t have to guess.
Then, have a close look at the quality of your prana, your personal energy. Does anything need to change? How is the quality of your breath, both in yoga and at other times of your life? Do you feel calm and energetic most of the time or do you get exhaustion or overly active energy sometimes? To address the energetic body, use the yoga practice of pranayama. Spend some time consciously working on the breath with all of your attention. Take at least 10 minutes twice a day and be absolutely present with the breath, breathing in and out smoothly and evenly. This simple exercise should help you to balance your energetic body. There are many other more refined breath practices that can help you become more balanced. Try and find a qualified teacher who understands the breath to help you learn.
As you become more balanced in the physical body and the energetic body, you have the foundation to look at the mind, emotions and senses. Yoga always goes from the gross to the subtle, from the outer to the inner. Mind, emotions and senses are actually what is creating your experience of life. You experience something and then the mind and emotions take over and create an image or a flavor (called bhava) that then causes you to act in a certain way.
This is known as karma yoga, or the yoga of action as outlined by the Bhagavad Gita and other wisdom texts. How we feel, act and interact is the main influence on our experience of life.
It is more difficult to do this work than the work of the body, but it is much more powerful and transformative when you do the work. So, make sure to take some time and look at your mental and emotional habits. What are your tendencies? Are they healthy and serving you or does some change and adjustment need to be made? We all have to keep very close track of the behavior and habits of the mind and do our best to stay mentally healthy. Remember that it is the mind which really creates our reality. We can turn a bad experience into a positive one by changing the qualities of the mind.
As you do the work of the body, the prana and the mind/emotions, you will gradually open yourself up to the real goal of the yoga: awareness without thought. This is what yoga calls ‘meditation’, the experience of being absolutely present without interference from the body, the energy or the mind. It is said that the practice of perfect awareness leads to the release of what the yogis call soma, the nectar of bliss.
We all have soma within us, but only through the refinement of our physical, energetic and mental layers can we access it. We all have our own unique journey to bring ourselves into balance, but eventually all yogis want to arrive at a place of true happiness: bliss without drama or complication. We can all access this state of blissful awareness if we patiently do the work, day after day. We start with our personal needs and eventually refine ourselves so that we are part of the universal, connected flow of life that is our true nature. See you on the mat!
