Chanting: Why do it?

Thank goodness for this practice of ashtanga yoga, not just the physical practice - but all eight limbs of it. My new favourite limb is the singing limb - where is that located you may ask, in the niyamas?

Yes, svadhyaya!

Is it located in the inner limbs - does it happen during meditative awareness, dhyana? 

Yes! 

What about asana, can you sing in this limb too? 

Heck, why not!

Dash is almost two years old. Since he was born and since the time I became pregnant in the fall of 2013, I have matured as a yogi in many ways. I have gone backwards in my practice and became a beginner all over; then forwards again as I built what was lost back up. 

I bring my teachers into the room to practice with me. They have inspired me to be great and go beyond what I know. My dearest friends and teachers - Randa Chehab, Christine Hoar, Guruji, Sharath, David Garrigues and Dena Kingsberg...they have all taught me nuggets of the yoga practice and I remember their touch and their insight each and every day I practice. 

I absolutely love this practice, I long for it and smell it - Surya Namaskar B is like a little slice of heaven in my mind.

My newest teacher is my Sanskrit teacher, David Miliotis. His website is Here. David teaches me about the yoga sutras and guides me in my daily chanting practice. I look towards seeing one of my teachers of asana once or twice a year if I am lucky - but David I am happy to see more often - once or twice a month if I can so I can learn how to sing and chant the story of yoga. 

The best part is that he lives in Los Angeles, and I live in Edinburgh! We use Skype to connect. It isn't difficult to connect with people whom you wish to learn from. Email, Skype, viber, messaging, hand written letters...reach out!

When you chant you are able to understand YOUR yogic practice better. Chanting I have found helps me understand the asana practice. This is difficult to understand but think of it this way: you see an apple and you smell it and feel it - it looks good. But until you actually bite into it and chew it do you really know what it is like. It is like this - chanting helps you savour and taste and absorb what you are practicing better. Like asana practice, in the beginning you are methodical, robotic almost, memorizing and just getting everything in the series done safely and in the right order. This is like chanting as a beginner, we repeat and learn how to articulate our tongues in the right way and it is often a bit difficult and tiresome. 

Soon though, with practice and time - you can sing the sutras! This would be just like linking the vinyasa with the asana and the breath and dristi - you find a rhythmic smoothness and ease, you almost laugh through the practice with joy since it is easy, free flowing and meditative.  It only becomes this way when you do it often and for a long time.

Chanting also relieves the stresses and pressures of the asana practice and gets me courageously taking a deeper look at myself. Chanting reveals what is happening on that rectangle purple platform, the yoga mat. What is really happening when I do Buddhasana? Sitting and chanting, sitting and absorbing the meditative qualities of the Sanskrit sounds  - this brings out the story of this posture.

Singing and chanting also means that there is joy. Bringing joy and ease into your practice is a healthy way to begin going deeper. We can't take ourselves too seriously, so by enjoying what we are actually doing more we will feel it and experience it on a deeper level. It can be a bit uncomfortable in the beginning, but it will be pain-free and harmonious with time.

As a total beginner to chanting and kirtan or other types of singing - where to begin? Get a recording or record someone great. Have a Skype private lesson with a teacher. Get yourself contemplating what yoga means by weaving your way through the sutras - I promise it will spit you out a few lessons on your Marichyasana D.

I am courageously weaving my way through the third chapter and almost ready to begin studying the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutras and I am definitely still a beginner. I lead free chanting sessions at Meadowlark on Wednesdays and Fridays. Until I've chanted it for ten years I will remain the beginner. 

If you practice deeply and devotedly any type of the yogic practice - whether it is asana, pranyama or meditation or chanting, you will reach stillness and acquire a meditative mind. And I believe the nirodhaha will come. Actually you don't even need the yoga sutras to explain it to you - though for some of us, the extra information does help guide us along in a very profound way.

Chanting Happenings:

Chanting Workshop 10-11 June - Meadowlark

Weekly:
4 pm Meadowlark Yoga - free
9:15 am Meadowlark Yoga - free

Daily Practical Practice

Dashiel Peter says, "Hello out there from bonny Scotland. I'm almost a year old!"

Often I meet people who think the practice of ashtanga vinyasa yoga is a very rigid practice that has many rules. Often they think they have to kill themselves to do it. 

This isn't the case at all. 

Daily ashtanga practice can be done with as much energy as you have to put into it, it doesn't have to be hard all of the time. 

Being a new mother, I find myself happy to get on my mat to practice. I am not concerned which series I do or how "hard" I practice. Just arriving on my mat and moving and breathing every day is more than enough. 

There have been times in my life where practice has been the most important daily routine and I didn't focus on anything else. And there have been other years where I practiced every day with the least amount of effort applied.

Now I find myself in the middle road after swaying to both extremes. I have done bare bones practices for a length of time and I have done full throttle practices every day as well.  

As a new mother, I am tired most days. To manage this and sustain a six day a week committed practice, I make a practical plan. 

I recommend this method for people who are working intensely, and people who are traveling. This would be great for anyone who is having a harder time than usual, dealing with challenges, or even just needing more sleep than anything else.

While we are on retreat, studying directly in India with time off from our jobs and householder commitments, and when we have carved out devoted time in our daily lives to focus just on the practice, we can study as deeply as possible with full intention on practice for hours on end. This is wonderful when this can happen and I fully urge people to dive into their inward journey as much as possible.

Having a practical practice plan balances this intensity, there must be a balance: we can't sustain deep practices over a long period of time. The body needs a break, so does the mind. Note how when practitioners study "in-depth" it isn't every day for an extended amount of time, usually it is no longer than six months.

If one WERE to practice full throttle every day, there is a higher chance of injury, quitting the practice altogether and burnout. This is what we DON'T want to do, we WANT to practice throughout our entire lives, so let's stretch it out over time and with ease.

Chakra Bandhasana with David Garrigues in 2011. One of the very few photos I have of DG assisting me.

Patanjali describes that higher awareness of the self - one of the foundational aims of daily yogic practice - is very near for those who apply themselves intensely (yoga sutra 1.21: "tivrasamveganamasannah"). But it can also come to those who apply themselves with mrdu - mild effort (1.22). 

In sutra 1.22, Patanjali defines three types of yogic efforts that lead one towards understanding samadhi. Practice can be mild, medium or intense; this amount of effort in turn relates to how fast or slow you understand yoga. 

Another way of understanding this is that there may be a few years where you are learning intensely on a regular basis. You are living in the same town with your teacher, you are seeing them daily, or you are on retreat. 

Then there will be a phase where you won't be progressing so quickly. Maybe at this time you won't be learning any new "postures" but you will be finding your own understanding of the practice; here you are learning how to apply what you have been already taught. You begin to use your own language to describe it. It becomes yours. This is where you build your "bhakti muscle" as my friend Tiffany Lee says.

Then the cycle continues: you'll be there for a while until something changes again, you see your teacher and something shifts. You learn the lesson needed to be learned, and you move on. 

This shifting and realigning is natural. Having a few years of enjoying what you have been taught is important to practice. Don't push all of the time. Or are you that type of yogi?

If we follow Patanjali's suggestion in sutra 1.22, we could have three potential practices IF we were to take the middle road.

1. Do an easy practice (a mild practice in time you spend on your mat and in effort). This practice could be twenty minutes to an hour. It is showing up and putting your time in with whatever you have in the tank to do. This could happen once or twice a week depending on how busy you are. For me this happens at least once a week: the standing and finishing asanas only - including savasana. Times that are very challenging this may be your practice - without shame or guilt. Sure it is a short one, but it is still a beautiful one.

2. Do a medium one (medium in length and in effort). This is the practice that Goldilocks would say is, "Juuuuust right". This practice is the one you try to do three to four days per week. This could be the practice you could do without working so hard but one where you have to still have to apply more effort than the first practice. One hour to an hour and a half. This is the meat of your practice - you spend most of your days doing this one - during this practice perhaps you also approach the asana you are currently working on or "stopping" at. Do this 3-4 days.

3. Enjoy a long one (intense and endurance based). This practice is the one you do one or two times per week. It is your big practice, the one that you pull everything from your tank to do. It could be an hour and a half to three hours. How much time do you have to spend on your practice? Could you turn off your phone a little earlier in the morning to make this practice happen more often? Or go to sleep much earlier? This is the practice I try to do twice a week with the goal of doing it three times a week. For some householders with big jobs and morning commitments in the week, this could be on a Saturday or a Sunday.

**

The reason we vary practice is so that we can:

1), focus on the breath and the vinyasa
2), maintain steadiness and consistency in our foundations
3), establish an unwavering commitment to getting on the mat six days a week 
4), enjoy practicing!

**

To Practice

I will practice today because the day is grey

I take practice today because the day is sunny

I completed my practice today because I needed to breathe
I needed to understand myself better

My body says I need to stretch

I need to chill out

I must learn to relax

I practice because no one tells me to

I practice because I feel God watching me 

Often the practice

Smells like the food I ate yesterday

I'm covered in sweat and I am drooling

I try to hold it together

I feel like an elephant
I am heavy
I unravel

Often during the practice
I am floating in the clouds, again with the Lord

My body is light and my mind doesn't fight

The earth enjoys my company

I join the world around me

I am taken care of

I do not have to be afraid

I love myself, my community and the blessed world

I practice because I believe in it
and it believes in me

Utthi Plutthi - one of the gestures you ALWAYS do, the last gesture before taking rest, the gesture that builds bandhas, builds bhakti, builds peace within.

Is Ashtanga Yoga a spiritual practice?

One of the dogs that I walk daily, The Bailers. He was wondering, "And Patanjali says what again about practice? Tell me, Sarah! Sadhana? Oooh, now what's that!? Walk!? When are we going? You wanna go NOW?"

There is much planning that goes on to maintain a daily ashtanga practice and many activities and hobbies are shifted or removed to keep your practice nourished. 'Practice' - if done daily and with effort over many years turns into what Vyasa would call a 'sadhana', or "one's specific daily spiritual practice" (Edwin Bryant).
  

Recently, a Philadelphia yoga friend of mine said, "ashtanga practice isn't a sadhana".

It may appear to someone who does not practice ashtanga vinyasa yoga that it may not be a 'spiritual practice' since the practice appears asana-based.

Practicing six days a week with the foundational elements of ashtanga: 

vinyasa (breath-movement system), 
breath (ujjayai), 
bandhas (internal locks), 
drishti (gaze), and 
dhyana (concentration) 

is a GIANT SPIRITUAL INVOCATION because each foundational element brings the practitioner INSIDE themselves, closer to their deeper selves. 

David Garrigues says, "Ashtanga yoga is an invocation. We are purposely doing this practice to look inside." He says this in his recent video on "Medium Breath". Check it out Here

Often in the beginning, coming to a daily ashtanga practice isn't a 'spiritual' decision to start. When or how one's ashtanga practice becomes a 'spiritual' practice varies from person to person. It is each person's specific relationship to their practice which makes it special and unique. Some people focus on the Divine during their entire practice, others the breath. Some people count through their practice, some people use one foundational element the entire time - like a specific bandha. Some people use all the foundational elements the entire time! All of these are strong tools that the ashtanga practitioner uses to sustain a concentrated state during their practice.

Whether you are sitting in a fixed meditation or jumping back on your mat via vinyasa, or invoking a mantra of health, stability and courage into your life through chanting and ritual - all these are rich and potent sadhanas worth practicing daily. And if done correctly with guidance from the proper teacher, these will potentially bring increased awareness about yourself and your life.
 

There is no correct sadhana, or spiritual practice that is better than others. The best practice is a daily practice over a long period of time, one that you cultivate a relationship with, and have faith in (Patanjali's prescription - see Sutra 1.14 Here).
 

You have to believe in your practice. This is the "specific spiritual practice" element Vyasa is describing. You must love it - and want to do it. There will be days where you will be tired and sore and your mind may be racing or attached to something that has drawn you away. But these are the days that you must practice and are more important than ever to remove tendencies and patterns which are hidden within you.
 

It does not and will not work if you fully and truly do not have faith in the system. Seek out trainings, workshops, and increase your study to learn more about practice. Dive into your relationship with your practice in a deeper way to encourage this to take form.
 

Then, with the guidelines suggested by Patanjali, you will have a sadhana because your daily practice will turn into something much richer than just an asana practice. It will develop into something very 'spiritual' because you will have developed a relationship with yourself. This is worth all the effort to get to know, as this bond will bring you closer and closer to the Divine which always surrounds you.
 

If you are in the Philadelphia area and want to increase the awareness within your practice - check out David Garrigues' in-depth study coming up - April 26-May 6. Learn more about it by clicking Here