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

Three Easy Practice Rules Post Baby or Post Break

Greetings, yogis and friends. I have surfaced from the depths of Motherhood to join you all in cyber-blog world. Becoming a new mummy has been an incredible experience but it has taken me far from writing and sharing about yoga. 

The vessel I am now occupying is a much different one. My body is clean and my eyes are sharp. I am stretchy, just like Elasta-Girl from "The Incredibles" which makes perfect sense, since my son is named Dash.

My body is now likened to a wing of a house that was once closed off which is now opened.

The positives to this of course is that I am able and bendy, the not-so-good parts is that I need STRENGTH to support this flexibility.

I thought about doing supplemental exercises to gain strength: pilates, running, climbing, or any type of fitness routine. But then with time being an issue, as I only have SO much time in the day to myself, I realised that my yoga practice is going to have to do much more for me than just bring me to a meditative state of calmness, it is going to have to heal my body, build strength AND make me calm.

Can your practice do all of this?

Yes, but you have to have a plan. I decided on three practice rules: 1), get through a practice every day - for as long as it takes. Once the mat rolls out and baby Dash has had his breakfast, we begin. 2), do Full Vinyasa and 3), practice non-attachment or what Patanjali calls, "vairagya".

The first one is easy, do the practice every day and during a time I set up specifically for it's success. It won't work if I say to myself, "I'll practice at 11 tomorrow, today at 9." It has to be at the same time so that you actually get it done AND so that it becomes a routine. In a two hour chunk of time, often I'll practice for thirty minutes, then I'll need to take a break to feed Dashiel; then I'll have another thirty minutes more of practice, and need to take another break to play. And so on...since I practice with Dash, this means that his needs are met throughout the practice. This is why they are so many stops. 

Oftentimes I do five or ten Namaskars to warm up to get back to where I was in the sequence before. This builds strength because some days I end up doing twenty to thirty Namaskars!

The second one requires coming to standing after each asana at the top of your mat. The positives are that you are able to settle yourself before undergoing the next asana, and you can give your wee baby (if you are practicing with your child) a kiss or a cuddle. You can also catch your breath and build your momentum again. If you are coming back to practice from a pregnancy or a break, this is a very good way to develop stability and stamina. 

The third is much more elusive. Patanjali calls non attachment "vairagya" which is first introduced in the first of his four songs on yoga, in the Samadhi Pada at sutra 1.12: Abyasa vairagyabyam tannirrodaha.

The concept of being "without attachment" to our highly cared for and oftentimes precious practices is something that many of us work on. Daily practice - done with steadiness, for a long time and without breaks goes hand-in-hand with also not striving for perfection while learning to let go.

Years and time on the mat inside yourself and with your practice will give you the information to make vairagya work. We need patience, perseverance and a lot of inward looking (within this same concept, I say "just say no to the daily yoga selfie!"). What we don't need is taking daily practice in a way that removes us from keeping a poetic reality on our life or becoming attached to the final end perfected product. 

Non attachment also means practicing every day within the limits of our abilities, without harming another vital aspect of our lives. We must try to let go of our attachments to the pleasurable parts in our practices; on that same note try not to be adverse to something in our practice that we are dodging; we should do it with equal effort placed on the pleasurable bits and the uncomfortable bits.  

A practical example is that I can enter a posture right now and say to myself the entire time, "It used to feel like this...I am not as flexible or strong...it should be like this" and my mind can take over comparing myself to this yogini whom I used to be.

INSTEAD I must think, the vessel I am occupying is different, that time before is over and now, with this new awareness and strength that I am building, I will do the posture with more ease, more stamina and it will feel differently, look differently and be a whole new experience. So because of this, the posture won't be like it used to be, so I can't attach to that experience at all. It won't serve me or my practice if I do.

It is this clear mind of not thinking of the past or what we were once before which can bring us to a place of deeper meditative awareness.

**

And how is it working so far? Dashiel is now four and a half months old, and I can share that we are rockin' practice. There are new yogic nuggets that are born every day. I find new gems of information from each jump back. 

What am I doing differently? I am not changing the practice in any way, just altering how I enter and exit asanas. Here are a few examples listed below. And maybe they can help you, yoga reader, become more committed to daily practice, and even let go a little bit more so that vairagya becomes achievable.

Cheers  to you, and happy practices from Love Yoga, Aberdeen.

• Float to standing from downward dog - take time to hang in the air
• Stay in chataranga for more than one breath - sometimes five or ten breaths
• Jump through alternating the top crossed leg; jumping back alternating the top leg
• Instead of jumping through with straight legs, go for the tight cross, hovering and straighten the legs out in in front, and then sitting down like a helicopter - stay here for a few breaths before lowering!
• Do fifteen to twenty back bends; limit the drop backs and doing more floor work; using a block to get the legs to do the work, and of course the chest follows suit
• Sing the sutras while practicing to calm your baby (or calm yourself).

Us doing our practice, and singing prayers, at Eco Yoga, Argylle