Jivamukti Yoga Focus of The Month~April '09

The Seat Of Isis

sarva mangala mangalye shive sarvartha sadhike sharanye tryambake gauri narayani namo’stu te (from Durga Saptashati, Chapter 11) I salute the three-eyed goddess, who fulfills the desire for liberation. Realization arises with Her blessing. She is the world itself. Only through the experiences of life can the soul be perfected. Honor this gift, your life.

To the ancient Egyptians, the Goddess Isis was the divine personification of the perfection that comes through the ability to connect perfectly. It was Isis, after all, who, through her power of love, reintegrated the dismembered body of her brother/husband, Osiris. She knew how to put it all back together because she held the key that connects: love.
Interestingly, the Egyptian hieroglyph for Isis, the Divine Mother Goddess, looks like a chair. Her hieroglyph looks like a seat, and its phonetic sound is st, like the Sanskrit sound sthit, which represents stability (the English word “steady” is related).
Obviously, the Egyptians did not mean that Isis should be referred to as “Your Chairness.” They were worshiping a quality of connectedness and relationship to the Earth that is inherent in the power aspect of the goddess.
Ram Dass, the great American spiritual teacher, put a chair on the cover of his classic 1971 book Be Here Now. Not a symbolic chair like the Egyptian hieroglyph for Isis, but an early American ladder-back, rattan seat chair, entangled in a network of interconnected lines that form a wheel. How appropriate for such an innovative book, one of the first books on yoga written by an American to reveal that yoga is about so much more than physical exercise.
Yoga is about being kind and good and connected well to the Earth. When you are, the Earth will support and sustain you. She as the Mother Goddess will also provide you with the means to go beyond mere sustainability, allowing you to rise out of all that has previously bound you to the mundane and impermanent. Through the experiences of life, opportunities to purify our karmas arise, leading to enlightenment or liberation from the world of suffering. Asana can be a means to overcome the limitations of the body revealing the more subtle sources of physical form.
Asana practice is a form of goddess worship. The Earth is another way of referring to the Divine Mother. Mother Earth is the Goddess. To practice asana means to practice perfecting one’s relationships with all aspects of the Earth and all beings that inhabit the Earth.
The Goddess supports those who are not greedy. Selflessness is the key to living happy in the world. It is the key to successful asana practice. It is the key to the attainment of Yoga. It is the way of the jivanmukta, the liberated being. A yogi walks in peace upon the earth, embracing each day, each experience, as providing opportunities for giving back more than he or she has taken.
The root of every asana is this steady connection to the earth. When your connection to the earth is stable, you feel ease in body and mind. Through this ease of being you begin to feel whole and with that wholeness, disconnection subsides, revealing your holiness -your own divine nature.
Practice: Seat of Isis Sequence found on pages 110-111 of the Jivamukti Yoga Book -Sharon Gannon (text adapted from the JY book)

Jivamukti Yoga Focus of the Month~March 09

Guru Mantra
Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnur, Gurur devo Maheshwarah,Guruh sakshat, param Brahma, tasmai shri guravay namah -Guru Stotram
Our creation is that guru (Brahma-the force of creation); the duration of our lives is that guru (Vishnu-the force of preservation); our trials, tribulations, illnesses, calamities and the death of the body is that guru (devo Maheshwara-the force ofdestruction or transformation). There is a guru nearby (Guru Sakshat) and a guru that is beyond the beyond (param Brahma). I make my offering (tasmai) to the beautiful (shri) remover of my darkness, my ignorance (Guru); it is to you I bow and lay down my life (namah).
Guru is the remover of darkness: Gu means darkness, and Ru means remover. Darkness refers to what obscures the light of awareness. Guru is the enlightenment principal that aids one in the realization of the true Self, the whole Self, the holy Self. The guru removes avidya, or ignorance, which is a case of mistaken identity. It is when you think you are your personality, mistaking your body/mind container for who you are and ignore who you really are. It is when you feel separate from the whole.
By reciting this mantra with a sincere heart, you will see that the power that enlightens is all around you at all times. The mantra asks for the ability to see the guru in all names and forms, and even to acknowledge, love and serve the guru who you cannot see, who is beyond all visible forms. The guru is your own self, the inner guiding light.
Your own birth, the creation principle, holds within it the potential for enlightenment. This would include your parents, your day and the place of your birth and all the circumstances surrounding your birth. Many people find it difficult to recognize the guru in their parents. Many of us spend a lot of time complaining about the bodies we have been given by our parents and blame our parents for the difficulties in our lives.
The situation we are living in right now at this time is where guru Vishnu manifests. If we could see our present circumstances-who we work with, who we live with, who our friends are-as embodying the guru principle, we might stop perceiving them as in the way of our happiness and begin to realize that they might be providing us with the way for our enlightenment to unfold.
The most difficult circumstances to accept in a positive way are the calamities, the injuries and illnesses that befall us physically or mentally. Guru devo Maheshwara manifests as the big challenges in our lives, which actually provide us with the greatest opportunities for clearing away avidya and embracing all that happens to us as a gift from God. Destruction always opens the door for transformation.
To see the guru in the teacher who is right in front of you, giving you the teachings of enlightenment, may be very difficult for us due to preconceived idealistic notions about what a guru is suppose to look like. This prejudice may disable us from seeing past the outer form or personality of the teacher.
To acknowledge that the guru is beyond name and form, beyond what we could imagine with the limited vision of the thinking mind, is to begin to open to the mystery of cosmic awareness.
The most potent prayer is the last line of the mantra in which we ask to have the good sense to be humble enough not to miss our chance to recognize the guru when they do appear. Only if we can let go of our self-cherishing, our pride, our need to be recognized and our yearning to be given credit for the things we do, can we ever hope to encounter the guru, that which brings enlightenment to our soul.
-Sharon Gannon

Note: We have posted the focus of the month for February, March and April 2009 in our website http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/.

Satya and Veganism
satya-pratishthayam kriya-phalashrayatvam (PYS II.36)When one does not defile one's speech with lies, the words one says are listened to and acted upon in a positive and immediate manner. The speaker will be able to say what they mean. What one says comes true.
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali gives us five recommendations, called yamas, for how we should treat others if we want to attain liberation. The second yama is satya, which means "truthfulness." Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati explains that truthfulness means "not to speak untruth, physically, vocally, or mentally.... Speech should not be deceitful, mistaken, or barren of information. It should be used for the service of all, not for injury to any creature."
As yoga practitioners, we come to a time in our lives when we question whether what we have been told is true, including assumptions we hold about ourselves and the world around us. If we don't want to be taken in by the lies people tell us, we can begin to examine our own speech and ask ourselves if we are really saying what we mean. Part of the process of transitioning into living more honestly is to hold yourself accountable for the things you do. Most of us say we want peace, equality, and freedom for all, but our actions say something entirely different as we bite into a hamburger or order an ice-cream cone, wear a fur coat to an anti-war demonstration or serve hot dogs to our children. Once you become more aware, there's simply no way to not notice these everyday hypocrisies, these gaps in awareness justified by group behavior and the culture of dis-ease.
As consumers, we are not told the truth about where food comes from. When advertising is employed to sell meat, milk, and eggs, pictures of happy animals are used. Images like these are false advertising. The truth is that factory farms, and farms in general, are facilities where animals are exploited and manipulated for the benefit of the farm owners. Although in our hearts we know the truth about how food animals are being used, we lie to ourselves. We perpetuate this untruth when we lie to our children and to others and fail to encourage them to investigate the truth. The more we lie to others, the more others will lie to us. Eventually, it becomes quite normal to communicate through lying, never really saying what we mean or doing what we say.
Some meat eaters say they are peaceful people and would never hurt anyone-they didn't kill the animal; they're just eating what is convenient. This type of thinking is an example of how disempowered and disconnected most of the carnivorous members of our culture feel. They have been convinced that what they do doesn't really matter in the larger scheme of things. After all, it is only my lunch-just a piece of ham between two slices of bread; what harm could that do? The fact is that when we buy the meat of an animal, we are the ones who have signed his or her death sentence. If we are buying and eating meat and dairy products, then the slaughterhouse workers, meat packers, and factory farm workers are all working for us. To live by violence and then to deny that you do is to live a lie. Living a lie causes a deep fissure in the human psyche. Yoga seeks to heal that fissure.
One of the ways that you can tell if you are making progress in yoga is by observing your own voice. Through regular practice, you will find that you will be able to say what you mean and mean what you say. When this happens, it is an indication that the disease of disconnection is beginning to be healed. You will experience for yourself what is true, and all the lies you have been told, even those that you have told, will fade away in the light of the greater truth of your true potential.
-Adapted from Yoga and Vegetarianism, by Sharon Gannon

Jivamukti Yoga Focus of the Month~January 09

Focus of the month, January 2009
Laughter as a Yogic Practice

Happiness is the goal of yoga - the goal of life"All the way to heaven has got to be heaven." - St. Catherine of Siena
We can become stuck in negative habits that distance us from joy, which is our true nature. Yoga practices can help us overcome these habits by making us aware of them. When you practice asana, you may feel resistance to joy. Your tendencies toward anger, greed, jealousy and sadness may be expressed as pain and tightness in the body, and as confusion, doubt or worry in the mind. Our bodies act as storehouses for our past experiences (karmas). Memories, which trigger emotions, exist not only in compartmentalized files in the brain but are stored throughout the body in the internal organs, in the blood, in the muscles and bones, in all of the cells and tissues. As neuroscientist Candace Pert says, "The body does not exist merely to carry the head around." The mind and body are not just connected - they are actually made of the same stuff, but just appear in different densities. Consciousness, or the knowing principle, infuses the whole body and mind.
Asana practice addresses not only outer muscles and joints but also organs, deep tissues, glands, blood and fluids, helping to release toxins from them. Healthy individuals can experience a wide array of emotions and not be adversely affected because they are able to process these emotions. But when we become overloaded, and are unable to digest our sensory experiences, these feelings become toxic and become trapped in our physical tissues. Emotions can be stored deep in our organs. Unexpressed feelings and negative emotions that have been long suppressed can short-circuit the entire body-mind system, resulting in debilitating dis-ease. Fear and anxiety can seep into the large intestine. Anger can become lodged in the liver. Greed takes root in the heart.
Laughter is an ancient yogic healing technique that can rid you of deeply held negative emotions. It has profound therapeutic value in restoring well-being and health, leading to happiness. Laughter induces relaxation, and because of its ability to free the body and mind of pent-up emotions that are obstacles to self-reflection, it is a potent prerequisite to meditation. It is good when laughter is spontaneous, but when emotions have been buried for so long that they have become deep-seated tensions, the conscious practice of laughing can be very healing.
The asana called hasahasana (laugh-asana)* can help to induce laughter. Lie on your back and lift both arms and legs up toward the ceiling. Flexing hands and feet, bend the right knee as you bend the right elbow, then switch sides, going back and forth until laughter overwhelms you ... and keep laughing. As you continue to laugh, you may even feel like rolling around on the floor. Feel free to do this. If you have trouble getting the laughs going, try shouting "Ha! Ha!" or "Yahoo!" or "Ooowee!" out loud, or just allow yourself to speak nonsensical, gibberish words to spark the laughter. Let your whole body shake with laughter for no reason at all, and go beyond reason, beyond thinking. Being in a room with other people involved in the same practice will help you, beacause laughter tends to be help you, be contagious.
Continue this practice for five to ten minutes, then sit up and assume a meditation seat, keeping perfectly still. Whatever feelings arise now, let them come and let them go. You may find that tears begin to flow, and even flood your whole system. Let go of the tears. Allow this cleansing to occur by witnessing without judgment or apology. Sit with this for five to ten minutes. Then relax in shavasana and practice systematic, conscious guided relaxation of each body part, starting with the toes, moving upward through the whole body to the head. Then begin to go deeper: start with the internal organs and move upward following the chakra model - relax the organs of elimination, the organs of sexuality, the organs of digestion, the organs of blood circulation, the organs of respiration, the organs of sense and, finally, the organs of thinking.
After doing laughter meditation for a month, you will feel revived, refreshed, unburdened and deeply cleansed, with a renewed sense of balance, leading to equanimity of mind and enlightenment.

- Sharon Gannon, January 2009
*See The Art of Yoga, by Sharon Gannon and David Life, Page 64.

Jivamukti Yoga~ December 2008 Focus of the Month

Jivamukti Yoga Focus of the Month ~ December 2008

Yoga Nidra and Shavasana "Yoga Nidra is a state of complete bodily relaxation, in which the mind rests in a suspended state - awake, yet calm, and free of all distraction. The body, senses and material mind are magnetized." - Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati

Through deep relaxation, a state of Yoga Nidra arises, which can lead to kaivalyam, or samadhi, in which the sense of individualization merges with absolute, transcendental joy. The practice of shavasana (corpse pose)can facilitate the arising of this state. But for success in shavasana, you have to understand, as Shri Brahmananda suggests, "how to use fixation, suggestion and sensation, and how to use the proper pause for time." The following is a guided relaxation to be used in the practice of shavasana; it is meant to be spoken out loud by a teacher to students after they have assumed a lying-down position: "You are about to embark upon a wonderful adventure, a journey into the experience of deep relaxation. To relax means to become receptive; receptive to your own inner happiness and peace, your true nature, that which is boundless, limitless joy, that which is the very core of every being. To relax allows you to let go of everything that may be holding you back from the experience of the truth of your very being. "Start by taking your consciousness to your feet. Silently suggest: Toes, relax. Feet, relax. Ankles, relax. Let go. Calves and shins, relax. Let go. Knees, relax. Thighs, relax. Release the large muscles of the thighs. Allow them to let go of their grip on the thighbones. Relax. Let go. Allow the bones of the legs to rest in the softened tissues of the relaxed muscles. Relax hips and buttocks. Release all clenching, all gripping there. Release all tension from the pelvic area. Let go. Let go. Lower back, relax. Middle back, relax. Upper back, relax. Allow the muscles of the back to spread and melt into the floor, spreading warmth outward from the spine. Release into the floor. Let go. Allow the floor to lift up under you, to support you. Trust it beneath your body. Melt into it. Release into the floor, into the earth. Drop all your tension, anxieties, restlessness, and resistance into the floor, into the earth. Relax your abdomen and chest. Release. Soften. Soften. Fingers and hands, relax. Let go of all gripping and clenching there. No need now to hold on to anything. Everything is yours. Let go. Let go of it all, and receive everything. Relax your wrists, forearms, elbows, upper arms. Let the muscles melt away from the bones. Let the bones rest in the soft tissue of the relaxed muscles. Relax your shoulders. Allow the shoulder blades to drop into the floor. Release and soften all neck and throat muscles, allowing them to relax. Relax your face, the mask of your personality. Release your jaw. Relax your tongue. Allow your tongue to float inside your mouth. Lips, cheeks, let go. Nose, eyes, inside the nose, and behind the eyes, let go. Let go. Let go. Eyelids, eyebrows, forehead, relax. Release all tension between the eyebrows. Allow the forehead to broaden. Relax the scalp and the back of the head. Let your hair grow. The more you can melt heavily into the floor, into the earth, the lighter you will begin to feel. Allow yourself to feel light. "Go now, deep inside. Relax the internal organs, the organs of elimination. Relax the organs of sexuality. Relax the organs of digestion. Relax the organs of blood circulation. Relax the organs of respiration. Release the sense of feeling and of thinking. Allow the frontal part of your brain to slip back into the skull. Let go. Let go. "Your whole body now, inside and outside, is relaxing deeply. Great healing and rebalancing is taking place now. Don't interfere. Allow a complete letting go into inner wisdom, and peace. Let your body relax, and take your consciousness to the site of your spiritual heart, the lotus of the heart at the center of your chest. Enter into this lotus. Feel yourself inside the lotus of the heart, which is the source of all creative things. The source of love itself; unconditional, boundless, limitless joy - bliss, ananda. Feel the petals of the lotus surrounding you with their soft fragrance. Allow yourself to become this lotus of the heart, to become the source of all creative things, to become love itself; beyond name and form, beyond pleasure and pain, beyond night, and beyond day. Become boundless, limitless joy. Fall into love itself. This is who you are. Become who you are. Relax all resistance to who you are. Relax all resistance to boundless, limitless joy. You ... you ... you are love itself, happiness itself. Shantih, shantih, shantih. - Sharon Gannon, December 2008

(For further reference: Fundamentals of Yoga, by Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, and The Jivamukti Relaxation and Meditation CD.)

Jivamukti Yoga~Focus of The Month~November 2008

Compassion, Diet, Strength and Happiness

Compassion is an essential ingredient in the practice of ahimsa (non-harming), the first of the five yamas (ethical restraints) in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Through compassion, you begin to see yourself in other beings. This helps you refrain from causing harm to them. But developing compassion does something else that is of special interest to the yogi: It trains the mind to see past outer differences of form. The yogi begins to catch glimpses of the inner essence of other beings, which is happiness, and begins to see that every single creature desires happiness.
To develop compassion, examine the motives for your actions. Are they selfish or unselfish? Proclaiming that it is acceptable to eat meat because it makes you healthier, for example, is a himsic, or "harmful," attitude because the action of eating meat stems from a selfish motive - your concern for your own personal health or enjoyment. When you realize that cows and chickens want happiness just as you do, you see them as kindred souls: the distinction between you and other beings wears thin as awareness begins to dawn.
In truth, we all share consciousness, and harm inflicted upon one being, be it animal or human, is felt by all sooner or later. Some meat eaters like to argue that vegetables have feelings too, so what difference does it make if we eat chickens or carrots? The answer is simple: Patanjali gives ahimsa as a practice, meaning that you do your best to cause the least amount of harm. And it is clear that a vegetarian diet causes the least amount of harm to the planet and to all creatures.
Generally speaking, the "disease of disconnection" plagues the human condition. As a species, we are not at ease with ourselves - with our bodies, with our minds or with our feelings. We are not at ease with others - with other human beings as well as other animals. We can be nervous, competitive, fearful and worried; we crave respect and approval while simultaneously seeking dominance and power. We certainly aren't at ease with our environment, and are constantly altering it to suit our needs or wants with little regard for how our actions impact others or the earth. This dis-ease causes all sorts of problems. We are destroying ourselves, as well as other animal species and the planet, in a misguided quest to find happiness, or ease of being.
By enslaving and abusing other animals in order to feed and clothe ourselves, we deprive them of freedom and happiness. How can we hope to be free or happy when our own lives are rooted in depriving others of the very thing we say we value most in life - the freedom to pursue happiness? If you want to bring more peace and happiness into your own life, stop subjecting others to violence and unhappiness. We tell our children that "might does not make right," and yet we throw this high-minded idea out the window when it comes to the everyday reality of using might to humiliate, torture and kill the animals we raise for food.
Maitri-adishu balani PYS III.24:Through compassion, strength comes.
This sutra expresses a radical concept because it challenges the message of our enculturation, which is that strength comes from weakening another. The fork can be a powerful weapon of mass destruction or a tool to lead a movement of peaceful co-existence. Eating a compassionate, vegetarian diet will stop war and create peace in one's body, peace with animal nations and peace on earth.
Besides, it is very radical to be a vegetarian during these times! As Ingrid Newkirk, founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), reminds us: "Never be afraid of seeming radical. All the best people in history have always been radical." The word radical, like the word radish, derives from rad, meaning "root." A radical is someone who attempts to dig to the root of a situation. Yogis have always been radical. Yogis search for root causes because they understand that effective change can occur only if you change a course of action from the causal point. Failure to understand this is why so many "liberating" revolutions of the past never elicited long-lasting, positive change. They dealt only with surface symptoms, not the root causes of social and cultural problems.
Yoga means "liberation." Slavery is contrary to liberation. We can never become free by taking away the freedom of others. Through the practice of yoga, we begin to recognize ourselves as not separate from the whole, and we realize that what we do to others, we ultimately do to ourselves.
Yoga is said to be the perfection of action by the removal of selfish motivation. The yogi uses the world we live in, and the way we interact with the world, as a vehicle for transformation. A vegan diet offers an informed, intelligent, conscious and yogic way to act perfectly each time we make a choice about how we consume the world, rather than focusing on how to consume the world.
As we become more Self-confident, we become less fearful. We become less self-absorbed, and our ability to feel life all around allows us to hear what life is trying to communicate to us through nature. Through the animals and trees, water and air, the message is simple yet profound: All of life is interconnected. What we do to others affects us all. When we begin to feel this, we can free ourselves from the false idea that the earth belongs to us, and instead use our lives to benefit others. In turn, we will become happy as we discover that the best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others.

- Adapted from Yoga and Vegetarianism, by Sharon Gannon, November 2008