Yoga can heal? After 15 years of yoga teaching to thousands of persons and following them face to face and with social networks, I wanted to give an answer to this question. My answer comes from somewhere into my mind but not from brain, it is a vertical thinking, nothing to explain, nothing to plan. Half of who is reading now could prefer bill Tara' horizontal words (see below), for the others, the vertical thinking is a feeling, the truth you get in a look, the very first thinking before thinking (which has happened in a before space). What happen before thinking? A simple exercize to understand: breathing check up.
Mukund Bhole (www.yogabhole.com) has set a vertical system from an indian medical 50 years' experience. I would sum it up in "feel instead of think" your yoga practice. Slow your breathe, feel your inspire, extend and relax, then expire.
Use your hands like ears, to feel, experience, perceive the peel contact. Check up your bandhas specially uddiyana bandha on the inspire relax your pelvic area like a lotus flower opening, and on the expire stress a little your pelvic area (scrotum for men). Check up your breathe IN relax and extend, EX stress and contract. Mindfulness is coming back to correct breathe (possibly ujjayi), to your focus (mindfulness and drishti), to right movement (as far as you know them banda and asana). Use compassion it does not matter if you loose the rythm as a student of viola please come back to the starting point for a new play.
The words from the students I listened to at the end of the check up were close to my intent, almost intuitive or not rational. It is so different from what this society used to ask for that I consider a success the affirmation of the rightness to use sound during the asana practice, the right observation that there is nothing to understand but only to feel, and the curiosity around mindfulness as I made it works. In a few words of mine mindfulness applicated to yoga (meditation in movement) is: find your first thinkings, find them right, give them importance.
Before the yoga sequence practice, I guided a moment of mindfulness in order to choose a focus for anybody. The focus helps, as the breathe while someone loose the sense of this work to come back to a starting point. The lost of concentration is not important but the find again of mindfulness practice is mindfulness. Sometimes I say to my students who are disturbed by the external sound of a car in the street or a plane over the city, "if you get disturbed and have many thoughts please put them on the next car/plane which is passing now and let them go. Come back to your breathe. Come back to your focus."
During the asana practice, we are getting slowly in. Building a vinyasa, and mindfuling an asana. For exemple, while practicing crocodile pose, I ask for laying down on the mat, feeling the breathe into the belly, and upward body. Reconnecting to the mindful practice of bandhas. The vinyasa therapy sequence is mostly based on feet standing postures. Getting faster the practice is combined with bija mantra (small primordial sounds).
See min. 4:15 the Shiva rea video
click here
Or copy and paste later http://youtu.be/6x1kt6A0o9s
After the one hour dynamic practice, I suggest the candel or the bridge posture but done in a slow motion version, specially while getting out of the posture.
During the relaxation I create positive thinking based on a book or on some reactions at what I have caught from the collective practice. In case I taught to ashtangi, I insist on the necessity to balance the strenght with flexibility (mentally and physically) for exemple. The sense to have practice in slow motion at the begining and at the end. The technics to find when you loose them bandhas, ujjayi and focus. A book I used in the past is Natural mind, natural body of Bill Tara, specially the parts called Wellness tips and The authentic Self. Create manageable goals, make your goals actable and act them. "Goals without actions are wishes. Action without a plan is often chaos and feeds the monkeys. If we do not make plans and commitments to ourselves, our failures can easily disempower us. If we let our vision fuel our desire, we need to let our plans be the engine that moves us forward." (bill Tara).
In a nutshell, yoga is life and lifestyle. To be alive while practicing you need to improve your presence and to be a real person (as you practice yoga) you need to put into practice your self.
