Step #8, Asana Meditation – Day 3 Pranayama is the formal practice of controlled breathing. There are many techniques… each one is as accessible and beneficial as the breath itself . Squared breathing is one of those techniques and it has a calming effect. It engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which is often referred to … More Calm Breathing with Pranayama
Asana Meditation – Day 2 Though we think of ourselves as shaped by our environment, it is largely the other way around. We create our experiences in this life and thus we create the world around us. It is our inner-most, or our most subtle selves, in the form of our emotions, thoughts, and … More The Inner Creates the Outer
Asana Meditation – Day 1 What does it take to align with joy? Engagement with your surroundings? Engagement with your emotions? Engagement with your mind, your body, your heartspace? Yes, and more. Energy follows thought; this is factual. As we marry the body, breath, and mind through gentle guidance, we can create altitude and poise, … More Aligning with Joy
Asana Meditation – Day 3 In sitting upright and lengthening the spine, the breath has an opportunity to become balanced. A sloppy posture usually means a sloppy breath, a sloppy attitude, and a sloppy response to that which arises during meditation. An upright posture usually supports a poised mind and a poised attitude. From this … More Asana as Altitude
As we tally… meditate! Asana Meditation – Day 2 How do you sense your body? How do you sense your body’s alignment? That may depend on how you define your body. Proper asana is not limited to the alignment of your physical body; it also includes your emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies. Perhaps you experience … More Cooperative Components
Asana Meditation – Day 1 It is a common misconception that meditation is a way to escape or check-out from physical reality. We would say that the contrary is true; that meditation is a way to check-in. It is full immersion into the now – and that includes the body, the mind and the spirit. … More Inner and Outer Posture
Human beings are a complex, a collection of energies. We have a physical dimensionality, a robust emotion-mind set of factors, as well as an essence or spiritual, higher nature. Meditation is interested in the integration of these parts along with yoga, tai chi, chi gong, aikido, and other practices that seek to unite our components. … More 8a. the Body-Mind-Spirit
Asana reminds us that our physical body is an aspect of the breadth and scope of human Awareness. Asana also reminds us that with the physical body honored and respected through good posture and alignment, it will assist our meditative stability. A body unacknowledged, not included as an aspect of our meditative practice, is a … More 8c: the body of Awareness
Asana is a whole being process and concept. Though it begins with being about one’s posture, asana opens one to poise, composure, equipoise, and the feeling of integrity. Each of these speaks of balance, but not a type of outer balance – like balancing a book on one’s head – but inner balance, inner coordination … More 8c: Integrity begins inside.
Sitting well for meditation creates immediate benefits in one’s practice. One can sit in a chair, of course, but if it is possible to sit in a cross-legged position, the pyramidal shape of one’s body actually has effect. But since many people cannot sit like that, a couple of things can refined and support one’s … More 8b. Feel it!
There are many reasons why the classical meditation posture is the classical one. A few are: aligning the body and inner chakra system, alignment of the body, energy, mind, and emotional components of oneself, verticality stretches one energetically as high, expanded or refined as one can reach and then sustain. Also, asana provides the downward … More 8a: Asana – from the bottom to the top
The word mudra is often used in conjunction with asana. In that case, mudra is a component of an overall asana in physical yoga. But, in these meditations, mudra is the focal point for actualizing an invoked energy or an invited quality of Presence. Then, Asana is lived as the overall motivation for wanting to … More Intermediate: Mudra: actualizing energy
A human being is a complex whole. Well-being lies in coordinating the various layers of that wholeness. Coordinated, we experience creativity, ease, joy, less friction with life and others, and less pain. Uncoordinated, with one part of us ill at ease or multiple aspects not valued, we are stymied, irritable, impatient, gluttonous, and diseased. Asana … More 8b. Coordinating Vibrations
Asana is usually understood in the particularity of postures and physical yoga. And, though that is correct, asana means more than that. Asana is one’s relation to one’s physical dimensionality: to one’s entire incarnated existence and to the fields into which one’s Being is constantly expressing. When understood as such, asana invokes a spiritual maturity … More Living from Essential Being
It is called a practice for a reason. With diligence, effort, and right motivation, a meditation practice will establish within oneself. If any of these is missing or haphazard, then that which a meditation practice is and that which it will bring forward within a person cannot happen. What can happen within oneself when the … More The stature of one’s practice
The ground gives one a sense of stability and surety. What are other things that do that? concepts and beliefs some forms of relationship a sense of self, who or what we think we are thinking (“I think therefore I am.” one’s environment, or the working of appliances, or the internet, or electricity Most of … More The many grounds of one’s life
Meditation training combines two factors: feminine and masculine. Within The Practice of Living Awareness, feminine energy is within the first several steps: Flow, Soften and Open, Receive-Release as examples. Masculine energy is within the next several steps beginning with Asana. Asana brings an acuity to one’s practice: straighten up, hold the attitude and altitude, command … More Ahhh, Composure!
A balanced life? Yes, it is possible. Asana provides many obvious as well as subtle results in one’s life, meditation practice, and in how to live within a physical dimensional existence. Asana brings us to the moment, in our body, in our state of emotions, in our state of mind. Non-distracted from these, one can … More Integrity: inner balance
We begin two weeks focused on Asana and its value to meditation. Each day of the Entry practice will engage a particular aspect of the classic meditation posture (lotus or half lotus), explain how to accomplish it, and the benefits that result within one’s meditation. Downloadable podcast: may0615entry asana produces results
Composure and all its related states are one’s choice. When a desire arises, we have choice if to act upon it. When an opinion arises, we have choice if to speak it. We have choice a thousand times a day as to how to BE, what to do, to spend money or keep it in … More Choose composure! Step 8
Cause and result are a perfect pair. Each is necessary for the other. Like the components of electromagnetism, cause and result are inseparable. Because of this, putting positive causes in motion will bring positive results. A meditation practice is such, along with each technique within that practice. We have now added sacred posture to our … More The perfect pair
For thousands of years, the primary posture for meditation has been the lotus or half lotus position. One could wonder if that is simply because people sat on the ground indian-style for the most part. But, in fact, there are many good and even important reasons to use the classic meditation posture if one can. … More The Inner Dynamics of Asana and Meditation