How Big is Your World?

Posted on September 15, 2015 by admin

Habitat is a wonderful word, carrying layers of meaning and subtle implications. It includes the physical place where something lives, the environmental factors that support and contribute to its well being, as well as other species that may be key components of this ecosystem. From a physical point of view, most of the planet serves as a habitat for the modern human as we have been shown to be a very adaptable species when it comes to the outer environment. And now we have space stations orbiting the earth, with dreams of Mars and beyond.

But, from a psychological/mental perspective, most modern humans inhabit the tiniest of worlds; one limited by their own narrow minded thinking and fear based ideological beliefs. These self created prisons and personal hells shape our behavior, and are reeking havoc on the environment and ecosystems that support our existence. How did the human become the species that destroys its own habitat?

This was the driving question of Thomas Berry‘s life and it inspired many extraordinary books, including The Dream of the Earth, one of the most important books of the 20th century. One possible perspective is that the modern human has completely collapsed its collective soul. Whether through over-reliance of logic and reason, or just plain fear of the unknown, we no longer inhabit the soul. We some how live outside its domain, the way James Duffy, a character in James Joyce’s short story, “A Painful Case” “lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses.” In our detachment from what is real and spiritually meaningful, we have forgotten how to nurture the environment that allows the soul to thrive, and barely acknowledge its existence. Because of this, we allow others to decide how big our dreams can be. We allow others to impose limits on our spiritual freedom, never acknowledging or trusting the deep inner wisdom of our own unique soul journey. And we are devastating the planet that nurtures or existence.

Fortunately, the Soul is making a comeback. The Feminine Spirituality that nurtures soulness is returning. Spiritual liberation is upon us, if we can find the courage to plunge into the unknown. For us somanauts, our soul journey is to fully and deeply inhabit this human form we call the body, in its soul dimension, which is the whole cosmos, physical as well as psychic. In the last post there is a brief description of the triune soul, including the Celestial, Mental and Physical Souls. When we can begin to see these soul realms as inter-related habitats, with healthy and unhealthy ecologies, we can begin the process of inhabiting, healing and reconciliation, both within our own soul realms, and simultaneously within the collective soul of humanity, the planet, and the cosmos. We’ll look at the Mental Soul first, and then, for our embodied practice, dive into the Physical Soul. We’ll call upon the Celestial Soul angels to help with both!

Mental Soul

The Mental Soul is the realm of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, creativity, imagination and intelligence. It is also the home of the ego, the realm where both the pathology and the healing begin. The poor ego has become a punching bag for much of pop psychology and pop spirituality, and this misunderstanding is a major obstacle to spiritual maturity. We need a healthy ego to continue to mature. The Samkhya term ahamkara, the ‘I maker’, refers to the natural and essential psychological processes that lead to the development of a strong, wise and unique self sense.

The Mental Soul is also home to the buddhi, or intelligence, and a key role of the buddhi is to keep the ego healthy, but in check. An unhealthy ego oscillates between an over-inflated view of itself with a deflated one, runs wild with imagination and self deception, and makes decisions from these deluded perspectives. What about me me me…? Trouble begins here. A healthy ego just does its job of navigating the incarnational journey without trying to personalize anything, and leaves the key decision making to the buddhi. A strong buddhi is essential for this. To inhabit this realm in a healthy way we need to awaken and nurture this balanced relationship between ahamkara and buddhi.

Thomas Berry’s 4th principle can help us understand nature of a healthy triune soul, and the Mental Soul especially, as it is a fundamental description of Soul health. We need all three of these basic laws Thomas describes to function simultaneously. If one is missing, or dysfunctional, problems will arise.

Principle 4: “The three basic laws of the universe at all levels of reality are differentiation, subjectivity and communion. These laws identify the reality, the values and the directions in which the universe is proceeding.”

Differentiation is simple on the surface. Every form, from atoms to galaxies, are unique. The Universe never exactly repeats itself. To honor our soul, we must allow our uniqueness to awaken and flourish. Differentiation also means we can function as as independent being at all levels of reality. We do not need to be dependent upon mommy, daddy, or guru to live our lives. Ideally, parents and teachers allow us to discover our own inherent freedom. Interestingly enough, this independence is a very clear expression of ego. I am different, I am unique. The buddhi understands that independence is a cosmic law, and really ‘nothing special’, because everyone is unique. There is no need for an inflated, or deflated self sense. However, many spiritual communities, cults and fundamentalist groups cultivate the dependence of their followers as a means of maintaining power and control. We are superior, and you are inferior, but if you do what we say, you will be safe. Yikes! This is not to imply that independent beings cannot continue to learn from and evolve with others, as we will see with ‘communion’.

Subjectivity states that the soul is also the Soul. The individuated self is also the Self, Drashtuh, the Seer. This is the integration of the infinite unbounded Celestial Soul or Atman into everyday consciousness. Infants live here, but the incarnational process gradually draws them into the Physical and Mental Souls, and when these are not well integrated, the Celestial Soul is forgotten and the spiritual world collapses. A healthy buddhi also keeps the ego in check here. Grandiosity can run rampant when the ego discovers the infinite and stakes its claim. “I am a spiritually enlightened being and I can do no wrong”. Naive students can project this grandiosity onto their teacher, and if the teacher is not awake, their own egos can get sucked into believing this as well.

Communion is the reality that the Universe is a Community of Beings, inextricably intertwined within and without each other. Souls need community, and find community at every level of reality, from humans, to angels of the celestial realms, to the animal and plant spirits of the lower realms. Communion is about relationships, where we can safely dissolve egoic boundaries without losing our personal identity. The buddhi monitors and regulates this process and helps repair and restore the inevitable ruptures that take place in relationships.

We also need communities of humans that give us full support to pursue our own wholeness and not tie us down with dogma and small mindedness. We all hold a unique piece of the cosmic puzzle. It is our dharma to unfold that piece, discover how it fits in with the other pieces and share it with the world.

Studies of the attachment process, one of the great contributions of the modern west to the understanding of the developing mind, high-light the role played by emotionally mature adults in helping an infant slowly evolve the ego or “I sense” and the buddhi or intelligence, and thus continue grow to emotional adulthood, and maybe even spiritual adulthood.

The infant begins with no ego boundaries and can merge with its environment. In the idealized attachment process, the parent(s), as carrier of love in the form of nurturing and safety, merges with the infant to provide strength, security and support. The parent appears to the infant/child as all-knowing and all powerful. The mental soul of the child remains latent in the beginning. A mature parent gradually allows the baby/child/adolescent to differentiate. This involves developing its own self sense or ego, and its own ability to make decisions, awakening the mental soul level. All the while,the parents still provide the primary guidance in monitoring and modulating the emotional ups and downs of being alive. Love is constant channeled from the celestial soul, even through hard times and deep disagreements come and go.

As the physical soul matures through biology and healthy living, the intelligence of the mental soul, the buddhi, awakens, and guides the ego towards a realistic perspective on its own unique capacities. Parents own human frailties are exposed and everyone’s humanity is acknowledged. Mature parents have a strong self sense of their own and do not confuse their own needs and wants with those of the child. This leads to healthy differentiation. Healthy parenting provides clear examples of trusting surrender into relationships and freedom to be and become a unique being. This leads to healthy communion. When love is the foundation, subjectivity flourishes. Of course, the process is never as smooth as the idealized projections. Children come into the world with their own past life karma, and parents have the karma of their parents as well, so it is usually quite messy.

The Physical Soul

Inhabiting the Physical Soul requires the activation of perception, as this is the major modality through which it functions. Through perception we begin to navigate the inner world of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. In any somatic exploration, we begin with the complementary elements earth and space, also known as weight and lightness. (Please explore and inhabit these in all poses and life.)

Next we move into water and fire, another pair of complementary elements. B.K.S. Iyengar, writing in Light on Pranayama, equates ‘prana’, or our life energy, with the balance of fire and water. Fire warms the water and gets it moving. Water cools the fire and prevents overheating and burnout. Water is yin, fire is yang. In balance you have the whole spectrum of possibilities. The circulatory system is the best place to play with fire and water, so we will now move into the vyana vayu and see what appears.

My favorite pose of exploration these days is supported bridge, where weight and lightness prepare for a deeper experience of fire and water. Near the block, find the bifurcation of the aorta and inferior vena cava and open up the flow in both directions, toward the head, and toward the tail. (Blockages in my neck/throat lead to the excess redness of the face.) Trace the blood vessels as a flow up into the legs and back down as well. Next slide up under the heart and carefully lift the heart/liver so the aorta and vena cava stay long and free. No hinging of the spine! Track out to arms and hands and back to heart. Open soft palate and adjust skull on C-1 to help release neck pressure. Extra height under the shoulders may help here, as in sarvangasana. Now begin to lubricate the mesentery by lifting it up away from the blood vessels and imagining a thin layer of fluid sliding around. This begins the differentiation of the median plane of connective tissue in the body to help liberate front from back, flexion from extension, and the anterior nerve roots from the posterior.

Now, from the space surrounding the heart, feel the mediastinum, especially the posterior, and begin to imagine a linking of the mediastinum with the mesentery. To do this you have to pass through the diaphragm and liver, spreading them laterally to fill the space across the whole torso. Lubricate the ligaments and tendons so the tissue is more pliable and the organs feel more freedom of movement. When the mediastinum, posterior liver tissues and the mesentery meet, knit them together elastically, so in backbends, the whole net stretches evenly. Most students by pass the liver region, giving the table top look to backbends. B.K.S. Iyengar was a master of exploring the inner world through the elements. This is a backbend from the median plane, where fire, water and the connective tissues are in perfect harmony.

Similar action of the median plane is needed in forward flexion poses such as bakasana and uttanasana. No wrinkles in the median plane, but there is an elastic elongation of the core tissues. This keeps the organs toned and the fluids reaching into every nook and cranny of the body. Feel free to take this exploration into any of your favorite poses or sequences.

This is ‘inhabiting’ the body, and prepares us for allowing the awakened body to be a gateway to the shamanic realms, where the hidden dimensions of the soul can be liberated and healed. Next week we will look at rotations and how these poses help expand our perception of the fluids into the discs and spinal canal and how when we can inhabit the inner spine, the cosmic realms begin to appear more spontaneously.

Cosmic Yoga

Posted on September 2, 2015 by admin

I decided to call my Ojai classes “Cosmic Yoga”. I’d rather call them just ‘yoga’, but there are so many variations of yoga out there, some truly horrifying, that the term ‘yoga’ can be very misleading. And I figured I might get the right people’s attention with the word ‘Cosmic’. We’ll see how it goes!

What is Cosmic Yoga ? My cosmic origins go back 13.7 billion years or so, but my cosmic teaching actually began when I met Thomas Berry and his protégé Brian Swimme back in the early 1980’s. They provided a context for my life and teaching that was unlike anything I had ever experienced or even imagined.

Bea Briggs, a yoga teacher from Chicago, told me about Brian, an astro-physicist by training, who lived in the Bay Area and suggested I contact him. I did and he mentioned he was just about to begin teaching a course at Holy Names College in Oakland, a few miles from my home, and suggested I take the course. The material covered the core of Thomas Berry’s work and became the basis for Brian’s ‘Canticle to the Cosmos’ video/cd set, which I highly recommend for anyone with cosmic aspirations. Through Brian I met Thomas and my life changed dramatically. (Brian, also featured in the Science section of this site with the “Powers of the Universe’ also has played a huge role in my own unfolding.)

Thomas became a major mentor to me also, and I was blessed to spend time with him on many occasions over the years, the highlight being the week Bea Briggs, Thomas and I spent at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana, somewhere back in the mid 1980’s, co-teaching “Yoga and the Cosmic Creation Story”. We were a little ahead of our time, but it was a fascinating week.

Thomas was a Catholic priest, amazingly enough, but primarily a scholar of human culture. Widely read in European history, Thomas also was deeply impressed with the East and wrote books on Buddhism and the Religions of India. And most of all, Thomas was an awakened Visionary. I am still in awe at how clearly and succinctly he assessed the modern era, saw how as a species we arrived at our historical moment, and chartered a very detailed path to restore harmony and balance to the planet. He fully embodied ‘the awakening process’ in a totally unique and profound way. He was a Taoist, a cosmologist and a spiritual teacher, but he always referred to himself as a ‘geologian’, a student of the earth.

The core of the cosmic teaching revolves around what Thomas called the ‘Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process’. What follows are the 12 principles, and then my own commentary and translation for yoga people.

‘Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process’, by Thomas Berry.

1. The Universe, the solar system, and the planet earth, in themselves, and in their evolutionary emergence, constitute for the human community the primary revelation of that ultimate mystery whence all things emerge into being.

2. The universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time. The unity of planet earth is especially clear; each being of the planet is profoundly implicated in the existence and functioning of every other being of the planet.

3. From its beginning, the universe is a psychic as well as a physical reality.

4. The three basic laws of the universe at all levels of reality are differentiation, subjectivity and communion. These laws identify the reality, the values and the directions in which the universe is proceeding.

5. The universe has a violent as well as a harmonious aspect, but is consistently creative in the larger arc of its development.

6. The human is that being in whom the universe activates, reflects upon and celebrates itself in conscious self awareness.

7. The earth, within the solar system, is a self-emergent, self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-governing, self-healing , self-fulfilling community. All particular life systems, in their being, their sexuality, their nourishment, their education, their governing, their healing and their fulfillment, must integrate their functioning within this larger complex of mutually dependent earth systems.

8. The genetic coding process is the process through which the world of the living articulates itself in its being and its activities. The great wonder is the creative interaction of the multiple codings among themselves.

9. At the human level genetic coding mandates a trans-genetic cultural coding by which specifically human qualities find self expression. Cultural coding is carried on by educational processes.

10. The emergent process of the universe is irreversible and non-repeatable in the existing world order. The movement from non-life to life on the planet earth is a one time event. So to the movement from life to the human from of consciousness. So also the transition from the earlier to the later forms of human culture.

11. The historical sequence of cultural periods can be defined as the tribal-shamanic period, the neolithic settlement period, the classical civilization period, the scientific-technological period and the emerging ecological period.

12. The main task of the human in the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth community in what can be considered the emerging ecological period of earth development.

My notes: (watch the ‘Canticle to the Cosmos’ series if you really want to go more deeply into this.)

1.Revelation: Thomas was deeply immersed in the religious practices of India, as well as those of the Native Americans, and both were very clear that creation was sacred. This has been lost in the Judeo-Christian-Scientific West where spirit and matter were somehow cleaved apart. Heaven, and God, were ‘out there’ somewhere, and the degradation of the Earth was the result of this belief. Thomas wanted the return of the feminine perspective that creation is Divine and the primary source for Revelation, not the Bible, or written scripture.

2. Oneness: Thomas was an advaita Vedantan. That the infinite and the finite were one, not two, was implicitly obvious to him. That every aspect of creation was intertwined is also seen in the image of Indra’s Net, or Web, the Indian metaphor for wholeness.

3. A recapitulation that Creation is not ‘just material’, but has layers of reality not easily seen. This ‘esoteric’ aspect in known in Shamanic cultures as well as those who hold Creation as Divine.

4. That these are the fundamental driving forces in the universe is one of Thomas’ fascinating insights. Amazingly enough, remove any one of these three and the Universe collapses. Brian unfolds this quite beautifully in lesson 4 of the Canticle. For yoga students and yoga teachers, the question becomes “are you allowing all three of these to manifest as deeply as possible?”

Differentiation refers to uniqueness. Every iota of creation is unique, never before existing, never to appear again in the exact same way. Like snow flakes, we all have total cosmic permission to be totally unique. Your body/mind, your life, is yours alone, unique and special. We all imitate in the beginning to get started. That is why we have mirror neurons. But ultimately, trust your own individuality. As teachers, this is even more important. Can you give permission for each student to be unique while still honoring the integrity of the pose? Fundamentalist communities have serious problems with this because they control people by limiting/stifling their individuality.

Subjectivity states that every iota of creation has Cosmic depth. Each of us, from atoms to galaxies, and all beings, speak from the Infinite Depths of Mystery. Atman is Brahman. Tat vam asi. In any posture, in any and every moment, feel the infinite presence, drashtuh svarupe. Nurture this!

Communion reflects wholeness and the inextricable intertwining of all forms across space and time. Wholeness, or Oneness is not just a good idea! To dive into this one is mind boggling. Awakening allows you to draw upon many traditions and teachers where awakening is emerging. The Whole Universe is Awakening. You just have to wake up and pay attention. Cosmic clues are everywhere!

5. The explosion of a star gave birth to our solar system. The churning and shattering of volcanoes, earthquakes and typhoons actually helps replenish and refresh the life conditions, even as destruction is also needed. Kali serves this purpose on many levels.

6. Awe is the primary expression of awakening, and then celebration. To Quote Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it.”

7. This begins Thomas’ instructions of how societies and cultures self organize and begins to lay out a blueprint for large scale social changes.

8. Biology is a major means for the Cosmos to carry forth learning and experience in time. Humans can see because 2 billion years ago, a cell learned how to convert solar energy to food. The chlorophyll molecule begat the retinol molecule and vision was born.

9. Culture is another means to carry forth wisdom and experience through time. Story telling, drawing, music, dance and writing are all means to convey information to future generations. And now we have ‘the cloud’.

10. The arrow of time travels in one direction in our world. For many generations humans believed that life unfolded in ever repeating cycles. Not so in the cosmos. Cycles may repeat, but they are never the same. This puts a lot more urgency in dealing with the present conditions.

11. Thomas was a cultural historian who saw history in geological terms. He described our historical moment as the termination of the Cenozoic era and the beginning of something new. The direction we go as a planet is being determined by choices humans make today.

12: What is the destiny of the human? To be determined.

Chakras, Vayus and Asana in Awakening

Posted on August 12, 2015 by admin

The Big Picture

Yoga is the exploration of: Awakening and stabilizing that Awakening, aka: Enlightenment, Self Realization, Moksha, Freedom from Suffering, etc, and involves Awareness, Attention, Intention, and Identification. This awakening allows our own unique creativity to emerge as a crucial component to the on-going planetary and Cosmic awakening arising in the fullness of this moment.

This exploration requires:
1. an ability to: differentiate the two perspectives available to humans:
Purusha and Prakriti, Being and Becoming, Luminous Emptiness and Creation, Now and Time, The Changeless and Impermanence, etc; cultivate each as a proficiency or skill, and integrate them into …

2. the realization of Oneness, of Non-duality, Advaita. That the two points of view, while differentiated, are never separate from each other. Purnamadah, purnamidam.

3. the recognition that the “I am”, the Self, Atman, ‘drashtuh svarupe‘, where the Infinite emerges into form as Soul, is eternally unbounded, luminous and the source of all creativity.

4. the understanding that life conditions, experiences and karma have created patterns of belief, thought and emotional reactivity that can obscure or completely hide the inner light of soul and inhibit creativity.

5. that there are skillful means, upayas, that specifically address these obscurations and reveal the inner light. (Citta vrtti nirodha, sthira sukham asanam, Mindfulness, etc.

6. that these obscurations appear as either rigidity, an imbalance of tamas, or chaos, an imbalance of rajas; or possibly combinations of the two. And they all involve a confusion of self-identity. (vrtti sarupyam itaratra.)

7. Somatic practices such as hatha yoga transform these imbalances back into coherence and harmony, sattva, by bringing attention/awareness to the deeper structures of the nervous system, including the gut body and cardiac nervous system, as well as the other physiological systems, which have their own inherent intelligence that moves toward healing and wholeness. Surrender into this awakened intelligence ( ishvara pranidhana, II-47: prayatna shayithilyaananta samapattibhyam) dissolves (nirodha) the self confusion (avidya), and allows the light of the soul to shine clearly (I-3: tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam,) and Divine creativty to emerge as your life journey.

8. This process of healing and awakening creativity is an evolutionary impulse rippling throughout the entire Universe. (I-40: paramaanu-parama-mahattvaanto’sya vashikaarah

The Details

How can we work with chakras and vayus ‘on the mat’ to transform psychological/emotional/spiritual confusion into light?

There are seven major energy centers in the human, known as chakras or energy wheels. As somanauts, we bring the buddhi (as light) to each and explore them as regions of movement and coordination of movements. This allows ‘enlightened posture and movements, or movement/posture as Divine Prayer. When all seven have been turned on (lit up), there is a clear sense of the spinal axis as emerging from the chakra line, like beads of light on a string. This of course, is refined in tadasana.

Our spiritual home base.
4th chakra: The center of our universe, where love, wisdom and compassion are awakened and sustained and all the chakras learn to work together. We begin here, and return again and again until we are rooted here as a felt sense in the body deeply linked to Mother Earth and Father Sky. It also supports heart and lungs, and feeds energy to upper limbs and head for movement and support and integrates the subtle spinal movements with the breath. Feel the heart chakra as a point where the infinite expands into form and keeps going. It’s a continuous opening.
Lower chakras:

1st chakra: tail and legs: the three pillars of support in tadasana, and the anal mouth, the root of the gut body. The first cosmic gate, opening a connection to Mother Earth. 2nd chakra: Sacral region: small movements at sacro-illiac joints and the bladder as an organ of support and vibrancy. 3rd chakra: upper abdominal region: liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach, adrenals, descending fibers of the diaphragm, T10 – L3 and more. Modulates spinal curves where the lumbar undergoes large changes in shape. We’ll see more below when we get to the samana vayu.

Upper chakras.
5th chakra: continues support and movement of head, jaws, mouth, and tongue. Integrates cervical and thoracic curves in movement and support. 6th chakra: inner ears, third eye, pituitary center. Subtle movement of skull on C-1, a place often stuck. Cranial-sacral work involves integration skull and sacrum, 6th and 2nd chakras in subtle inner waves and inner energy fields. 7th chakra: crown, above the skull, organizes movements that totally release neck. The second cosmic gate, opening connections to the heavenly realms/Father Sky.

Now we add to the mix the physiological/spiritual organizing energies of aliveness known as the Five Prana Vayus. These are:
Prana = what we take in / expansion / upper body centered
Apana = what we get rid of / condensing / lower body centered
Samana = what we choose to keep / the balancer / middle body centered
Vyana: distributing the good stuff to all cells and tissues
Udana: growth and development on biological, emotional/psychological/spiritual levels.

Can we ‘feel’ these five organizing activities as movements of energy and energetic fields? Can we integrate these with the chakras? This will bring us to the basic laws of living structures and the effortless support they offer. Then our poses and practice in asana become divine prayers, healing and awakening creativity.

The primary organizing activity in the Universe is the balance between expanding and condensing. This is the yin/yang of Taoism and Chinese medicine, and also ‘Tensegrity’ as articulated by Buckminster Fuller, Tom Myers etc. In a tensegrity structure, like the human body, the compression elements push out against the tension elements, which in turn pull in against the compression elements. B.K.S. Iyengar describes asana as the balancing of centripetal (toward the center) and centrifugal (away from center) forces. (Light on the Yoga Sutras on Patanjali). A star, like our sun, is delicately balanced between the intense condensing caused by gravity and the equally intense expansion created by the nuclear fire. Our life flows from this dynamic relationship at all levels of reality.

As the prana vayu governs taking in, we can experience it as an expanding energy field centered in the chest (fourth chakra) to open heart and lungs. It is the yang, or centrifugal energy. Imagine this as a radial expansion, like the opening of the hoberman sphere. In kinesiology, we feel prana also in supporting the action and movement of the arms, ribs and head.

The apana vayu governs releasing out and thus is a condensing or squeezing field centered in the lower body (first and second chakras). It is the yin, or centripetal energy. When functioning in a healthy manner, apana squeezes out solid and liquid waste from below, but also helps to squeeze the air out of the lungs. Kinesiologically, apana can be felt supporting the action and movement of the pelvis, legs and tail, maintaining grounding energy in posture and movement.

Samana is the balancer. It integrates the upper body action of taking in with the lower body action of squeezing out. Usually described in digestive terms, as it is a third chakra energy, somanauts explore the samana’s role in balancing the upper body and lower body in movement. It’s role is to integrate the movements of upper body/head and arms with movements of the lower body/legs and tail like in the cheetah. Notice the cheetah is actually flying more than running. Notice also the coiling and uncoiling of the core as it oscillates between flexion and extension. This is the mammalian action will will explore first in the asanas.

Ideally there is a single integration of all five vayus, the prana, apana and samana riding on vyana and allowing udana to function at highest most refined level possible. Iyengar describes this as samyama in asana, where organs of action, organs of perception and intelligence (buddhi) integrate into a single conscious movement in the entire body.

Now we add the poses. Take what we have covered above and integrate with what follows.

Integration through the Standing Poses

Lesson 5 of the basic course in my home study section of the site covers this,
(and saves me the need to rewrite it all! ) so please click here to continue.

Flipping the Dog (Please click here.)

Into Inversions

Preview of Coming Attractions