Charleston Yogi

This morning I practiced janu sirsasana. This pose became an analogy for the art of surrender unto God.  Upon entering a pose, we have a tendency to resist in certain spots of the body.  In this particular one, I engaged my hips and lower back, which prevented full fold over my right leg.  Guided by my breath (my anchor), I began to relax into the fold and experienced that full release, the surrender.  I felt my chest and face graze my leg as my exhale and gravity carried me down.  I interlaced my fingers around my foot and pressed my heart toward my toes.  It was beautiful and peaceful.  I felt deeply loved.

And so it is with the surrender unto God.  We resist initially because he is the mystery, the unknown, the unfathomable.  But there are some things that I do know – that he is steadfast in his love for me and wants to encapsulate me in that love.

After some time, the body begins to resist the pose again.  There are a number of reasons for this.  The exertion could be tiring or the position uncomfortable.  More often it could be a slack in concentration.  We grow accustomed to that ecstasy we experience in theasana and then begin to shift out of it inherently.

Despite my desire to bask in the glory of God, I become distracted in my heart and my focus.  My attention diverts to something else and I drift out of the sacred space we cultivated together.  But then I remember.  I realize that something has changed.  I am conscious of the absence of that deep seated love.

When we regain our drishti both with our eyes and our minds, we sink back into physical release.  Concentration returns to the full manifestation of the posture and we enter back into its benefit, this time with greater intention and maybe even more deeply.  Somehow, it is even better than before.  There is less resistance after shaking off the initial resistance.  There is simply being.  Instead of a glimpse of ecstasy, we bathe in it and saturate.

Remembering the Lord, I bring myself back to his feet.  I enter into surrender with more trust and experience.  My diversion actually provides evidence for the goodness of being one with God.  My lack of concentration actually reminds me that nothing is greater than tying my heart to his, being completely his.  I release all tension and engagement.  I sink into his presence.  Instead of momentary vision and light, I bend beneath the weight of his glory and soak in the substance of his love.

CHARLESTON, SC – Want to join hundreds of other devoted yogi’s for an afternoon of down dogs, headstands or mountain poses in one of Charleston, South Carolina’s most historic parks all the while raising money for a children’s charity? The Yoga Marathon benefitting Louie’s Kids is readying for their 7^th year as the region’s most popular yoga event.

Simply log on at www.louieskids.org/yoga and register for your personal fundraising page. Invite friends and family to support your efforts to complete 108 Sun Salutations, a yoga sequence combining 12 postures. Your specific website address will link to your email signature, Facebook, on MySpace and LinkedIn allowing for paperless donations. Tweeting and texting will increase your exposure and direct your followers to where they can donate. Many sponsors donate money for each Sun Salutation or minute of yoga completed.

“This is a particularly emotional and moving year for me personally,” explains Louis Yuhasz, founder of The Yoga Marathon and Louie’s Kids. “Last year the day before the event a 17-pound steel post shot through my windshield while I was driving on I-26 with equipment for the event, the results were a broken jaw and serious slash that ended at my neck artery. The next day while I was in a 6-hour surgery at MUSC Trauma center, the yoga marathon went on and not only did the yoga community come out in record numbers from the hundreds of studio’s across the region, this event went on to raise $25,000.00 –another 7-year record. We recorded donations from 37-states. I am indebted to the yoga community and am just as certain this year will be another extraordinary event for our community” Yuhasz went on to say.

With participants coming from as far as Asheville, NC and Jacksonville, FL to participate, many of the region’s most popular yoga instructors will lead the way in this 7th Annual Yoga Marathon on Saturday, October 9th from 12:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m., rain or shine in Marion Square. 

This year Louie’s Kids will share a portion of the proceeds with Yoga Benefits Schools, a  non-profit devoted to helping children in Title I schools benefit behaviorally and academically from regular yoga practice. In addition this will serve as a new funding source for a new Louieskids.org initiative RUNBUDDIES.ORG. Runbuddies will bring athletic mentors to the doors of children who need them most. To find out more about The Yoga Marathon and to create your personal fundraising website, visit www.louieskids.org/yoga or call 843-343-5746

About Louie’s Kids:

Louie’s Kids is a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization that raises funds to help treat childhood obesity, which afflicts 25 million American children today. Louie’s Kids works to find the best treatment options to meet the needs of each child. We find the fix that fits, one kid at a time.  Founded in 2001 in Alexandria, VA and now operates from Charleston, SC, Louie’s Kids serves economically disadvantaged kids nationwide. To learn more, visit www.louieskids.org.

I am the Lover,
of all that spreads before my vision.
To each blade of grass
that lounges gorgeous upon the dark earth;
to each tree that summits forth,
rising like a sentinel to guard its Source;
to each mountain that has its abode
in the heavenly clouds of Light;
to each animal that crawls or swims or flies,
that lives out each day following their primordial call,
to live, to be, to expand, to feel, to wither, to die,
passing like the days in the eons of eternity;
to you, I am the Lover,
who lounges back against a rock,
one leg propped against the other,
shirt open, smile spreading to the corners of my mouth,
breathing in the gorgeous perfume of your essence,
feeling the touch of your windy fingers caressing my arms
and blowing through my hair, it is me, the Lover.
It is I who asks you all my daring questions,
who comes to you for visions and signs and ecstasies,
who throws up my hands for guidance,
and you respond,
answering with rolling thunder and glistening rain
falling upon my shoulders.
It is I who asks for bold, life-giving dreams.
It is I whom you give wings to soar
to distant lands unknown.
It is I who sings your songs and dances
to your oceanic rhythms.
It is I,
your instrument, your flute,
full of your breath and playing your notes
of Love and Wisdom.
It is I,
the heart that holds the woman that shares my soul,
kissing her eyelids and breathing in the scent of her hair.
It is I,
who loves the people and all their beautiful follies,
their waves of emotions and their daring moments of generosity.
It is I,
who will tell the tales of your beauty
who will sing poetry from the tops of your hills
who will bring your light to eyes covered in scars
It is I, and it is You,
Lover and Beloved.

~ Matthew Foley

 Written at Eagle Creek Campground, just outside Yellowstone National Park. These were moments of reverie experienced in the natural world, written with the occasional help of a bottle of red wine and the company of Divine-drunk mystic poets.

I recently read an amazing article in Yoga Journal on “Your Brain on Meditation,” by Kelly McGonigal (www.yogajournal.com/health/2601). She teaches yoga, meditation, and psychology at Stanford University and is the author of Yoga for Pain Relief. It is so inspiring that there is now scientific evidence that your brain on meditation actually changes its structure in different regions of the brain depending on the meditation. For instance, “over the past decade, researchers have found that if you practice focusing attention on your breath or a mantra, the brain will restructure itself to make concentration easier. If you practice calm acceptance during meditation, you will develop a brain that is more resilient to stress. And if you meditate while cultivating feelings of love and compassion, your brain will develop in such a way that you spontaneously feel more connected to others.”

Meditation in the Christian faith is often read and talked about, but not often taught. Meditation is compared to learning a skill like playing an instrument or a sport. In the Message version of Matthew 6, by Eugene Peterson, Jesus say’s “Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

Prayer and meditation are two integral practices that join or unite us to our Creator. Prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to Him. However, they both are forms of communication and require practice, patience and time. Our brains are so complex, yet we are designed in such a way that when we take the time to meditate a physical manifestation of gray matter in the brain is produced in different regions. According to “Eileen Luders, a re-searcher in the Department of Neurology at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine found that increased gray matter typically makes an area of the brain more efficient or powerful at processing information.”

How do we put meditation into practice and deepen our faith? Meditation is an ancient old practice and is used in many religions to connect with God and non-religious meditation techniques link the breath or repeat positive phrases (mantras) to calm the nervous system.  When Jesus visited Martha “her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, ‘Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.’ But the Lord said to her, ‘My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42). Learning to be still and quiet in our inundated culture and living up to the expectations that we place on ourselves and others requires discipline.  By practicing just 10 to 90 minutes a day you can experience immediate results of calm and peaceful feelings.

This meditation was taught to me at Yogaville, an Ashram in Virginia.

Connect to God in Meditation

1. Go to a quiet secluded place
2. Close your eyes
3. Draw your shoulder blades on the backside of your heart as you melt your shoulders away from your ears
4. Expand from your heart center and smile with your collar bones
5. Ground in through your sitting bones by pulling back any access flesh
6. Inhale and Exhale:”Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10
7. Inhale and Exhale: “Be still and know that I am.”
8. Inhale and Exhale: “Be still and know that.”
9. Inhale and Exhale: “Be still and know.”
10. Inhale and Exhale: “Be still.”
11. Inhale and Exhale: “Be.”

This may upset you.  Or you may have never heard of any of this before.  You may not believe any of this.  You may not like any of this.

Good

There is a story in India about how they catch monkeys.  It seems they would take a coconut, cut a small hole in it and nail it to a tree, with the hole pointing out, parallel to the earth.  Inside it they would put a tasty treat.  A monkey comes along, sees the nice delight and sticks his hand inside, closing his fist around the morsel.  The hole is large enough only for the hand, not the closed fist, the monkey is trapped!!  He’ll remain there for days perhaps thoroughly baffled as to how he’s not able to have both this treat and his freedom.  Soon some trappers will come along, release the coconut from the tree and take our simian friend off to be sold into a circus or some other such fate.

See something here?  Sound like you?  Well it is, it’s all of us.  This idea of enlightenment we’ve been sold sounds great.  But can someone tell me exactly how tree pose will lead me to enlightenment?  And better yet, show me someone who it has worked for.  Come on, any idiot in a white coat can sell this acne cream, where are those 9 out of ten dentists, and why do lawyers use paid actors dressed up as lawyers to tell us we need them.

Ya want to know why.  They’re selling us something.  Yoga classes, books, prayer beads, peace of mind, all this stuff to lead us to non-attachment!

 ”Take it off the mat” they say.  Take what off the mat?  Exactly what?  And why?  And where did I get this, did I not have it before?  And where am I going to keep it in these little tight yoga shorts?

The minute we decide to take something off the mat (I’ll say apply a “Spiritual Concept”) we invest an interest in it, we have an expectation of the outcome an ATTACHMENT.  Practice, let things play themselves through without orchestrating every little aspect.  Quit TRYING to be enlightened, you’ll miss it when it happens.

We have an amazing knack of accessorizing the practice of Yoga.

Not too long ago I was subbing a class for another teacher.  A student came barging up to me and demanded, “Where’s—–, is she not teaching this class?”  “No”, I said.  She stormed out.

I stayed, taught the class and got paid.  I don’t know what she did, I know I didn’t suffer any.

Do you want to know how addicted you are to your attachments?  Use the other hand for a day, brush your teeth in the opposite direction, put your keys in the opposite pocket. 

I taught a class recently to illustrate this point.  I had the students, many of them dedicated regulars, switch sides of the room, and then switch rows!!  There was definitely some tension.  But, many of them almost immediately recognized the purpose of the exercise (remember, they are dedicated regulars) and laughed at their own discomfort.  I was ecstatic.  I encourage everyone to try this, it can change your life.

We have an amazing knack of turning a liberating practice into a binding one.

Yoga teaches that without practicing non-harming (अहिंसा ahiṁsā) realizing the goal of Yoga (samādhi समाधि) is much more difficult.  Notice I didn’t say “Jivamukti” or “Anusara” or some other style?  It’s because the idea is a fundamental and universal one, not particular to a certain style.  It’s expounded upon, made into sutra, verse, chapter, story, allegory, and even the qualities of God Himself are associated with it, it forms the BASIS of Yoga fundamentals and yet…. Don’t like it?  Shop around, you’ll find a teacher/class that will re-enforce your attachment.  A good example is if a student says “What about this vegetarian thing?”, the teacher may say “Well, I think it’s a personal decision, so I don’t teach it.”

Go to a driving instructor and see if when asked about the need to use a turn indicator they say the same.  When you put two of us together with our attachments-LOOK OUT!! 

We have an amazing knack of re-enforcing and justifying our attachments.

Darwin tells us we’re evolved from primates.

I think that may be true, bigger bodies and brains-more advanced thought capacity.  Bigger more complex attachments.

If our simian friend had it to do again from a different perspective, do you think that little scrap of food is worth more to him than his freedom, he had alot of time to think about it while he stood there.  All he had to do was let go, though.  Not analyze the hell out of it.

We have an amazing knack of complicating simple matters.

लोकः समस्तः सुखिनो भवन्तुः

lokaḥ samastaḥ sukhino bhavantuḥ