We had the final meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  Last week we studied chapters 8 & 9 Brahmacarya:  The Wise Use of Sexual Energy & Aparigraha:  Non-acquisitiveness.

Our discussion was wide ranging.  We considered the many ways yoga is an embodied practice intended to embrace our whole being:  body, heart and mind.  It’s a process of refining our sensitivity to what we feel and how we perceive.  As sensitivity increases so does our awareness of pain and the many ways we try to separate ourselves from feeling.  Yoga practice calls us back to sensation:  whether it is the physical pain of movement or misalignment in posture or the anxiety expressed in racing pulse or repetitive thought.  Yoga asks us to relate to our individual and shared pain.   Our attempts to separate ourselves from feeling usually only add to our suffering.

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We had the fourth meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss.  In yoga we explored our willingness to experience ourselves as we truly are:  sensation without interpretation.   We let go of fixed ideas, allowing thoughts, emotions and breath flow freely.  We practiced sitting and walking meditation periods.    We discussed the 6th & 7th chapters:  Satya:  Honesty and Asteya:  Nonstealing.

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Yesterday, we had the third meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss.  In yoga we explored sensation before the level of thinking:  taking in and letting go with breath and movement.   Postures and slow movements became containers and vehicles in which a sense of interconnectedness could arise.  We practiced guided bell sound and formal sitting meditation periods.    Our discussion focused on the fifth chapter, Ahimsa:  Nonviolence.

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Doors of Perception

We had the second meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group yesterday at Yoga Bliss.  We began with a yoga practice to explore sensation and also a sense of interconnectedness, relatedness as we moved together.  We practiced sitting meditation and explored walking meditation as a way of broadening our field of awareness.    Our discussion focused on the second and third chapters, Restraint in Times of Unrestraint and Lack.

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We had the first meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group yesterday at Yoga Bliss.  We began with a yoga practice.  In standing, we explored sensation and experience of being rooted like a tree.  Our book revolves around the ethics of leading a conscious life – known in yoga speak as the Yamas.  These principles of restraint will be our foundation – the ground from which we’ll grow over the next few weeks as we begin to integrate them into our daily lives.  We come from different backgrounds and stages of life.  Yet we are drawn together to grow – like those trees whose roots connect underground and branch out in the light.

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