So this may rub people up the wrong way, it may pee some yogis off and it may not resonate.
My practice is all about the body, staying down in the lower chakras and feeling every sense in what it is to be human. The spiritual world can be overwhelming aimed at guiding people up to the top chakras, the third eye and all the things that can make you get out of your body and see into new cosmic realms.
Samadhi and yoga can be taken as a place to go that allows you to leave this body and go somewhere else.
But this doesn't resonate with me, I'm a yoga teacher that DOESNT want to leave my body, I've spent so many years trying to escape my body my practice is all about getting down deep and dirty with my body, learning to love her, learning to use her, learning to enjoy her and all her senses.
To me we've been given this vessel to live out this lifetime in, lets not rush to escape it, lets enjoy it.
OUR BODY IS OUR UNCONCIOUS MIND
The risk of escaping our body into the higher chakras is we miss huge parts of healing, we HIDE in the spiritual and don't really get true with what is actually manifesting itself within us.
Our body stores trauma, fact, from the simplest shoulder pain when your stressed to deep rooted emotional trauma causing illness and dis-ease. So to avoid our body seems to me a big way of avoiding the obvious that's causing what we want to get rid of.
The asana practice was always about getting into the body so that you can sort your shit out there before you head into the mind, the unfortunate thing is we have so much shit to sort out people don't spend the time there and jump to stilling the mind
So my practice and my life is all about getting down and into the body, learning to live fully as a human, in this vessel that we have been given, noticing when I'm avoiding a sensation a feeling of discomfort, noticing when I'm shutting down and drawing up into the brain and getting deep and dirty with what its like to be the essence of me, fully.
My practice is all about loving the skin I'm in and everything that's within that skin, the deep and dark, the light and bright and everything in-between, I know that sometimes its easy to live in the mind, but ultimately a life lived in the mind is a life half lived.
Each day I find new ways to connect with the truth of being human, I ask myself what am I hiding from and what do I need to feel more of, I lean into the discomfort of the unusual and I explore where I can go further in being a human, fully.
How do you embrace being totally human? How do you hide in the mind? What is your communication with your body?
These are questions I believe we should ask ourselves regularly, always pushing our boundaries too get further into ourselves and explore what comes up. Ultimately its an exciting exploration around our own inner landscape.
