body movement

Yoga as Ritual

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india-yoga_1666113iWe step into class.  We roll out our yoga mats.  We gather our tools: blocks, straps, blankets.  We set the tone for the journey that is about to unfold before us.  Yoga is a beautiful thing.  We each come to class for our own reasons, we set our individual intentions, and we bring the mystery of our lives to our mats.  As the class begins, we harmonize with others and begin to share our journey.  Yoga is community.  Yoga is much more than just physical movement.  Each time we do a downward dog, or take a deep breath we are breathing with everyone that has ever done those things, is doing those things.  Showing up is the first, and often the hardest step.  This is where the magic of your journey begins.

 

Yoga means to “yoke”, to unite, to bring together.  What in your life are you coming into union with?  What needs to be balanced?

One of the things that I hope to explore through this blog is how yoga can be used to enact magic in our everyday experience.  Yoga is breath, connected to movement, connected to energy, connected to will, engaging desire, and blessed with beautiful uncertainty.  Yoga is a lesson in learning to trust.  We learn to trust the instructor.  We learn to trust our own bodies.  We begin to step into a process that may be new and dangerous, but that is life… and what keeps us moving.

Our yoga mats are sacred space.   I often encourage my students to lay on their mats at home if they are facing struggle and uncertainty.  Our yoga mats are places of power, they hold the energy of our classes and are blessed by breath and sweat.  Just taking a moment outside of class to find where our practice intersects with our lives invites our practice into the other parts of self.

What is yoga to you?  What questions do you have?  Feel free to ask them below and I’ll try to address them in future posts.

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful. You are Divine.

Namaste 🙂

Mike Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.soulinteraction.com

www.facebook.com/soulintuitive

www.blogtalkradio.com/michaelbrazell

Moving the Body, Engaging the Storm

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indexThe storm is upon us.   The body follows the mind, and right now stress seems to be permeating the global experience.  Now, more than ever physical body spiritual practices important for connection and stepping into the storm.  Things are not easy for many right now (but when are they truly ever easy).  We are getting to step into our tests in new ways, and as we step into engaging spirituality, the divine, and intuition we cannot forget to include the body.  The body follows the mind.  When we are crippled by stress or overwhelmed by life the body reacts.  For many this means sore backs, achy joints, loss of mobility or even sickness.  The phrase “I’m worried sick”, become literal.

When we move the body, we are moving energy.  When we sweat we are building heat, we are breathing, we are engaging stagnation that might reside in the body.  This all helps us to move into the life experience we are facing off our yoga mats.  A lot of times I know my students come to class to get away from the storm.  They hope to leave it behind for the 90min that we are together.  They hope that by avoiding the chaos that it might disappear.  I encourage a different approach.  When we invite our chaos to the mat, when we invite it to the practice we engage the storm, we get to play in the puddles, and we move the energy.  We are not empowering the chaos, but we are proactively engaging it.  We burn off the physical and mental stress, and invite the body into the spiritual process.

You can use any physical body practice to do this work.  I recommend yoga because it elongate the body, opens the joints, we are engaging in focused breathing, and each asana is a meditation.  Spirituality is built into the yoga practice.  Start your practice with an intention.  If you are inviting life to the mat you could start like this: “Beloved chaos, I invite you to the mat… flow through me, ignite my body,  bring clarity to my mind, and let’s be at peace.”

Yesterday as I was walking home, my umbrella fell apart.  For a moment, I felt anger surge through me.  I did not avoid or run away from being angry, I sat with it.  Then I looked at my mangled umbrella, the up at the gray sky and laughed.  I l asked the rain to cleanse me, and perhaps that was the gift my umbrella was offering me.   I was able to engage the storm in a literal experience, and it was beautiful

Where is the storm in your life?  What do you do to engage the storm?

You are loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Namaste.

 

Mike Brazell

The Yoga of Falling Down

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fall2One of the things I see most often in the yoga classes I teach is the frustration that so many feel when it comes to balance, or to getting the new postures just right.  There is a “perfection” mindset that a lot of people bring to their mats that can add a lot of resistance to their progress and their path.

What a lot of people do not realize it that all the falling, the being off-balance, and the struggle is where the real yoga lives.  Once we own a posture the work to get there is done.  It is in all the off-balance, catching ourselves states of being that the body, mind and the spirit are working in overtime.  When you are off-balance the senses heighten, the core engages to stabilize you, the breath becomes engaged to add power, and spirit shines through when we get back up and keep trying.

 

Yoga is beautifully frustrating.

 

We live in a culture where we see beautiful people doing a lot of perfect asana (postures) on the cover of magazines and in videos.  We often take these images to our classes and our mats.  I feel that it is our job as instructors to help guide each student the beauty that is found in imperfection.  Our bodies are beautiful when the move through the postures.  Yoga is not about being perfect, yoga is about showing up.  Yoga means “to yoke” or “to unite”.  Showing up is always the hardest part, and anything beyond that is icing on the cake.  Frustration is also not a bad thing.  It keeps us moving through the postures, it keeps us evolving our craft, our practice.  We learn to open up to the divine that rests in the process.  When we show up to class we want to be sure that we are setting an intention.  That we move through the postures and carry that intention into all our many parts.  We want to embody the intention fully.  Our bodies become conduits for energizing intention, our breath aligns and fuels will and desire.  When we finish our practice we meditate and move intention into reality.

Falling down is an important part of the yoga process.   What we do in class is an extension of what we do outside of class.  A simple meditation that can be done in a yoga class is to sit with the action of falling or coming off-balance.  Reflect on a time in your life where you may have fallen, or were shifted off-balance.  Bring that image back to your practice and bring balance to that past event.  If there is something in your current life that is causing you to be off-balance, bring it to the mat.  The intention of bringing balance into that area of your life will live on once you leave class.  Life is not something we leave with our shoes when we enter the yoga studio, nor is yoga something we leave on our mats when we go back out into our busy lives.  Using your yoga to help generate energy for the other areas of your life help you to unite with all aspects of self.

When is a time where you felt off-balance?  How did you react?  What can you do right this moment to bring balance into your life?

Falling is a beautiful thing.  Fall with grace and rise with power.

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

 

Michael A. Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.blogtalkradio.com/michaelbrazell

www.facebook.com/yogawitch

Engage Your Inner Warrior: Standing in Balance

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Many of us are entering this new year shedding off the old.  The dust is finally settling and it is time for us to move into greater states of connection with what we want from life.  So, here are a few questions to sit with:  What do you want from life?  What are you doing to achieve it?  What is your resistance to making these desires manifest?

As we move into this new year I want to bring a bit of warrior energy into our practice.  In yoga, warrior postures take us into places of strength, balance, focus.   I will however point out that too often we hold these posture with too much rigidity.  Warriors have to be flexible, they have to move with the elements, with life itself.   Engaging the practice of asana work helps us to embody the warrior.  When we move our bodies into a posture that represents our warrior nature we are calling that force into all of our parts.

Here is a quick and simple mediation that you can do to help you find balance.

Warrior 2-

Step one leg forward into a lunge.  Your back foot is at a slight 45 degree angle.  Your front knee is either above the ankle or slightly behind.  You can lessen the intensity of the lunge depending on your fitness level.  Your hips are turned outward.  One hand is moving forward, the other back.  Look forward and back and your hands should be aligned through the center plane.  Here is a video to help work your into the posture:

Once in the poster here is a meditation to help you get the most from the power of this posture:

This warrior posture represents standing in the center.  Being fully in balance and in control of our experience.

STR_Warr2

While standing in warrior two, listen to your body.   Where is your mind drifiting?  How does your body feel standing in the posture, do you feel strong, weak, small, big?  Sit with these thoughts as they come up.   Where do you need warrior energy in your life?

Now shift your focus to the rear hand:

STR_Warr2

What in your past is still binding you?   Do you find yourself drifting through the your past?   Where do you feel that you need balance in your past experience?   Send light and energy through your fingertips to those areas of your life.

Now Take your focus to the front hand:

STR_Warr2

Where in your current experience do you feel bound?  What do you feel about your future, does it bring fear or joy?   Where in your current experience do you need energy, balance, strength?  Send energy through your fingertips to those parts of your life that need it?

Switch sides and do the same thing with the opposite side forward.  This becomes a practice of balancing our bodies and engaging the mind/body/ and spirit connection.   After you do this practice, take a few moments to journal your experience.  What thoughts came to mind?  What came up for you?  Do you feel powerful, do you feel like a warrior?  If not, touch the solar plexus, ask the body what it needs in order to bring that energy into your life?

Blessed be warriors!   Practice, connect, love, and stand in your power!

and remember… You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Michael A. Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.facebook.com/yogawitch

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.soulinteraction.com

theyogawitch@gmail.com

Ecstatic Yoga

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EcstaticDanceYoga means union.  Union with the breath, union with movement, union with the divine, union with others in your class, union with your many parts, union with your imperfections, union with your perfection, union with your emotions, union with your physical body, and union with your soul.

Yoga is an ecstatic practice.

Ecstatic is a word that is making growing rounds in modern spiritual circles.   The definition of ecstatic practice is a profound and overwhelming sense of joy, or mystical experience.  I like to define it as a full embodiment of an experience.

Yoga can be rigid.  We run through our sun salutations, we may hold or pause in certain spots, and at times the practice might feel more routine than fully embodied.  There are ways to take your yoga practice a bit deeper that we often forget to incorporate.

Most yoga postures are meant to be held much longer than most modern class structures.  Imagine holding down dog for 6-15 min, or warrior for 10 min.  There is a moment when the asana lets go completely, when the body and mind separate from the asana spirit moves in.  Many forget that the purpose of the asana (postures) is to prepare for final meditation.

You can also add dance to your yoga practice.  Move your body, allow music to move you.  Move around in a dancing pattern, then drop though the yoga postures, then back into a dance, then back into a yoga sequence… don’t spend a lot of time thinking, just let your body move as it wants.  Don’t choose the asana, let them choose you.

You can also try to change-up the music that you might use for your practice.  If you normally use kirtan music, try rock-n-roll, or something completely different that you would normally use.  Shifting music can also shift your consciousness.

I’ll go deeper and give you specific practices to help you move your practice into embodied states.  For now, breathe fully… live fiercely… and be present in your divine experience.

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Daily Practice Minute: Look Up

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147943431_730b0c3b62Daily practice is essential to opening our spiritual lives.  Each week I’ll give you an exercise that you can use to establish a practice, or that you can integrate into a current practice.  Some of these will be simple and quick, and others will be designed to take you a bit deeper into your practice.

Many moons ago I use to be a Navy Instructor.  Each week my students would have to take tests on the knowledge they had learned during the week.  Coming into the Navy from civilian life was not an easy next step and there was a lot to absorb in a short amount of time.   During the tests I’d see them struggling, and crinkling their brows.  I remember telling them “Look up for inspiration and not Down in desperation.”

Fast forward to now.  Stepping from the mundane world into the spiritual world has the same effect.  There is so much to absorb and often it can become overwhelming… not to mention that life itself can at times feel overwhelming.

Looking down is typically a sign of worry.  Our minds become heavy and we forget to look up.  Looking up does a lot more than take our eyes to the sky.  We we look up our heart center opens to sky.  Hunched postures are locked postures.  Heart center is a posture of surrendering upward.  When our spines are aligned energy can move through us a bit more freely.

Place your hand on your heart center.  Look down, now look up.  Feel how your heart rises to the sky, or compresses into your center.

How often do you notice the tops of the trees on your walks?

Take a deep breath deep.  Look up.  Surrender your heart center to the sky, to the divine, to your breath.

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Michael Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.michaelbrazell.com

Move Your Body to Let Spirit Move You

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In yoga we often greet the rising sun with Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutations).  This sequence of postures allows the body to move stagnant energy out of the joints.  The spine warms up, the body builds heat, and the heart center becomes more open.

Body movement is one of the easiest ways to engage spirit.  Movement is something we hear a lot about in most spiritual circles.  We talk about moving energy, energy moving during healing, movement of spirits between dimensions, but often we overlook the simplest….. moving our own bodies.

Physical body movement can be anything from drumming to dancing, yoga postures to QiGong, Circle Dancing, to free flow body movement.  You do not have to be a skillful dancer to put on a bit of music and let it take you to a meditative space… Move your voice, sing… Move your hands (mudras), move your thoughts (contemplation).  There are many ways to move, and when we move we invite spirit into the physical, the tangible, and we can deepen our connection this way.

What moves you?  Where do you find movement in your spiritual practice?

 

You are Loved, You are Beautiful, You are Divine!

Michael A Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

http://www.michaelbrazell.com