Spiritual Practice

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

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Pilgrimage to the Heart (Part 2)

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543428_10200973243806535_281176769_nI’ve really been taking my time writing this follow-up post.  There is a lot changing for me, not only in the way I am personally engaging my spirituality and path, but how I am relating to other.  Lots of wonderful movement is occurring, and my biggest lesson is stepping back and allowing the changes to take place.  I think too often I get in my own way, I feel that I “have to do”, rather than just hold presence.  Taking the trip to South Carolina opened me up to a lot of things that I needed to see.  I won’t be sharing all of the changes here, as those are meant just for me.  My journal is now my constant companion, as is a mala (I take different ones out depending on the day, my mood, and which one calls to me from my altar).

I had the opportunity to sit with my past in interesting ways.  I found a stack of my old journals.  Many of them leading up to my transition to DC, and I even found one that I kept for my first year in the Navy.  Seeing my personal transformation through these texts really brought me into a deep place of gratitude for where I am, and all the beautiful trials and tribulations along the way.  Getting to be with family helped me to root, to ground, and to just be me for a bit.  I didn’t have to be a teacher, a student, a psychic, a healer, and sometimes when we have the opportunity to step out of our roles we shake the wrinkles out–then we put our multicolored coats on once again.

Now that I am back into my routine, I am getting to live a lot of the changes that I experienced on my Pilgrimage.  I am in the process of de-cluttering my life on many levels (internally and externally).  I am looking at where I am and where I am going a bit differently, and am allowing the changes to take place through a place of deep and unconditional trust.  I am reconnecting to part of my path that are calling to me, and am being kind to myself a bit more.

Spiritual transformation takes many forms, and sometimes we have to step into and out of our lives to gain perspective.  One of the things I did when I went to on my trip was to ask the universe to give me clear signs as to the changes I needed to make… and so my perception opened, and I listened deeply.

I’m going to be writing a series of articles relating my processes moving forward and reflections on the deeper changes that are taking place.  Fasting, writing, loving, being, meditating, yoga, silence and a bit of solitude are now part of my experience.  My processes are mine, but it is my hope that we can share, learn from one another, and grow through the beauty of our shared experience.

 

What changes are you making, and what is changing you?

When you venture into a retreat, take a pilgrimage, or attend an event–how do you integrate what you bring back from the experience into your life?

 

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

Michael A Brazell

Michael@michaelbrazell.com

http://www.michaelbrazell.com

 

The Practice of Gratitude

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gratitudeYou only need to do a quick Google search on the “science of gratitude” to see that there is power in being thankful.

Many spiritual teachers (myself included) often assign gratitude journals to help us look for those things to be grateful for daily.  When we move into a place where we be in gratitude for the smallest things we can shift patterns, thoughts, and limitations in the moment.

One of the struggles that I see in this exercise is that we often try to force the practice.  We open our journals, and we sit.. stare at the blank page, tap our pens… and feel the resistance that is sometimes present in spiritual work.  One way to breakthrough this is to start where you are, “I am thankful for this journal, I am thankful for the ears that allow me to hear the tapping of this pen… (then deeper), I am thankful for my resistance, I am thankful for the thoughts that are moving in my mind, I am thankful for my struggles today and I am thankful for the contrast they offer my life, I am thankful for life…”

You can also write the same things more than once.   Our tendency is to try to find new things everyday to be grateful for… doesn’t have to be so.  Try to take the circle of gratitude outward, but do so when you are ready.

We have our journals, we have our affirmations, and most of that exists in the conceptual.  We have found gratitude, now it is time to extend it and to LIVE it.  Sharing gratitude is powerful, and makes it real.  Saying, “Thank you” to those you encounter, saying to loved ones, “I am grateful for you.”, doing acts of kindness without expectation of return, all allow us to experience gratitude.  When we take gratitude off the paper and out of the mind it becomes real.

What are you grateful for today?  How are you going to Live Gratitude today?

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

Namaste and Blessed Be.

Mike

 

Day 9 NaPoWriMo Poem

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You were my sweetest mistake… Like forbidden chocolate when I am on a diet… you are the empty calories I’ve learned not to count on… I feed myself on your words, but the shards of your promises slice me open from the inside…  You and I feed of one another… Like Gods dining on used up souls… let us feast, pray, and be full.

Namaste Mudra- Engage the Sacred Elements

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namasteNamaste mudra is a powerful hand position.  We often begin and end our practice with it.  It is also called prayer position.  Namaste is a common salutation that is offered in many yoga classes, it means “I bow to you”.  It is an offering of self to those that share the class and the space with us during our practice.  It is also a term that has grown in popularity thanks to yoga becoming more mainstream.   The hand gesture is a physical extension of this greeting and salutation.

This hand position is much more than meets the eye.  When you are able to create deeper connections to these simple (and often taken for granted actions) you see the power that simple gestures hold.

First the action of bringing the hands to heart center.  Many of us first meet this hand position as children.  When learn to pray into our hands in the hopes that the divine will hear our prayers.  The beautiful thing about this idea is that it is true.  When we pray into clasped hands held at the heart we are praying down into the hear center.  Think of the fingers as the tip of the microphone, and the heart being the seat of the soul (or that place where God Herself sits within us).  Praying into the heart center is taking the prayer into the body so that the divine can hear it, and since we are extensions of divine will we hear our own prayers, and so does God too.

The five fingers in namaste mudra represent the five sacred elements as they move through us.  Sacred air as it moves through our lungs.  The sacred fire that burns deep within our hearts.  The fluidity of our blood, bones, muscles and joints.  Sacred earth as it supports, grounds and protects us.  Spirit as it move in and through us.  Bringing the hands to the heart in this position is bringing awareness and connection to those primal elements that make up our sacred being.

The all that is within me, acknowledge and bows to the all that is within you.

Take a look at these simple actions.  See the power in all of our gestures, and look for meanings beyond the initial layers of experience.

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

Namaste.

Michael A. Brazell

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.blogtalkradio.com/michaelbrazell

www.facebook.com/yogawitch

 

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

Fasting Blog (The Pre-Fast)

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Today I am beginning a journey into a fast.  I have decided to share the journey here and to be a bit more transparent than I usually am with this process.  I sometimes tend to be more guarded with my process as fasting is a deeply personal venture.  When we start sharing we often will get criticism and judgment.  I will open up my process for discussion, but am not going to debate my fasting process or reasons for fasting.  That said, I feel that fasting is a powerful tool for both spiritual and physical alignment.  It is a way for us to let the internal organs rest, reset and align.  Fasting also brings us facet to face with our fears.  The fear of not having food, nutrition, or energy.

The biggest tool on a fast is a journal.  It is important to do a lot of self reflection while engaging the fasting process.  One, it allows you to do tunes in with where you are in the fasting process.   You want to pay attention to your health, where you are in the body and how you are connecting to the process itself.  I typically do not try to maintain strict time lines for fasting, but this time I am going to push past my own boundaries and go for an extended water fast.  I’ll be journaling the experience and of course blogging it here.   I am also going to do weekly video blogs that I’ll post here to give you updates on my progress.

I always start my fasts on a Monday (I’m a big OCD with dates and things, lol) so the Sunday before the fast I ease myself into the amount of water that I’ll be taking in for the duration.   I also give myself a few light, healthy low calorie snacks to ease me in to the fast.  The key is working with the body, bringing in the mind with ease, and allowing the spiritual component to also unfold.

So, that is just a bit of information for now.  I’ll post a bit more this evening.

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.

The Power of Silence

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Shhhh….

This is one of most powerful invocations used to create silence.  There are times I just want to say this to the world around me.  Silence often escapes us, but it is one of the most powerful magical tools that we have in out tool belts.  We often forget what silence is.  It can be hard to find when the world moves at the speed of thought.

Silence is one of the most powerful magical tools that we have.  When we are silent we can listen.  We don’t need to rush.  We can just still in our own energy.

Stillness and Silence can be terrifying.  When kids are too quiet parents can sense that trouble is brewing.  We often have odd associations with silence.  We fear it.  It can be terrifying to stop and embrace our many pieces.  When we are still, some of us fidget, we try to find distractions to take us out of the silence, and then when we are finally there… we find those things that we were running from.  Sometimes they are painting on our walls with crayons, instead of getting angry we should take a moment to see what they painted for us.  Silence helps us to align.  It holds us accountable to our own sense of being.

Silence is powerful.  In the quiet pot on the stove the wonderful meal is created.  In the silence, there is rest.

Sometimes I visit the small graveyard near my shop and it is nice to sit in the silence.  The psychic noise is still.  I can be with myself and my many pieces.

Where did you find silence?

Where do you find stillness?

Are you afraid of what you will find there, and if so… what would help to ease that fear?

 

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

 

 

FlowCasting: Manifesting With Your Yoga Practice

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Abundance-3We hear a lot of talk about the law of attraction.  I work in a New Age book store and the abundance shelf is lined with them.  Some of them are great, others just focus on material gain.  Granted, there is nothing wrong with financial abundance, but we have to also understand that the law of attraction is constantly active… even the bad stuff we might be experience is part of the overall journey.  I’ll go into the Law of Attraction a bit more in a later post, but I do want to spend a bit of time discussing manifesting and how we can use our yoga practice to generate energy for manifesting.

In yoga classes we engage movement, breathe, and generate energy.  Let’s use that energy to make a difference in the world around us.

—I am writing this in regards to yoga, but the same intentional work can be used for any body centered spiritual practice:  dance, yoga, sacred body movement, ecstatic movement, lifting weights, etc.

At the beginning of your practice start by setting an intention.  This can be something that you want to call into your life.  The desire can be something tangible, spiritual, or can be directed in any way you feel necessary.  If there are things you are wishing to let go of, simply let them fall away as you engage in your flow practice.

In yoga (and other body centered practice) there is a focus on the breath.  You cannot run a marathon while holding your breath, so as you breath you give the body life.

With each deep inhale visualize the intention you set at the beginning of your practice flowing through all parts of your being.  With each exhalation you are creating space for intention to become reality.

The heat, the energy, the movement, the flow of your practice helps that intention flow into creation.  Movement is a creative act.  Connecting to a sense of letting go of rigidity in your practice will help make this easier.

When I first started doing yoga I felt bound to the idea that a sequence of asana had to follow the patterns that others put into script.  As my practice progresses I feel my body moving into different postures, moving energy and stagnation out of my joints, muscles, cells.  The divine will speak to your body and the ecstatic release that happens creates powerful healing.  (I’ll post a video of myself doing ecstatic yoga flow soon as well).

I also try to not set a time limit to this practice.  I start and I stop.  If I only do a little bit of movement wonderful… If I do several hours of movement, wonderful!   Time limits can create another level of restriction.

Sacred space is set by your yoga mat, and the breath cleanses you and the space around you.  You can use the invocation located in the FlowCasting section of this blog to call in the elements for increased power.

– You can also write your intention or your manifesting list and place it under you mat.  As you flow through your asana practice you will be feeding energy directly into that intention.   The mind can wander, and if it does the written transmission of what you are asking will hold the thought for you.

-After each sequence or posture take a moment to center on the breath, the heart center, and your intention. Visualize the intention moving around you, glowing, pulsating into being.  Allow it to become tangible.

Don’t be afraid to ask the divine for assistance.  Using a manifesting list is powerful.  I love using the grocery store analogy:  If you walk into a grocery store without a list you end up getting a lot of stuff you do not want. You get the stuff you knew you should not get and that causes regret or guilt.  Going into manifesting with a deep sense of asking.. even demanding from the universe will help keep then energy of manifesting focused.

What are you asking for?  What is your favorite manifesting technique?

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

Michael A Brazell (Mahayogi Das) CFT CSN MAT PAT

 

http://www.michaelbrazell.com