Sunrise, East, Ahimsa, Kundalini

As you all know by now, I've been considering switching to teaching in the early morning hours, which are traditional for yoga practice, and which in my own experience -- as well as in many of yours', from the feedback I've been getting -- are the most beneficial hours from the practice of hatha yoga.

"Most traditional authorities agree that the early morning is the best time for meditation. In India, the yogins typically meditate at sunrise, known as the "Hour of Brahma" (brahma-muhurta). It is thought that the quality of the life force (prana) is then particularly pure and strong and more easily assimilated."
- The Shambhala Guide to Yoga, Georg Feuerstein, p. 93

In addition to the benefits of practicing before the day begins, in the Hour of Brahma, there is also the benefit of doing practice at the same time every day, which is the reason for moving class to the same time every day, Monday thru Friday, 6am. However, several of you really want to keep one day on the weekend, so I'm thinking at this point that the James Howell Studio schedule will change to:

Sunday: 8-10am
M-Th: 6-7:30am

Let me know how that sounds to you, or comment directly on here if you like.

Also, we've shifted direction in the studio, so that we're facing East. Several of you have already let me know that you feel a difference, which is really exciting to me. The east is indeed more expansive than the west. Practice is working! I invite you all, in your practice, to begin to become sensitive to the differences in the directions, and how they appear to your inner eye. These energies are -- by far -- easiest to sense in the hours before and including the rising of the sun. Indeed, I've found that 4-6am are the most wonderful hours for practice, so I'd encourage you to at least once in a while, get up well before the sun and practice as it gradually approaches the horizon. It's truly amazing, to begin to feel the sun, and to feel the changes that happen within during those hours, when most are dreaming.

Finally, in the Advanced Classes at James Howell Studio, we've been doing quite a few new poses, and many of them are quite demanding, physically as well as perhaps emotionally (the poses that affect primarily the upper chakras open up energetic flows and lead to emotional effects that are somewhat less familiar to us that what occurs through the opening of the lower chakras). Perhaps it's worth saying that the poses, truly, are secondary to the breath.

The breath is the center of practice.

The poses are simply beads strung along the thread of the breath, but where the breath is broken, the beads fall. Practice is like stringing a mala. If the thread of the breath is lost, even for an instant, all the beads fall off, and in a sense the meditation practice starts anew. The body of course still receives benefit from practice -- any practice -- but the inner energies of practice that we are awakening arise from the breath, and the thread of consciously attending to it, through the union of the attention and the breathing, which is then expressed outward through the poses, which are all quite optional.

In trying new poses -- or difficult poses that are quite familiar -- it is quite easy to lose the thread of the breath, but the thread of the breath is what matters. The breath is the practice. Like changing clothes, the change of pose, but if the breath is not expressing itself through asana, there's no one to wear the clothes and the support of the meditation is dropped. The practice is staying with the breath, whatever happens, and it is this ability to stay present within in a continuous way -- come what may -- that makes the practice itself practically useful in living life off the mat: the ability to stay consciously present inside, come what may.

The internal concentration on the breath -- which grows and deepens over the duration of the meditation, and drops away in a way that is directly palpable when concentration evaporates -- is the true source of the internal fire of hatha yoga. The closing of the eyes and the withdrawal of the senses inwards is another form of Tapas -- or internal fire -- that we regularly practice. Notice the way in which your internal sense of heat is affected by wandering eyes, and by the withdrawal within of the sense of sight. In Savasana, the absolute absence of movement -- the attention of the mind with absolute absence of action of the body -- is another Tapas.

The heated room is a prop, to be dispensed with as practice deepens. Ultimately, as you deepen your capacity for paying attention you will begin to feel the external heat challenging your meditation to some extent, because the external heat in addition to the dramatic internal heat will create a condition of too much heat, which you will notice will lead to the need to reduce the internal heat through adjusting the breath accordingly, though of course, any external circumstance is an opportunity for meditation...

In asana practice, I encourage you to develop an attitude of play. The mind is focused on the breath, and invited to express itself playfully through poses. The poses are not essential, and there is a way of approaching even the most advanced pose that is appropriate in every healthy body. But that way will never involve interrupting the flow of attention and breath. Any practice where the pose is allowed to take priority over the breath and internal attention quickly begins to violate the first principle of Patanjali's Classical Yoga: AHIMSA.

Allowing the breath to take precedence over the more external and muscular actions of the physical body sets up the conditions for optimal non-violent practice. When practice is approached in a primarily muscular way, and the poses are created from the body first -- and then perhaps the breath is relocated afterwards -- the practice is done so externally that it can become a bit violent. Ideally, the breath is invited to move through -- and as -- the body, so that the breath itself gradually becomes the actual source and inspiration of all movement. When the body is manipulated from without, the wisdom that lives in the breath is not so easy to access.

All of the information about alignment of the skeleton and the actions of the muscles is coded fully in your breath, and as such, your breath is your teacher.

To the extent that the breath -- and the ability to concentrate attention through it -- is compromised, the alignment and action of the pose is 'incorrect'. Yoga teachers suggest ideal alignment and action in poses, but none of us are in fact the ideal.

The ideal towards which we aim is in fact fictitious.

We all have our own ideal, our own breath gradually embodying itself. All of these instructions are merely places for you to begin your own exploration, your own experimentation in your own body. If the instructed alignment does not optimize the flow of attention/breath, change it towards a greater sense of internal flow, or if needed simply skip the pose.

Always: Child's Pose, Headstand, sitting meditation, or lying meditation are appropriate alternatives (at least in my class).

Finally, several people in class have been having rather intense kundalini experiences lately, and I really appreciate all of your frank conversations on the subject. We're all learning this together. This essay -- though it certainly has a particular opinion expressed throughout -- is quite interesting on the subject, and might at least help a bit with context for kundalini awakening (scroll down, the whole text is there):

http://www.skaggs-island.org/humanistic/sannella/kundalini.html

Also, swami-krishnananda.org has a great essay on Tapas -- the third niyama -- if you scroll down (or 'Find' Tapas):
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/univ/univ_11a.html

And in closing, THANK YOU to Aubrie, who brought in a heater for the studio this morning -- we could use a couple of more if you've got extras! -- and to Adrienne, who's making curtains to keep in the heat. It won't be hot, but it'll be nice to be a little warmer!

namaste,
jamie
Kundalini Vinyasa Yoga classes
Yoga Tree / Yoga Flow Castro, Gold's Gym Castro, Grace Cathedral, and James Howell Studio
san francisco
california

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