You transfix me: You are my chakras

you are balanced. i live with you.

You are a work of art. It’s not easy but you do it. You live true to who you are and know it. When you are open, chakras, in my yoga practice, I don’t question it. 

dear chakras, you help me walk with strength, enchanted. i’m open to each of you as you arrive, speak and feel. i know who you are…

-->> chakra article moved to here.

Surrender to your heart: Let go of anger, sadness and stories that cover up your love

find your peace

Maybe it doesn't seem like it at times, but there is peace within you. Sometimes it's hiding on purpose, so that you cannot find it easily. Let's say you find the source of a problem and throw it out the window. But your inner chaos returns. Why?

Surrendering is a process. You need to believe that it relieves you. And then know that this action needs to be repeated.

But what does surrender even mean?

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Chill

find the answers in stillness

Chill.

The beauty of solitude.

Magic.

Finding your soul.

Inviting your self.

The answers are coming.

Just lie here.

You will know what to do.. soon.

Ommm

photo by Ricky Tran

© 2010 Yoga Robin^®

Can you find stillness and not stiffness?

stillness

Can you find stillness and not stiffness?

Yoga is, no doubt, a great place to work on this. Some yoga classes are all about moving fluidly with your watery nature, as you, like a dance, find your way to balance. This can help with flow in life, moving with the body we are dealt in life and becoming one with it.

life and chaos

Life brings chaos and challenge sometimes. A challenging yoga class can help you mimic this challenge and give you the chance to relax into it. You can come out ahead of the game with your head on your shoulders.

Ashtanga yoga, invigorating and fast-paced, can be a place to find stillness and calm. A serious voice that instructs while also inviting you to find softness in the strength is important, especially in your neck and trapezius muscles that support your neck—a common place to hold tension. 

expansion and contraction

Can you find the perfect balance between expansion and contraction of your muscles so that the end result is soft and still? If you cannot, your yoga could be harming you. Better yet, can you find it in your mind and spirit? It takes patience to traverse your oceans of time...

Other activities such as surfing require focus and strength. Learning how to ride nature's gem—the ocean—allows you to give yourself to it. It is pure fluid so you have no choice but to move with it. Can you find the strength in your muscles to protect you, fuel you, and help you get the most enjoyment possible, while still remaining soft and fluid, especially in the back of your neck?

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Savasana: A true art

Reflection

Savasana, the final pose of any decent yoga practice is the place where you reflect upon your entire practice as it comes before your eyes from a distant cloud.

Savasana is one of the most important poses in yoga, reflecting true peace as the culmination of your practice.

This final resting pose, otherwise known as Corpse Pose, is a pose in which to wrap the fruits of your labors, your joys of movement, and your love for your body.

Wring out toxins

After moving the precious prana within your body through movements that flow through you, twists that wring out toxins, and peaceful moments in between that take your breath away, savasana is a time to celebrate and smile within. It's a place for stillness.

Celebrate

Celebrate your life force. You may have a tendency to ignore it as you move along in your busy day.

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Receive your gift in silence

what is your intention?

We go to yoga class. We start the class by making an intention. Then what?

Do we hold true to its energy every second of the class? No. We tuck it away in our heart and let it speak its own words to our soul.

be patient for the prana to do its work

For, the energy of a wish comes from within us and can hardly hide its wings when we are allowing the prana to circulate as we move our bodies in twists and waves.

What we feel comes from within. Before the words even articulate themselves to our being, we know what it is we are trying to say.

sometimes no words

Sometimes we are silenced. Sometimes this is a blessing. In this inability to find words, our soul is telling us to go deeper. Look into the still pond of your being. Do not always rely on words. Look to the swirling space that doesn't want to hear your words and give it your thanks.

There is more to living.

Namaste.

© 2010 Yoga Robin^®

underneath the surface of who i am: yin and yang of the heart

Picking up where I left off in my article on an inquiry into your nature…

The idea of participatory spirituality has some more juice in me at the moment. First, I’ve been on a tangent speaking of shyness and opening up about my true expression. As if in a bit of a conundrum, I go back and forth in my life between befriending stillness and befriending the gems inside me that I can only get to by stirring up the darkness to see what’s lurking beneath that surface.

From the words of a song, “I swear that I can feel you creeping underneath my skin. It feels like heaven to me sometimes.” The feeling is all-encompassing. There is a quality of light within the dark—a yin/yang. The love is what I feel.

I can feel a side of me inside reaching out for expression, asking gently to not vaporize the energy of the expression into an emptiness, thereby bypassing it all together. It is telling me that there is much to be learned in feeling this darkness that I hide within the armor I’ve built like a child building a sand castle.

Sand is a good metaphor for this armor. It is made of rock, symbolizing strength. After many years of weather it can harden to an impenetrable substance, but if air continually moves through the tiny spaces (e.g., breath) between each grain, the wall can easily be knocked down in its softness. A simple symbolic hand can do the trick with one violent strike. Alternatively, I could douse it with my watery essence in a waterfall, or a slow drip to eat away at it slowly.

A soothing Italian proverb leads the way in my life now:

Chi va piano va sano va lontano. Chi va forte va alla morte.

(Who goes slowly, goes healthy and far. Who goes fast, goes faster to death.)

Taking time with the precious gems is most important. They have been in the dark so long, so once they see the light do I expect them to acclimate immediately? Give them time to adjust and evolve to become one with me again in their new form, with light shone upon them.

If I do they will become like a dream that I’ve always imagined but could never reach. Not until now at least.

© 2010 Yoga Robin®

Do follow my heart that lives in silence

i cherish when my mind is still

I cherish the point in my yoga practice where I no longer have to tell myself:

"O my mind, you talk too much. Do follow my heart that lives in silence." ~ Sri Chinmoy

Then I am free. It's like shooting stars have just gone off to remind me I am here in this sacred space... 

When I’ve reached this place, I no longer know that I had a goal to get here in the first place.

It is then that I am able to truly see and feel the transpersonal. It is in the stillness that it all comes to me as the primary channel of my experience, making the most sense to me in an energetic form that cannot be described in words. 

ineffable feelings find expression

The ineffable feeling gets articulated within me, from a heartfelt space, in a poetic form. I have been given a gift with this mode of expression. It is what flows through my veins

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