Session 7: Sustainment

+ Introduction

Congratulations on reaching this stage of the course!

Sometimes things take longer than you think they will, and while recovering from trauma can take less than a heartbeat, some things stay with us longer than others.

Understand that when you are ready to let a thing go, it will be so.

At this stage, you have a practical, working understanding of your own body-mind system, an understanding of the current limitations of your consciousness’s physical manifestation in this reality, knowledge about how to expand the boundaries of your limitations, and a growing sense of awareness of your unique expression of existence in this world.

No gain in Consciousness is ever truly lost.

The awareness and effectiveness that you have discovered through the course of these lessons will stay with you for life, even if you never do them again.

I encourage you to do the body scan exercise as much as possible in your daily life, as it can serve as the basis of a much more robust practice of meditation, yoga, or any self-realization / actualization path.

As well, I suggest developing your own variations yourself, and tune in to ever-more subtle nuances of your bodymind.

You should be able to in the coming weeks and months come to further develop your own relationship with your body, and in particular the spine, as well as to further unpack and explore the frequencies associated with any traumas.

So congratulations, and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your dedication, your joy, your discipline, and your willingness to spread your light in the world.

Again: thank you!

Your journey is just beginning – it always is.

The process of self-discovery never ends,

no matter how far along we find ourselves.

That’s the thing about Infinity: it’s Infinite!

And make no mistake, this is an infinite journey ahead of us.

+ Introduction

Find an open location with clean airflow, free from bugs and dust, and set aside the next twenty minutes or so to really let this lesson settle in.

Hold each posture for three to five breaths, and take a deep breath between the end and the beginning of each posture.

Remember to body scan with every breath and then to, if your awareness becomes centered on a particular location, observe the location if not the tension itself, witness the tension, allow it to be, and then to identify any other possibilities for holding yourself in that position.

Allow your body to find the natural, restful ease in each pose.

Remember: listen to your body and open your awareness.

Notice the pulse of each pose as you make micro-movements with the breath.

Holding postures will not become rigid if the adept continues to breathe deeply and is aware of the undulating wave this sends through the whole body. Guide your movements with your breath, and feel good.

+ The Sequence

Namaste!

The theme of this class is diligence. Diligence is vital to any growth – nothing happens overnight. The difference between diligence and effort is massive: diligence is throwing a ball, over and over again, to get it right. Effort is the abusive coach yelling at you and telling you you’re not trying hard enough.

This sequence is about putting things together. We’ll be exploring the poses that have been covered in this series so far, and by this point, you should be able to execute the entirety of the sequence without any breaks or anything. Again, we’re looking for smooth, continuous flowing breath the entire sequence.

• Sukhasana / Kneeling / sitting in a chair
• Ujjayi Breathing

Remember the body scan.

• Parsva Sukhasana
• Parvrtta Sukhasana (Twisting Variation)

Remember the spinal segment scan.

• Stand up in base
• Tadasana
• Uttanasana (forward fold)
• Cettakasana variation (horse pose)
• Parvatasana (mountain pose)
• Cettakasana variation (horse pose)

Acceptance. When you can accept the progress that you have or haven’t made, you’ve made some serious progress.

• Uttanasana (forward fold)
• Tadasana (palm tree pose)
• Tree Pose

Visualization.

• Wide-legged squat
• Knee Raises

Positive reinforcement.

• Stand down in base
• Ardha Matsyendrasana (twisted bend)
• Pascimottanasana (Seated Forward Bend)
• Inversion Leg lift
• Matyasana (fish pose)
• Savasana

Simply witness, and observe the subtleties of your bodymind as you release all tension into the earth.

• Sukhasana / Kneeling / sitting in chair

+ Introduction

There are many layers of meaning projected onto the appearances in our lives.

A forest means something very different to someone raised in it, and a city, too.

Cut out all the mess and go straight to the root of the tree. Go straight for the essence of the thing.

This is the horizontal path of empowerment, the path of discipline, the path of tapas, the path of applied will.

The vertical path of self-realization, of taking an airplane from New York to LA instead of walking one step at a time, of directing the focus of your attention to realize quantum leaps in your everyday consciousness,

this is not what this series it about.

When applied to your perspectives, beliefs, and points of view,

the principles in these videos can empower you to move forward, one step at a time, and polish the mirror of the self so as to shine ever brighter.

There is no need to run. You have all the time in the world. Let lessons come as they will; you need not seek catalyst out. The world offers more than enough on its own terms.

You do not need workshops, you do not need to systematize your self-development, you do not need to meditate so and so hours per day.

All you must do is attend to yourself, moment by moment, and live in accord with the Tao, with the flow.

One final principle, or mechanism, that can greatly assist in this is in active recognition of one’s emotional guidance computer.

During an asana sequence, you will have noticed little tensions and kinks getting worked out.

The small adjustments along the way are each of them signals of a small bit of past trauma being “released.”

If you are aware of the more subtle interactions going on, you will also have noticed some emotional charge coloring your intellectual process at the time.

Now, in a very real, experiential sense, you can pay attention to your emotions in real time, while engaging with the circumstances and events and situations and relationships and conversation and objects and plans and hopes and dreams in your life.

All these things that appear, that arise and pass away, they come with an emotional charge.

This emotional charge is generated by the friction of your perceptions of reality, your beliefs about what the way things are, and what actually is, what reality actually is.

Depending on your definitions, your beliefs, the way you have described and labelled and identified what’s going on, you will experience a different emotion.

Let’s say I fail out of school. I hate my major, I’m relieved. I love it, I’m depressed. The only difference is in my perception of what’s going on.

By paying attention to how you feel in the moment, you can recognize little tensions and frustrations and consciously choose to re-align your perspectives in such a way that you clear up negative definitions and limiting beliefs.

This is a bit of an advanced teaching, but I wanted to mention it before this series is finished because it’s where the asana practice begins to bridge the gap between time on the mat and off the mat.

Listening to your emotional guidance system, while practicing with asanas and redefining those little surges of trauma and limiting beliefs that stem from your conditioning, allows you to make straight the crooked so to speak.

To bring together the opposites, and let yourself experience effortless and lasting flow.

Active application of the emotional guidance system allows the adept to begin to constantly refine and continually self-adjust nested belief systems.

An increased Self-awareness is just the start.

If you can shift your perspectives on events and situations to see only life-affirming, freedom-based points of view, only Abundance, only Infinity, only Free Will, only Love, only endless, immortal Consciousness, and that the sky is the limit or the beginning—then you can always come back into alignment, into your center of being.

And from that center of being, you will feel powerful.

You will feel inseparable from Creation once again.

You will feel like you belong to the All-That-Is-ness that you actually are and you will feel that nothing is out of reach.

Most Common Mistake:

Yogic circles generally refer to this as a ‘practice.’ Your yoga practice is about getting on the mat, about doing the work, about putting the time in. As if the number of minutes that you meditate have anything at all to do with how happy you are going to be. Get real.

Care for yourself a little bit more than to simply assume that something as small as a schedule can keep you down.

Practice is for a performance.

The grand arena of life is the performance, and the best way to learn is by learning while you do.

Align yourself with Abundance and away from ideas of lack so that we can all collectively follow your lead and mimic your example.

And then, through the vibratory amplification that you send out by being rooted in your center of alignment, your center of gravity, your center of being; and by exuding only Abundance, only faith, only knowingness, only confidence, only empowerment—more and more every day because you care about your life and you care about Being and Existence—others will care, they will notice, and they will unconsciously at first, and then consciously, see the example that you have set by your courage, your power, your strength.

+ Homework

Observe the patterns in the world around you.

Understand that because you perceive this pattern, this form, it is something with which you are personally familiar. In other words, if you see someone else getting upset over nothing, it's because you know what it looks like, because you do it, too.

Accept this.

Observe the emotional impulse you experience as a result of pattern recognition. Accept the emotional impulse as reflective of the belief structures you have assumed.

Ask yourself, "what much I believe is true in order to feel this way?"

Adopt a new point of view that is more in alignment with who you really are.

Recognize things for what they are, independent of assumptions and projections.

During the course of your day, take mental note of when you feel bad. Inquire within to the associations you have made and notice the effects when you change your perspective to be in alignment.

The homework for this lesson is simply to observe yourself in your everyday life.

Every time you suffer, feel good about the recognition, and then using whatever permission slips are useful for you, whether it’s simply smiling and breathing deeply, maybe taking a break and getting some water, could be calling your girlfriend, doesn’t matter, any permission slip to feel better, and then, notice that you have adopted a certain point of view on the situation, and notice that you can change that point of view in order to feel better.

Simply increase your awareness of this dynamic so that you start to naturally gravitate toward a truly aligned center of being.

You have to make this real for yourself.

Believe it. Demonstrate it to yourself, repeatedly, that this is actually how simple it is.

That all you have to do is pay attention to how you feel, and all need for strategy slips away.

Beliefs generate your reality.

If you want to believe it really is highly complicated and difficult and painful and utterly necessary to grow, it will be that way to you.

If you want it to be as simple and present as your experience in the moment, it will be that way for you.

So, again…

1. Keep observing the process that is happening on a daily basis, but now with this newly found awareness that there is only one emotion, only one emotional spectrum, and that your emotions have only one purpose: to let you know whether you are positioning yourself in or out of alignment.
2. Pay close attention to your emotional body’s responses to everyday life events and thoughts and definitions.

Be resolved; be committed to bringing yourself back to center.

We could get into more specifics later with additional tips and tools, but for now just start experimenting and trying out what ways of seeing life actually bring you back into the sense of connection, abundance, and the truth of your reality.

So, (a) be alert to whenever you are misaligned through the sensations that the emotional body gives you, and (b) notice how you label and define events.

Notice the types of thoughts, the types of commitment and resolve, the types of energetic or vibrational attitudes, the types of beliefs and perspectives you have on life, the types of new definitions you can paste onto a circumstance that you would previously define in a very lacking way (thereby causing you suffering).