First Summer Round 1--Commitment, Setting your Sightline

MYOGA SEASONS for Subscribers

Happy Summer Solstice Southern Hemisphere folk!

End of year sillies after my first time rowing sweep in an 8 on the Brisbane River.

At this year-end turning point we are often flagging and have, perhaps, forgotten the intentions we had way back at the start of the year. As we take the holy days to recover from the rigours of the past year, this practice will aid us in regrouping.

Here, for the first time, I am sharing from my book Trust the Longer Journey…

This Season is action-packed in the energy centre of the navel chakra Manipura, and these practices will strengthen your stem, the core all-the-way-around.  For free subscribers and those wanting a simpler practice, here’s a Basics session:

When we step into the yoga practice we often do so with a fire, a determination to get somewhere. Maybe it’s into headstand or crow or full forward folds. Maybe it’s into a state of bliss we can only imagine is better than the here and now. Still others step into yoga slowly and tentatively, eventually building their fire over time. Whatever our approach, it’s the fire of commitment that we need to get us onto the mat, every single time. And it’s commitment that our main reading in this Round speaks to:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

― William Hutchison Murray

Yet, we all know how easy it is to make a resolution, to talk the talk. What I say in this practice, and trust you’ll begin to experience in your body as you do it, is that commitment is not a one-time statement. It’s a constant reiteration of your original intention, particularly in the midst of frustration, diminishing resources such as time, energy and money, and even in the midst of boredom.

Willpower means to be able or capable of (power) manifesting what you desire (will). Our desires ideally arise out of our priorities. If not, then they are often carry-over desires from our ancestors that may very well keep us mired in habit patterns that don’t serve us and our individual growth at all.

When we make the time to cultivate a taste for what we truly desire and we plant that seed (as we did in the previous Season/Chakra) - that intention for growth - within our lives, then the next step is to support it. In order to draw the sprout out of the seed casing, we need to water it regularly. Then, in order for the seed to break through the crust of the earth, there must be warmth. The heat of the sun compels the sprout towards it. The flame of our life-force beckons us to grow out of our current comfortable container.

This is not easy business. Growth is not comfortable. When I was young I woke in the night crying and even screaming with the painful sensations of my leg bones and joints growing so quickly. There were also emotional and psychological growing pains that were not as easily attributed as the physical ones, but nonetheless deeply impactful. I like the lyric from an Ani DeFranco song that says, “stretch marks to show where we’ve grown.” There’s a reach necessary in growth. We’re aiming for something farther than where we currently are.

MYOGA Seasons vision by Melissa Billington, 2010.

I see the human body as much a plant as an animal. As we move along a vertical trajectory of our power centers, or chakras, I see them alternating between assertive and receptive energies, whereby the odd numbered ones are yang and the even numbered ones are yin. The yang areas, in their strong and dynamic energies, make it possible for the yin areas to receive by supporting them so they can open outwards. This is a helpful visualization for creating better alignment within ourselves.

For example, when we activate the strength in the legs, then the hips and pelvis can be more free. As long as we’re walking on our legs instead of with them, the hips will have to balance that lack of assertive energy underneath them by trying to hold it all together, leading to tightness in the hips and low back that could so easily be alleviated by strength in the legs. Above the yin, or receptive, hip area we have the core all-the-way-around - belly, waists and low back. The navel centre, the area of Manipura Chakra, is what I consider the stem of the human-plant body.

Photo by おにぎり on Unsplash

As the energetic seed in the hips and pelvis opens, the roots drop down into the legs and we are Ents, movable trees. After the root, the seed sprouts upwards into the stem. Our hips can be more open when both the roots of the legs and the stem of the core are strong. In a seed, when the supporting conditions of heat, moisture, and darkness are just right, the roots and sprout grow in their respective directions.

This doesn’t happen just once and it’s done. It happens and happens and continues to happen. And so it is with Us. We don’t eat food once and then we’re good! We eat as often as we need to each and every day to derive the nutrition, the fuel, we need to support our existence and persistence.

When it comes to commitment, our minds can cause us to give up even though our biological natures carry the blueprint for persistence. At our base biological level we generally find a way to eat each day. Yet when it comes to feeding the seed of our desire-aligned-with-value - our self-proclaimed commitment - we can despair when the fruition of our desire is not immediate. How often have you given up on a dream when it did not come into being the first time you clarified it was your dream? I know I have.

What we fail to recognize is that conditions must be right. There must be enough support (earth), desire (water) and commitment (fire) for the seed to even sprout. And that’s only the beginning.

Trust the longer journey. Architects know how to trust the longer journey—many don’t come into their own until they’re in their 60’s, as buildings are big creations and take time to come into being. Eels, storks, monarch butterflies and other creatures that travel untold distances to pro-create the next generation know how to trust the longer journey because the specific conditions of their (pro)creation are crucial.

In this warming Round of First Summer, we’re stoking and sustaining fire in the belly to support the hip opening later on in the practice, and also to stimulate digestion. We do this in simple, yet effective ways, especially through the fiery breathing practices, or pranayams, of Agni Sara and Breath of Fire.

Agni Sara is actually more of a practice, an action, than a breath since it’s done on the expelled and held-out, or suspended, exhale, which is called Bahya Kumbhaka. The pumping action of the belly muscles stimulates digestion and massages all of the internal organs, bringing your brain down into your belly in the process. Scientists have discovered neurological tissue in the gut that have led them to call the belly another brain, which fits in perfectly with our body metaphors here of having a “gut instinct” or learning to “follow your gut.” 

Notice what your experience is of this practice. If you’re new to actively connecting with your gut, this may feel not only unfamiliar, but also uncomfortable. Growth is a stretch, a reach, and it often requires initial, temporary discomfort. We can actually learn to trust the discomfort as a hallmark that we’re on the right track, while keeping in mind your own ever-changing barometer of intense sensation. Challenge, growth, stretch, reach generally have intense sensations accompanying them. Be aware of keeping your jaw relaxed, so you’re not creating more tension than you’re releasing. Also keep your breath steady, since it is the bridge between mind and body.

Our other fire-stoking practice, Breath of Fire, is done while holding the poses of Cat and then Cow. Once you get the hang of Breath of Fire, this is a very simple practice since all you’re doing is sustaining the breathing while allowing the spine to curve towards the ground in Cow and then arching it towards the sky in Cat. However, this seemingly simple Kundalini Yoga practice is often far from easy or comfortable. This is where I really hope you’ll experience the process of what it means to stay committed.

We mentally intone the mantra Sat Nam with every breath in this exercise in order to consciously change our, often unconscious, mental mantras. We’re shifting from our unsupportive mind-speak to seed-planting Truth - your truth, the truth of who you are - with a continuous and conscious mental iteration that supplants all the unconscious mental chatter. Sat Nam means your existence is truth itself. Isn’t this a better seed to plant than the mantras we can unconsciously plant, like “It’s too late for me.” or, “I can’t keep up,” or “Why am I even doing this?”

Notice the stories that arise when you feel fatigued. Or perhaps you suddenly feel bored, panicked, or angry and want to turn off the video and run away from these new practices to something familiar? This is exactly the time to re-see and re-seed your seed commitment. What’s your intention?

Let the clarity of your intention sustain the energy of your attention.

In this manner, you learn how to stay with discomfort and even begin to appreciate, trust, and welcome the process of growing beyond your self-limiting comfort zones!

Here's what Others have to say about this practice:

"ahhh I love it! I chose to do this over going for a run and it was a wise decision. I love that I'm learning something new every time. Thank you, Namaste :)"--Sarah

"I got through this one fairly well considering it's the first time going into the Seasons. Does create some heat and energy!"--Lynn

"Wow....so much here. I am both overwhelmed and inspired. Thank you for the Goethe quote--very clarifying as I try to wrap myself around this new practice."--Barbara

From the chapter Cultivating Courage: First Summer - Manipura 

I very nearly missed my flight out of New York City trying to find Guinness to take to my Irish host in Mumbai. I gave up, just barely managed to zip my over-stuffed suitcase, called for a cab to JFK, and hobbled down the stairs in my spongy platform sandals designed to keep my feet cool but well-above the monsoon-flooded streets I would soon encounter. 

Of course there was traffic. There’s nearly always traffic in NYC. I bit my cuticles in the backseat and did my best to will a path to open for us so I wouldn’t miss my plane. This was my third attempt to reach India and I suspected if I didn’t make this flight—as they say, ‘three’s a charm!’—that I would go to my grave not having made it to India. 3 tries in 3 years. 

People often ask me if I went to India to study yoga, since most people know me as a yoga teacher. But no, I went to India because my friend in university, whose name means smile!, had spellbound me with Hindu legends and tales of the Krishnamurti school outside Bangalore that she attended. With great delight she described the crazy, colorful fun of throwing fistfuls of dry dye at everyone during Holi festival and the insane amounts of rain that spilled from the skies in August. She told me about learning to dance the stories of her culture. She showed me how fast she could waggle her tongue, and how frighteningly expressive her eyeballs could be. In exchange, I taught her how to drive my baby blue Ford Maverick that was older than we were, invited her to my birthday pots-n-pans band through Cornell’s campus on a sleepy Sunday morning, showed her my sewing projects in the costume shop, and filled her non-dating self in on the details of having a boyfriend. 

I loved hearing what Smitha got up to with her studies, though. I called her one time and she was literally watching water boil while she talked to me on the phone. She was studying how the bubbles formed and, as we talked about this and that, she interjected excitedly, narrating to me the moment when the bubbles detached from the bottom of the pan and then how they all began to float in steady streams towards the surface. Eventually the bubbles began to rapidly roil into a critical mass moment of crescendoing together in a unison that frothed upwards. It was then that I thought perhaps she knew more about relationships, studying bubbles, than I did, mooning over other humans. Maybe these “other” ways of seeing that Smitha seemed to be so capable in, could be found in the land that made her. In going there I might be gifted a new set of eyes.

My whole life, it seemed, I’d been itching to explore, to travel, to see the world ‘out there’. Without any further research, or for any other reason than the allure of Smitha’s stories, and the apparent affordability of an extended, and safe, stay for a single woman, I began to set my sights on India. 

To be continued…