YOGA
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Headstand, Tripod Variation
Benefits: Strengthens core, arms, back
Helps: Fatigue, balance
- Kneel on the floor with your glutes resting on your heels. Place your palms on the floor, slightly in front of and just outside your knees. Bend your elbows to 90 degrees. Place your head on the floor.
- Straighten your legs so you come into a modified downward-facing dog pose (adho mukha svanasana).
- Place your right knee on your right upper arm and your left knee on your left upper arm. Bring your toes together and lift them toward the ceiling, straightening your legs and coming into a headstand. Hold for three to five breaths.
- To come out of the pose, bend your knees, fold them in toward your chest, and lower your feet to the floor.
- Bend your knees and push yourself back into child’s pose (balasana).
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Manage Your Mind
1. Be in the present:
If you take care of the present, if what you do today is good, then you will just move toward your ultimate realization. That is the purpose. Other things, worries, this that, “What will happen?”, “Where do I live?”, “What do I eat?”, “Who am I with?”, all these things are not so important.
2. Keep correct knowledge only in the mind:
Correct knowledge will calm the thought waves down. This correct knowledge, that all will merge as one, will keep you peaceful. Incorrect knowledge such as, “I want to go be with my friends on the beach in Florida.”, or “Maybe I should go to Hawaii.”, all of this is incorrect knowledge and will create a lot of waves in the mind. Thoughts like, “What is the difference of Hawaii or Florida?”, “What’s the difference between this friend or that friend?”, will create a lot of waves in your mind and you won’t go anywhere.
3. Do self study and listen to scriptures:
Correct knowledge is not that easy. That is why you have to study and listen to the scriptures so that it is imprinted in the mind that such thoughts actually are good and are possible. Nourish yourself with it and you will be fine.
4. Practice of non-attachment.
This is the practice of non identification with the thoughts waves, which means not being distracted.
5. Manage your mind. Concentrate.
Don’t let it loose.The mind is very fast. Every thought is a lot of energy and very, very fast. So abhyasa, constant practice of restraining of the thought waves is needed. Then you don’t have much stuff floating around. What if and what if and I’m afraid of this and I fantasize about that, etc. You have too much energy in your mind, junk, garbage, erroneous understanding! Focus. Learn how to transform all this material that you think is free. It’s not free, it’s harmful material. The energy in your mind that is not used or channeled properly is energy that pulls you down. That is why you cannot go into the concentration and meditation state. So you need to create space by reducing the erroneous understanding, the memory, the sleep, and the verbal delusion and by increasing the correct understanding. Then you have a chance to clear your mind.
6. Use up the energy of the mind through Karma Yoga.
If you can’t meditate, then do Karma Yoga with the tremendous energy that you have. Usually we say we don’t have time to do it but it’s just that the mind is so used to being in the dull state and it enjoys the jumping state. The wrong habit is the mind doesn’t enjoy the concentrated state, specially it doesn’t like something selfless and detached. That is why focusing on Karma Yoga (selfless work) is very helpful to calm the mind down.
by Swami Sitaramananda
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What meditation is and what it is not
- To find Peace of mind
- When Peace of mind comes, Happiness follows. If we look for happiness but not looking for peace of mind, we might look for it at the wrong place.
- Peace of mind means also a balanced, calm, focused and clear mind which is not deluded, not crazy, not over active and restless, not depressed and lethargic, not fearful. Yoga Lifestyle helps meditation and peace of mind.
- Meditation gives inner strength and detachment , the power to let go and to release ourselves from our attachments. This will free us from the weight of our subconscious and per se bring in new light.
- Meditation is a process of purification. The patterns of attachments and fears of the past, the mistakes and karmas are replaced with new ideas, feelings, perspectives and possibilities. Meditation detaches us from these long standing patterns of wrong thinking and identifications and frees us from fears as the sense of the True Self becomes more real and tangible. We become lighter and wiser. In the same manner, when darkness is being dispelled slowly by light, we start to discern the accumulated old furniture in the dark room in the basement, and also realize that we can be free from them.
- Meditation is a slow training in awareness. If our favorite thoughts come, and we fall in its traps, meditation and awareness fail. Try again.
Therefore concentration is necessary in meditation, to dissolve the distractions and to be strong in the remembrance of the Self. When we succeed in concentration, we can return to our focus quickly and go deeper. When we concentrate on the Self, the name of God, a mantra or sacred pure sound, this will replace all distractions and traps of the mind. What meditation is not?
- It is not closing our eyes and wandering in the thought world, dwelling in our likes and dislikes, attachment and confusions, deluding ourselves in what we already know instead of opening ourselves to what we can not possibly know with our minds.
- Meditation is not putting more thoughts in the mind or solving problems. It is the process of emptying the mind.
by Swami Sitaramananda
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What Is Sivananda Yoga?
Sivananda Yoga follows the teachings of Swami Sivananda, as brought to the west by his disciple Swami Vishnu-devananda. Vishnu-devananda came to the United States in 1957, making Sivananda an important part of yoga’s first wave of popularity outside India. There are now Sivananda yoga centers in major cities in the US and western Europe, as well as nine ashram retreats.
The Sivananda method is based upon five principles:
1. Proper exercise (Asana, focusing on twelve poses in particular)
2. Proper breathing (Pranayama)
3. Proper relaxation (Savasana)
4. Proper diet (Vegetarian)
5. Positive thinking (Vedanta) and meditation (Dhyana)
