stambha

Happy Everything! We’re all basking in the post-eclipse and post-solstice darkness, and this year I’m finally okay with.  I usually fight this time of year, resist having to be inside so much and get super restless and bored.  What’s different for me this year is that I meditate.  I am finally unafraid of the steady darkness inside myself, and have discovered I kinda like it in there.

I know as a certified teacher I’m supposed to have a regular meditation practice, but to be honest, up until a year ago I didn’t.

I never really had a teacher show me how to do it, and talk about what really happens when you meditate, and include the entire spectrum of  possibilities.  Like some days you really will be thinking about what’s for dinner, or replaying that conversation in your head, or wondering if the timer is about to go off.  Other days it’s a glorious light show, a trip to end all trips when my awareness skims along the surface only briefly, then dips deep to adjust itself and align to the core of my consciousness, where it truly rests.  Yes, that happens too.

In February, I complete a year long course with Kashmir Shaivite and Sanskrit scholar Paul Muller-Ortega called Blue Throat Yoga which has transformed the core of my asana practice to share the seat with meditation.  It is a practice that my teacher calls ‘adult spirituality’, and it’s mine to create as I please.  This past year has been dedicated to creating and sustaining a practice he also calls ‘stambha’, sanskrit for “central pillar of support” in the form of a regular sit-down twice daily.  He has taught me that through this regularity of practice, I can more actually have an experience of my core.  My core being the stambha itself, or central pillar that is my consciousness.  And the funny thing is that once you get there, it almost has no characteristics, no particular qualities, and it is almost outside of time and place.  Yet even through the various ways and days of experiencing it, you kinda want to keep going back there.

I have been adding more meditation to my classes as well, and students are grateful for the chance to really sit with themselves, even if it’s difficult.  The ultimate vortex is deep inside, made up entirely of every cell, tissue, muscle, bone, thought, word, tone, touch, and breath.  Yet the way to really touch it or have an experience of it is to rest all those active forms of it, to feel it simply pulsate.

In my practice of Anusara Yoga, we start with the assumption that everything in the world is an embodiment of Supreme Consciousness, which at it’s core, is pulsating with love and joy.  Everything we are and do is made up of that, so when you meditate, you’re plugging into the highest flow of Consciousness that is the core of all things.  The theory is that we’re hard-wired in this way, so you tap into the mother board when you sit and give yourself time inside.  That is the core power that drives every part of who you are, what you do, and what you say.  It governs your thoughts, words, actions, and perceptions.
  
His Holiness The Dalai Lama offers this: “Be sure to spend at least 30 minutes alone every day, to examine yourself, and figure out what you want.”

That sounds way more powerful than strong abs.