Yoga: Attitude or Insight
Editorial by Mira "Can you still feel frustrated and inadequate even though you may have meditated with yoga for many years?" a journalist asked me recently, "or do you go around with a permanent smile on your face?"
That made me think of a woman on one of our yoga meditation courses. When she came home after the meditation, her children rushed boisterously up to her and hugged her. She wanted to remain in the tranquil state she had reached during the meditation. She therefore tried to keep them at a distance imagining that the children would disturb her.
I advised her to accept the children entirely and not try to cling to any state. The effect of the meditation is there anyway, as we go about life and allow our various traits to find expression - and it's okay to react normally.
I am sure everyone experiences yoga and meditation in their own individual way. It is exciting to discover and explore the potential of the exercises. The fundamental effects, however, are pretty much the same for all - body and mind find their own natural balance.
When I have been very busy going full speed ahead all day and then find it difficult to unwind in the evening, meditation calms me. But if I am tired and uninspired and cannot get started on anything, then meditation gives me renewed energy.
A woman with very high blood pressure participated on a yoga and meditation course we held in Germany a few years ago. She had tried all kinds of therapies, but nothing helped. So she turned to yoga. She had a blood pressure device with her and we took her blood pressure on various occasions during the course.
After the deep-relaxation Yoga Nidra, followed by the meditation The Source of Energy, which is, amongst other things, based on a special breathing technique, her blood pressure became almost normal.
Another woman on the course proved to have low blood pressure and when we measured her, we saw to our great surprise that it had actually risen following the same exercises!
An explanation for this could be that these techniques make us relax and help us let go of the thoughts, impressions and states which are otherwise seated in our muscles and organs and which influence the nervous system - this process normalizes the blood pressure.
When something is worrying us, we may feel as if we are enclosed in a bubble. When the problem has been resolved, or the cause of the anxiety has been removed, then everything feels different. Suddenly we can make contact with the people around us again and appreciate the small daily events.
Yoga and meditation can remove these bubbles - regardless of whether they arise from anxiety, ideals or self-indulgence - and prevent new ones forming. If you happen to adopt another "meditative pose", then you end up in a new bubble that can inhibit your awareness and meditation and become a burden.
The realization that you don't need to live by ideals and poses, that you can depend on yourself, along with the understanding that meditation does not need props - is fundamental to our teaching, which is inspired by the Tantric tradition. When I went on my first yoga course at this school, I found I could be myself. There was nothing to live up to and no one tried to convince me of anything. The result was that I was able to relax and experience the effects of yoga.
One day two young men came to the school. They wanted to know what yoga was. "Do you have to believe in anything?" they asked. "No," I replied, "yoga is like football. It is something you do. It isn't something you believe in."
Maybe you get a broader perspective on a variety of things or maybe new values, but yoga is not something to ascribe to; insight grows by itself
Meditative Deep Relaxation
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