The Power of Feldenkrais Plus Ananda Yoga


The Feldenkrais Method, and Wake Up Feldenkrais
is superb at this:
allowing us
to come to the moment,
allowing us to train
and improve our awareness,
our brain,
and alongside that:
our grace and ease
in moving.

Yoga, of the traditional sort,
is pretty good at giving us
a guiding path of
how to place of bodies
in positions
that allow us to feel more full
of life,
a little more flexible,
more in tune
with how great it is to be in a body.

Ananda Yoga,
with an emphasis on affirmations
that accentuate and hone the poses
into arrows of direction,
directing our energy in
and up the spine
to our brain,
directing our attention
to higher emotions
(One, for example is,
"I radiate love and good will
to soul friends everywhere.")
and to
the Higher Nature in either ourselves
or some Higher Spirit (God??)
in the Universe.
(for example:
"With calm faith,
I open to Thy light.")

So with Ananda Yoga,
with not only have the body
and mental awareness of most yoga,
but we have a deep confirmation
and accenting of
the emotional
and spiritual basis of yoga.

And with a Feldenkrais companionship,
we have a deepening of
the immensely easy
and pleasurable
improvements in
awareness
and thinkng
and moving
that can come from a system based
on learning and discovery
rather than that old trap
of "Doing it Right."

What is Yoga?

Yoga is an ancient system of self
evolution,
that involves mental, physical, and emotional
development.

What we in the West often call yoga,
is the body physical part,
sometimes called Hatha Yoga.

Well, usually called Hatha Yoga.

A really sweet way to cut to the core
of what yoga is,
is to go to the second sutra
of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras,
196 short and often very tense
statements on how to come to
the highest human states.

The second sutra
goes like this

YOGAS CHITTA VRITI NIRODAH

yoga is the stilling
of the fluctuations and whirlpools
(of emotional likes/dislikes/attractions/repulsions)
of consciousness.

so: yoga is coming to the quiet place
in the center of all the fuss.

And then again,
some people like to explain yoga
with the idea of YOKE,
as in that thing that ties two oxen
together,
or even wedding vows perhaps,
but yoga here can mean union.

Union with what?
With your Higest Self.
Or Union with God.
Or Union with the Biggest Quiet at the Center of Life.

Or union of feet and head,
front and back,
left and right,
outer involvement and inner awareness,
movement and stillness.

Once you start going for harmony
and union,
the possibilities are almost endless.

Isn't that nice?

Ciao
for now,
Chris