Ashtanga Yoga with Sarah Dee: Yoga means Relationships

While sharing ashtanga yoga with my new friends and students here in Edinburgh, I've come to realize that the more I share about myself and my experience and approach to practice, the more good I can do. I want to offer students a whole lot more than asana...I want to share with them how yoga has helped me. This story-telling allows them to open up to me, and share with me how yoga has helped them.

Yoga is intimacy; this word comes off at first as a significant relationship with someone that involves more than friendship. Yet the definition is more accurate as "closeness between two people". This "closeness" can be friendship, familiarity, confidence, communion, affinity, and understanding. Yoga is intimacy with yourself and how you put that into play with your words and actions with others.?

Look how you have acted or changed with the practice - for some of us (myself included) it took a while for me to observe my actions and act in a more wholesome and honest way. I wasn't honest with myself so in turn I may not have been as honest as I should have been with others. This responsibility and awareness of my own actions allowed me to look into the mirror at how I was treating others.

How the practice teaches us to speak in a more gentle tone of voice and also, accept our responsibilities...all this happens with this daily practice since each time we roll out our mats we are going again into the mind and body with a shovel, digging out past actions and observing them, contemplating the present, and breathing into our samskaras.


Michael Stone talks about samskaras as:?


?"deep cultural, personal, psychological, environmental, genetic, physical, grooves. What we?re trying to learn in practice is how to have a relationship with these patterns, so that we?re curious, instead of being swept away by them. The patterns that we know about aren?t usually the big problem, the big problem patterns are the ones we don?t know about, and we find out about these in relationships."

Recently I was sharing with a friend that the samskaras were "wearing down" meaning that we are less likely to approach the same problem in the same way; that we are possibly doing something in a different and more effective response, and doing good.

I find that when we get so wrapped up in ourselves and the asana practice - we forget about one of the most important lessons of yoga - to listen and to participate in what we are thinking and how we are acting to our thoughts.

The last five years I have had a developing relationship with my family that once was broken. I have made it a practice of mine to include my family in my life. This means writing my mother and father once a month and just telling them about my life and sharing with them what I am up to. This open door invites them to come in and feel safe and willing to include me in their lives as well since I have included them in mine.

Teaching yoga has taught me that the more interesting part of this practice is the WHY we practice part. We practice to develop an awareness for ourselves that is rich in compassion and trust, kindness and equanimity so that we can go out there and cultivate loving relationships, deep friendships and meaningful teacher-student relationships.

Christine Hoar and Randa Chehab, two very influential teachers of mine - taught me that to teach yoga is to give and serve others in every way. This loving friendship/relationship that makes you feel like you are cared for is what they have offered to me, and in turn I teach this way since I have learned from their example.?

I am grateful to have such mentors enter my yoga life at an early stage in my practice and in my teachings: I began studying with them in the fall of 2003, when I was new to ashtanga. And since then, I have carried this lesson with me in how I teach and share.

My new ashtanga friend,?David Keil and I shared a deep discussion recently that yoga means intimacy. Teaching yoga with people is to share, reflect, connect, open up and trust; it is also a committed ability to listen to those who you are teaching! It is easy to count the primary series in sanskrit or to give an adjustment and wrangle an ashtangi into their posture that they are seeking. But to share your story and to give - now this is what teaching is about.

Storytelling is how we connect with others, how we share ourselves. And there needs to be more of this in our practices. Let others in and give back to them so that we can be ourselves and participate more fully in the world around us. This brings acceptance and confidence so that we can potentially harness more creativity and imagination to flourish.

We ashtangis are all students of Guruji because we are dedicated to the daily practice with the hope and goal that this practice will offer us the insight to cultivate richer relationships and therefore become more adept in the world around us, and more capable to tackle difficult decisions when they come our way.?

Isn't this what Guruji wanted for us when he wanted ashtangis to be householders? I agree with Dena Kingsburg when she says in the book, "A Portrait of Guruji":

"May we do him proud."



















?

Source: http://ashtangayoginionthemove.blogspot.com/2012/07/yoga-means-relationships.html

colts colts big ten tournament 2012 dennis quaid bruce weber fired notorious big biggie smalls lyrics