By now everyone knows about yoga and it’s benefits and it’s as if yoga can help you with just about anything and that is true.
It is represented as a way to limber up, and in some instances it has been modernised to the point where it is no longer viewed as a spiritual practice.
In the modern world, life and activities zoom by and if you practice yoga or go to classes, that is slotted in too. Many people spend so much time on doing things for others but not for themselves and real time to yourself becomes a yearning. Yoga practice is exactly that, the investment of time to keep understanding your mind, it’s inner world and it’s vehicle, the body.
When we can hone in and take time to explore a yoga practice, it can be nothing but a conduit to our inner worlds. At times feeling confronted and challenged or conversely, blissful and contented, brings us to observe how yoga works. It stirs us up, rearranges and gives us the tools to carry on to the next viewing of our selves – like an artist working on a painting, adding, drafting, subtracting and understanding shadow and light.
BKS Iyengar was very clear about this. His understanding and methodology is a testimony to his extraordinary body of work and this linage is carried forward by his family of yoga teachers and Iyengar yoga teachers worldwide.
Yoga helps us change, if need be. This happens over the course of a lifetime but often we see big shifts even in a short time after starting yoga as the mind and the body get enriched and flooded with the feeling of possibility and that is very powerful. We discover that this helps us to see where we need to add or subtract different traits and ways of thinking that are no longer necessary or useful.
Once we start, it is hard to stop. We get use to the spoils of practice, the joy it offers, the addiction and we want to pass this on to our colleagues and friends. We want to keep moving our whole- selves towards a deeper experience, to chart our unknown territory with the vigour of an excited explorer. The “Iyengar Yoga” system is basically Hatha yoga that is practiced over the course of a month to cover the range of asanas so our bodies and minds can assimilate them. In classes it can be, for instance standing pose week, or backbend week – so the subject of those asanas can be understood and covered and not just be a random event.
Yoga is not a club that people do or don’t belong to. It’s available to everyone, of all personalities and body shapes as long as you are alive and breathing.
How to start? Turn off your phone. Have a mat, stand on it. Do what you have learned or liked in class. Set a time frame; even as little as 15 minutes is good.
Here is a General Level Asana sequence , do what you feel you can do – enjoy exploring!
Suzi Chin Silicz is an experienced Ji Certified Iyengar Yoga teacher. She teaches private and corporate classes by appointment plus regular classes at The Yoga Centre East Redfern, Neutral Bay Yoga Centre and at The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney. Suzi also runs retreats in Bali, with the next retreat in Ubud October 20-27, 2018.
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