Pratyahara – the Withdrawal and Emancipation From the Senses

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring the fifth limb of Yoga Pratyahara – the withdrawal and emancipation from the senses.

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things, and the eye of the heart alone sees the invisible.

                                    - Richard of Saint-Victor

The senses - the eyes, ears, touch, and taste - are wonderful instruments for observing the outer world. But these instruments function at their best when they are trained. If they clamor for what is damaging to our health, it is not their fault. It is ours, because we haven't sent them to school.

"Why do you want to eat that?" we ask the palate in exasperation. "You know it's going to add to the pounds."

"I can't help it," the palate replies. "You never trained me."

It may take a long period of education, but the senses can be trained. Then, the palate might clamor briefly for the chocolate mousse, but a friendly "Careful!" brings it back to the fresh strawberries.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to consider the fifth limb of Yoga Pratyahara – the withdrawal and emancipation from the senses. Select a day (or an hour!) to study your sensual experiences. Note which experiences bring up feelings of attachment – “I want more!” and, note which bring feelings of aversion – “Never again!” Consider what actions follow those sensual experiences. Are your actions based on an intellectual decision that you’ve made? Or are your actions based on the unconscious drive for more or less of the sensual experience?

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003

Patience

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring patience.

Living the Good Life

Patience

Why do we hear so little about patience today?  There almost seems to be a conspiracy in our modern civilization to counsel just the opposite: be impatient, be angry, “look out for number one.”  But what is life without patience?....We seldom realize what power there is in patience.  All the energy consumed in exploding against others, in retaliating, in unkind words, in the anger that brings grief to others and ulcers to ourselves – all that energy can be harnessed as positive, creative power, simply by learning patience…….Imagine someone who cannot be disturbed even if you are rude or unkind to him.  Imagine someone who moves closer to you when you get angry, instead of running away; someone who keeps showing respect even when you try to strike out and hurt him.  Simply being around such people is a joy.  Their practice rubs off.  Gradually we want to be like them.  When we have a selfish impulse, we reject it; we have seen something higher.  Once we have an ideal like this to live up to, we try to stretch ourselves a little every day; we see opportunities in every challenge.

                                                                        -Eknath Easwaran

                                                                      

Yoga Gems: A Treasury of Practical and Spiritual Wisdom from Ancient and Modern Masters – Edited by Georg Feurstein  

The homework is to notice when you are being impatient with yourself and work to turn this impatience into patience for yourself.  Then encourage this practice to “rub off” into other areas of your life.  Start with the little interactions that make up each day and be slower and more patient.

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003

Becoming Small Forces for Peace Wherever We Go

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring "becoming small forces for Peace wherever we go".

And then there crept a little noiseless noise among the

leaves,

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.

                                    - John Keats

Today I was walking with some friends in Armstrong Redwoods Park and I was astonished at those trees. The more I looked at them, the more I came to appreciate them. It was completely still, unlike our tropical forests in India, where elephants trumpet, tigers roar, and there is a constant symphony of sound.

Here everything was still, and I enjoyed the silence so much that I remembered these lines of John Keats. It is a perfect simile for the silence of the mind, when all personal conflicts are resolved, when all selfish desires come to rest. All of us are looking for this absolute peace, this inward, healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind. When we find it, we will become small forces for peace wherever we go.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to consider why you have taken up the practices of Yoga and how doing so can help cultivate becoming small forces for Peace wherever you go.

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003

Fear

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring fear.

On this path, effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear.

                                    - Bhagavad Gita

To be truly secure, we must begin to find a source of security within ourselves. Even the bravest among us have many fears. Behind the attachment to money or possessions, for example, you will always find the fear of loss. Attachment to prestige brings the nagging fear of what others think of us. The thirst for power feeds the fear that others may be stronger. Every self-centered desire brings the fear that we may not get what we desire.

One could make a Sears catalog of these fears, but all stem from one fatal superstition: thinking of ourselves as merely physical creatures, separate from the rest of life. As our sense of oneness with the rest of life deepens, we step out of the world of fear to live in the world of love.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to consider how can the physical practices of yoga (bahiranga sadhana: yama, niyama, asana) and the inward practices (antaranga sadhana: pranayama and pratyahara) prepare you for your spiritual path and help free you from fear and move you in the direction of LOVE and the experience of oneness?

  

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Savasana

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring Savasana or corpse pose.

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?

                                    - Henry Havelock Ellis

When we wake up from a dream into waking consciousness, we do not pass from unreality to reality; we pass from a lower level of reality to a higher level. And, the mystics of all religions say, there is a higher level still, compared with which this waking life of ours is as insubstantial as a dream.

Yet until we do wake up, nothing sounds more absurd than the assertion that we are dreaming, and nothing seems more solid than this world of the senses. Why should this be so? If original goodness is our real nature, why are we unable to see it? The answer is simple: because we see life not as it is but as we are. We see "through a glass darkly," through the distorting lenses of the mind - all the layers of feeling, habit, instinct, and memory that cover the pure core of goodness deep within.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to observe your state of being after Savasana. One of the goals of Yoga is to uncover our true reality or as Eknath Easwaran writes "the pure core of goodness deep within." In Sparks of Divinity B.K.S. Iyengar writes, "The best sign of a good Savasana is a feeling of deep peace and pure bliss. Savasana is a watchful surrendering of the ego. Forgetting oneself, one discovers oneself." See if through your practice of Savasana you can move towards discovering yourself. 

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003

Dharana

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring Dharana or concentration.

Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful.   . . . Such people not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.

                                    -Philo

Just as we live in a physical atmosphere, we are surrounded also by a mental atmosphere. And just as the air we breathe may become polluted, our mental atmosphere can be polluted by negative thinking. If trees were not always releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, scientists tell us, all life on earth would suffer. On a smoggy day the trees along the freeway look grey and drab in the haze; they do not seem to add anything valuable to the landscape.

Yet they are performing a vital function: they are taking in our carbon dioxide and giving us oxygen in return.

A person whose mind is free from negative thinking spreads a life-giving influence in much the same way that a tree gives oxygen. Although a selfless man or woman may seem to go through the day doing nothing extraordinary, without them nothing would revitalize the atmosphere in which we think. By being vigilant, and not encouraging negative thoughts, all of us can offer this vital service - which benefits everybody, including ourselves.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to witness the mind and all of its movements or Vrittis. The Yoga Sutras state that practicing the Eight Limbs of Yoga is the key to calming the Vrittis. Study these Eight Limbs and specifically review Dharana or concentration as a practice to help you notice when you are generating a negative thought and discourage the fruition of these thoughts.

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003

Letting go of our Attachments

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring letting go of our attachments.

Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child. 

                                    -The Buddha

My grandmother could not read or write, and she was a woman of few words, but by her example, by the very power of her presence, she taught me that we are all children of God, no matter what our country, religion, race, or sex. To use the language of traditional Hinduism, she was aware of the unity of life that binds us all together, and she was able, gradually, to transmit her awareness to me.

A favorite expression of my granny's was, "Life cannot make a selfish person happy." It has taken me half a lifetime to understand the profundity of her simple words, warning that happiness cannot come from possessing another person, or from any selfish attachment. But she would also always add, "Life cannot help but make a selfless person happy." Like spiritual teachers of all the world's religions, she taught that happiness is to be found in learning how to love others more than I love myself.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to observe what it is that your are attached to the most. Learn for yourself what it might take to let go of this attachment a little bit at a time. Start with easier things like chocolate and move on to harder things like people. See how your Yoga practices can nurture you on this path.

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003