ॐ Yoga and Meditation 1 ॐ

I've been meditating a lot recently, thanks to yoga class, at least 2- 3 times a week. Meditation and Yoga go hand in hand. One must do yoga to quiet the body, and then meditation calms the mind and the body! Also 3 ॐ s at the end of practice can help seal the deal, in helps the vibrations from the practice be vocalized. I used to be embarrassed of the ॐ we said as a greeting and farewell, at the Sivananda Yoga center, when growing up in India. now I find beauty, mysticism, wholeness, and energy in them. Perhaps chanting, meditation and yoga all go hand in hand. It makes sense why all the Sanyasis do all three and more. So it should feel right. There is a beauty in silence and fasting too!

Last night at yoga, we meditated after the 45 minutes of vinyasa. The yogi guided us through a very interesting technique where we focused on breathing. The difference was we focused on inhale right nostril, exhale left nostril, then inhale left nostril, exhale right nostril. When focusing on this, just through your mind, I believe the nose muscles, and nostrils start actually doing it! So it is like doing Anuloma Viloma, with no hand! It was a very amazing, although I felt my breathing was loud, deep an obnoxious, so I tried to quieten it a little. We closed with a chant, and three ॐ.

At the beginning of the practice and the end, we always set our intentions for our practice, individually, for ourselves. It's internal, a quiet whisper to ourselves. We close with remembering those intentions. At the end of the meditation, we repeated our intentions to ourselves and the yogi also asked us to remember sradha the word for faith, belief and trust, and focus that onto ourselves: Internally and externally. To have sradha in ourselves, the world, the practice, to listen and then have faith. An example was when we were in headstand, we should listen to our bodies to see how far we can go, and not to push it, but trust it. It's an amazing thing to meditate on, and be aware of. Also remembering to let go of the things we can not control, those that add to our worries. These external problems/unchangeable do not help us in our sradha, but we should let it go and accept it the way it is. I am so glad the yogi is mindful to always go back to that - the philosophy, the spirituality, the connectedness and energy behind meditation and meditation.

ॐ

 

 

Notes:

Practice = the practice of living something, in this case it is yoga and meditation. Although I won't perform it, I practice it daily. :-P I guess I picked this up from my yoga teacher training class.

Sradha - Faith or see the hindu or collective definition or Buddhist definition... I hope to post more on this subject!