5 Yoga Tactics to Elevate Every Moment
In each moment there can be beauty. In every experience there can be mysticism. It all begins with noticing. Read on for five yoga tactics to elevate every moment.
In Tantra, everything is sacred. The air you’re breathing. The device you’re reading this on. The challenges you faced today. Matter meets spirit. Life unfolds as sadhana.
Elevating each moment begins with the recognition that all moments are sacred. And we can also get much more practical.
##5 Yoga Tactics to Elevate Every Moment
1. See the magic in the mundane.
You are here. You are alive. You are inhaling each new moment and exhaling the one that came before. You are fueled with awareness, a force of nature. Carrying within you the innate capacity for infinite possibilities. Free to choose.
Life is your canvas. You get to paint it any color that you like. Isn’t that kinda magic?
2. Live in your body—not your head.
The purpose of yoga asana is to still the movement of our mind. From this simple teaching we understand that the mind is not the ideal place to live from. Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and probably even Oprah would agree.
To get out of our head and into our body is simple. We begin to feel our body. Beyond thought. Beyond emotion. Physical sensation. We notice what’s there, without judgement but with great compassion and curiosity. And we begin to emerge into a landscape guided by acceptance.
3. Experience your senses.
We’re gifted with our sense of taste, smell, hearing, seeing, and touch. We are innately able to deeply experience each moment. Each pleasure. Each pain. All equal. All sacred.
When we shift our awareness to what we can taste, smell, hear, see and feel, we shift from worry or fantasy about the future. We drop away from clinging to the past. And enter into the only moment we ever have. The one we’re living right now. And it becomes a thing of beauty, because we fully recognize and live what’s happening.
4. Presence. Aka: Being in the now.
In the now, we move from past remembrances and future fears or fantasies into the moment we’re in. This is a moment saturated with sensation. Rich in subtleties.
In this moment, we shift from ego to atman. Anchored in our senses and in our body, we begin to travel inward, traversing the five koshas or sheaths that cradle the Self: the physical body, mental emotional body, energy body, wisdom body and bliss body.
In the bliss body we are light. The wisdom body guides us. The energy body sustains us. The mental-emotional body helps us process our life. And the physical body carries us.
In the now, we can access bliss because becoming deeply present takes us beyond our physical body and the other koshas, and brings us there.
5. Transforming from within.
When we notice what is within us and accept it all, we begin to see how we create our experiences. By exploring without judgement we see how our reactions in our mental-emotional body dictate how we perceive what happens. And we realize we can change things.
We start within our own selves. By feeling what we feel and dropping out of thought we arrive at a place of peace. And from that place we can move forward. No longer hindered by old limiting beliefs. No longer shackled by ancient misperceptions. We are free to create what we desire.
And we begin by creating the feeling of it within ourselves.
About the Author
Archetypal Moon Energy; a Lunar Love Ritual
The moon cycles possess archetypal energies that offer women deeper insight into her own natural rhythms and how her divine flow guides her to have greater control over her mental and emotional well-being as well as harness the full potential of her creativity, strength, and nourishment. A woman who becomes consciously aware of her connection to the moon’s influence through her womb can begin to intentionally craft her life’s events in a way that will bring her the results she truly desires. Practice this Lunar Love Ritual to align with these archetypal energies and receive the full power of their guidance.
The 4 Archetypes of the Moon
It’s quite common for women to menstruate and ovulate in sync with the moon cycle. Since there is no evidence of women possessing greater or lesser health whether their menstrual cycles sync with the moon or not, please do not get too attached to these or allow them to mean something about your identity or worth as an individual. These are simply here to act as a framework to help guide you into an exploration of yourself.
A woman’s menstrual cycle is around the same length as the 28-day moon cycle, give or take a few days. There are two types of women depending on when they ovulate and menstruate – a white moon woman and a red moon woman. A white moon woman, which is the more common of the two types, will menstruate around the darkness of the new moon and ovulate with the full light of the full moon. A red moon woman will menstruate with the full light of the full moon and ovulate with the darkness of the new moon.
Depending on how our cycle aligns with the four moon phases – new moon, waxing moon, full moon, and waning moon – there are four archetypal energies that we can use as a guide to feel more in tune with our natural rhythms and those of the moon. Although the new moon is the start of a new cycle, for the purpose and ease of learning here, we will start with the virgin phase which corresponds to the waxing moon.
