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
Purifying Through Fire: Creating a Fire Ceremony
The ancient Vedic culture, from which yoga is derived, has a long-standing tradition of rituals designed to pay homage to and communicate with the divine. In a Puja ceremony, one makes simple offerings in gratitude for the blessings they have received and to return a piece of these gifts back to spirit. In a Yajna, the ritual is more extensive. Here Brahman or Vedic priests communicate with specific aspects of the divine through the messenger Agni, the fire God. Yajnas, as prescribed in the Vedas, follow a specific template which include intention, offerings, and specific mantras to be recited. The following article describes the basic tenants of Yajna and Puja to provide a template for practitioners to create their own fire ceremony of purification and transformation.
1. Begin in Fullness
A central tenant in yoga is the notion of “purnam” or wholeness. All that exists arises from wholeness and is in itself whole. It is essential in our communion with spirit to understand that we are not separate from and seeking union; instead we are unified and remembering.
Purnam exists throughout the entire life cycle; from the blessing of a newborn baby to the cremation grounds of Varanassi, the wholeness of life is acknowledged through its entirety. As an individual soul, or atman, we go through a journey of transformation as our life unravels to reveal new layers of understanding. Regardless of one’s disposition, place in life, failures or successes, each individual is of “purnam” and as such, divinely whole. The practice of purification serves to dissolve the illusion of separation and bring the aspirant back into their knowing of wholeness.
Application
As you prepare your body and mind for fire ceremony, do so from the intrinsic understanding that you are whole exactly as you are. Bring your whole self forward. Allow all parts of you, from the beautiful to unseemly, to open to the direction and guidance of spirit.
