Asana and Reading for June 2011
Namaste yoginis!
As we enter June, nearing the middle of the year, we can look back at everything we have done and learned up to now in our yoga class. Looking at the beautiful yoginis in class from my green yoga mat, I can say with pride that all of you have improved SO much since the beginning of this year! With regular practice, patience and breath awareness, we can all become stronger and more flexible in class.
Last month, in May, we spoke a bit about Karma Yoga. As we said, Karma Yoga is the yoga of selfless service, and is a road to enlightenment by way of continuous awareness of thoughts and actions. In this vein, for the next month I’d like to talk about another type of yoga, called Kriya Yoga.
Kriya Yoga was brought to the West from India in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananada. To gain more insight into this advanced form of yoga, I’d really recommend reading: “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Mr. Yogananda.
Kriya Yoga is a systematic and ancient way towards enlightenment. It uses a combination of meditations, asanas, breathing exercises (pranayama) and visualisations to slowly but surely train the mind, body and soul to come closer together, towards one-pointedness.
Following the Kriya Yoga way could take decades, and we only have a month. For our asana practice, we will take one of the prescribed daily practices that is part of the preparation leading up to the advanced practices and finally, true Kriya Yoga. Because the asana practice involves a lot of single postures done one after the other (as opposed to vinyasa flow-style postures), our program will look something like this:
| Warmup: | Surya Namaskar (Sun salutations) |
| Asanas: | Ardha titali Asana (half butterfly) |
| Shroni Chakra (hip rotations) | |
| Marjariasana (cat stretch) | |
| Bhujangasana (cobra pose) | |
| Shashankasana (child’s pose) | |
| Shavasana (corpse pose) | |
| Pranayama: | Nadi Shodhana (breath awareness) |
| Meditation: | Visualisation practice |
I’m looking forward to June’s practice and to finding out more about Kriya Yoga!
Our reading this month is from Swami Satyananda Saraswati:
| What is Yoga? |
| Yoga is a system of living with sense and science, of the realization of ultimate values and altruistic missions of life. |
| Yoga evolves a harmonious order in mind, matter and man. |
| Yoga is an absolute departure from basic animal tendencies. |
| Yoga is a state of aloofness from the artificialities of life and relationships. |
| Yoga is the culture of tomorrow. |
Namaste,
Marilu
月毎に行うポーズ名をご紹介します。レッスンの状況により多少変更することがあります。
