Tag Archive for: Teacher Training

Shift in Perspective: The Experiment

Every night before going to sleep, write down three people, places, or things for which I am grateful.

When I first began this experiment with santosha, I sometimes needed a few moments of thought to come up with three things to add to the list. But as I moved further into the experiment and began truly embodying the practice, not only did it become easier to come up with three things, some days it was difficult to only write three down. There were a few days I was so overwhelmed by gratitude I had to write down five or more things just so as to not neglect feeling or explicitly expressing gratitude. I knew things had shifted when I felt myself getting fired up in traffic one day and I was able to talk myself back from the brink by reframing the situation and mentally thanking the person in front of me (going 45 in a 65) for the opportunity to practice patience. Usually those people just get the finger, not my gratitude.

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Shift in Perspective: Conclusion

Taking the time to mindfully acknowledge and record three things I am grateful for each day was a powerful personal reminder to maintain focus on the blessings in life.

There are far too many negative things in the world to distract us from what is important and placing my attention on the things in life that make me happy, instead of things that upset me, helped create just the shift in perspective I needed to feel better on a day to day basis. Engaging in this experiment also helped cultivate a change in how I look at the world and events and people around me. This occurred after a week into the practice; so, not only did this practice help create a space for acknowledging the positives, but it also increased my general levels of contentment and influenced how I interact with the world around me overall. Pretty powerful stuff. 

I intend to continue with the gratitude practice indefinitely and I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this yama/niyama experiment.

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Getting Out of Your Head

Everyone hears their own chatter in their head at times. The message is sometimes full of praise but often times full of self-criticism. Learning to script the message of this chatter is something everyone can benefit from. This Axis Yoga Teacher Training student took time to reflect on this challenge while focusing on a return to creative expression.

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Getting Out of Your Head: Summary

In a big nutshell:

I have been an artist for as long as I can remember.  Instead of connecting with people and relating, it was just me, a pen, and paper.  Sitting for hours and drawing my life as I saw it or wanted it to be was my life force.  School was art-centered.  College was even better because it gave me more opportunity to fully immerse myself into being creative.  Working in the corporate world for the past 13 years being told how to design and what to design sort of interrupted my flow of creativity up until last year when I left it all.  The process to do my art again has been slow.

Idea:

I would like to give myself the opportunity to create something – a doodle, sketch, an entire piece — something expressive, something artistic once a week.  Maybe then I can get that momentum going again and just have it flowing from my fingertips instead of reeling in my head and feeling stuck.

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Getting Out of Your Head: Goal

The process of being creative and staying creative has gone through different stages in my life.  As a small child, it streamed like water from a steady flowing faucet.  The thoughts, emotions, urges, expressions all came out effortlessly and consistently.  School and college still supported the imagination but then the work started turning into assignments with due dates.  Fast forward to the working world and corporation employment – something happens emotionally and/or mentally that somehow halts my ability to express myself.  The ideas are there spinning in my head, collecting in folders on my computer desktop, saved and bookmarked…. but I just can’t seem to let it go.

The goal of creating something once a week to share with others was supposed to be an easy way to get it all out – to not feel stuck, to stop keeping it all inside and connect with others.  The experiment was not as successful as I wanted it to be.  One piece of work was created and shared within three weeks.  There was a lot of judgment and criticism, “Only ONE piece of art in three weeks?  Good artists constantly doodle and have something to reveal daily.  What’s wrong with you?”

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Getting Out of Your Head: Observation

Having a busy schedule or other things taking priority is always the excuse.  This experience has actually slowly been revealing itself within the past year.  The journey has been full of me being with myself.  I have been learning to guide, nurture, and encourage myself to start making art again.  It truly is a daily affirmation game for me to get going.  I never really needed it from the outside world because I have become numb to others’ prodding and confidence.  I have even let positive comments from others to run dry through me.  I needed it within myself to step onto the path and be my own biggest fan and supporter.

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Finding My Own Sadhana

The following account shares the journey one Axis Yoga Teacher Training student takes to find an authentic personal Yoga practice. With the many paths and practices of Yoga, it takes some self-exploration and experimentation to find what feels right to each individual. This student was able to embrace Yoga in a way that fit current beliefs and practices, and left room for Yoga to continue to become a more substantial part of life.

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Finding My Own Sadhana: Inner Obstacles

I started doing yoga five years ago with the sole motivation of getting physically fit.  I soon started to know and appreciate the subtle mind-clarifying benefits, and the importance of the breath in the practice, which can be applied to many situations throughout my day.  My practice stagnated for years when I found myself unable to pay for yoga classes and then I ended up traveling for two years consistently.  I continued to practice asana almost daily, but I wasn’t learning anything new or deepening my practice at all.  As soon as I started the Axis Yoga teacher training, I could almost immediately feel the benefits of deepening my practice by using pranayama, meditation, and mantra along with my ever-evolving asana practice.  At the same time I came up against a deep-seeded inner obstacle; a resentment to being told how to practice my spirituality, and an aversion to dogma and ritual (especially mantra for some reason).  Having felt the positive effects of sadhana in Vipassana, and in class, and seeing the use in overcoming aversions, I decided to use the opportunity to do a personal experiment to get to the bottom of this particular aversion.  I decided to try and do at least thirty minutes of sadhana a day and see what kind of effects it had on my mind and well-being.  I figured that if I could really experience the effects of the practices, then I could more easily overcome my aversions and allow them to become a part of my life and improve my well-being.

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Finding My Own Sadhana : Outer Obstacles

Almost immediately it became clear that my original goal was not going to come to fruition.  The experiment happened to fall on a time when I had a terrible cold that lasted two weeks, making it impossible to breathe normally through my nose let alone do pranayama.  Furthermore, it came at a time when the summer camping trips I lead for youth had started, making it difficult to find the time and space to do a practice that requires so much silence and solitude, and which could be very alienating for the youth I work with.  I also had trouble forcing myself to sit indoors to practice sadhana with the beautiful springtime weather beckoning me outdoors.  I did learn from this obstacle, however.  I learned that I can create my own form of meditation which allows me to be outside, and really enjoy the practice.  I would simply find a quite spot alone in nature and sit up straight while trying to keep my focus on the present moment and my immediate surroundings.  This was a big breakthrough for me as far as getting over my aversions to meditation, because I realized that I could bring in everything I’m learning in yoga and add my own pieces that work for me to make it something that benefits me even more and also allows me to express my spirituality in a way that feels authentic to me.

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Finding My Own Sadhana: Finding Authenticity

This inauthenticity was perhaps the root of my aversion to mantra.  I always felt strange chanting word I couldn’t even understand except that I knew they were praising deities I didn’t even believe in.  Not only that, but it is sung in such a monotone drone which, as a musician, sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me.  It was not intended to be a part of my experiment, but attending Tushta’s Gita study session really helped me to clear out some of my blockages about mantra.  Tushta explained the aspects of existence that the different Hindu deities represent, which made them much more palatable to me.  Then, as if from divine intervention, my practicum group convened and decided unanimously that I needed to be the one to lead mantra because I play the accordion.  I didn’t even argue because it seemed so clear to me that this was my chance to turn mantra in to something I love and use it to help dissolve my aversion.  I found a mantra whose translation really resonated with me, and I found that once I was able to turn it in to a beautiful, melodious song, it actually became something I loved.  When I led a practice session of it with the class, I was deeply touched by how beautiful it sounded when everyone sang it back to me, and the calming affect that the vibration of the accordion and the words had on me.  It was really a transformational experience.

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