Before we consciously realise it, yoga becomes the driving force that galvanises us into action, so that we can start living our passions…

If you’re like me, yoga crept into your life surreptitiously. Yet the impact has been profound. With an old knee injury and my thirties creeping up, I unknowingly turned a corner and left aerobics and spinning behind. Yes, the universe and my “knee karma” guided me gently, yet firmly, away from years of body perfect pursuits, towards the yoga studio.

There I found the awareness and courage I needed to change the negative aspects of my life. Nine years later, I’m changed for the better and finally learning to live my passions – teaching yoga and writing.

Oddly perhaps, passion from the root Latin word “passio” actually means “to suffer”. We learn however that it’s only when our passions are unfulfilled and our emotions unbalanced, that we create our own dramatic and exhausting suffering. To break this cycle we first have to recognise that in this “situational suffering” we’re coming from a place of ego and acting from the perspective of fear and not trusting our essential wholeness.

The key yogic premise, Patanjali’s yoga sutra Yogas Citta-Vrtti Nirodhah, beautifully explains how a daily yoga practice enables us to notice or recognise our true, complete self. The Sanskrit translates: “When you stop identifying with your thoughts, (the fluctuations of the mind), then there is yoga.” It describes, logically and accurately, the process of unfolding awareness, which inevitably leads, (for anyone who practices yoga consistently), to self-actualisation.

Yoga asanas direct our prana (life force) upwards to the ajna (third eye) and sahasrara (crown) chakras to perfectly prepare us for meditation. This is when we learn to stop identifying with our “monkey” minds, i.e. the ego. Non-attachment to thought begins with simply being able to observe (without judgement) the mind and its constant fluctuations. Our thoughts aren’t permanent, real or necessarily based on truth either – rather, they’re subjective.

By recognising this, we open up space to become aware of the blissful, peaceful state of simply being. This state of being liberates us. The moment we let go of all our heavy expectations of ourselves, the chance of actualising our dreams and passions becomes truly possible, perhaps for the very first time. In fact, it becomes likely. Why? Think of a balancing asana such as Natarajasana or Lord of the Dance Pose. In the asana, the instant we let go of our fear of falling over and focus only on our breath, we balance! Suddenly we are a light, lithe dancer…

This holds true for all our strivings, every day. The world tells us to look outward to define ourselves – to careers, relationships and material success. When we attach to this, we feel we never do, have, or achieve enough. We focus on perfecting and correcting ourselves in all the wrong ways. Wasting energy and time, we scatter our attention, spread ourselves too thin, squash our inner voice and childhood dreams – and then berate ourselves or others when we fail. Afterwards, we review our failures again, through the mind (which takes itself rather seriously indeed). Living like this can drain us of the vitality and clarity of purpose needed to make changes towards self actualising, in a non-pressured, fulfilling and organic way. When we persevere with yoga, it becomes habit to simply notice our moods, our daily hankerings, the little voices in our head and then to laugh them off. With determined calm, we start to habitually value the profound importance of simply being, in every moment of every day.

Suddenly, our priorities rearrange themselves like we’re shuffling a deck of cards and the universe seems to roll the dice in our favour too.

Our path is never random. In the beginning, all this “noticing” may unsettle us, shake things up a bit – as the intellect and ego wrangle with the soul. However, this holds the key to fulfilment. Thankfully, yoga heightens our awareness, so we recognise the signposts along the way and are galvanised into action, to follow them.

By Mandy Walker

Surrender the ego, control, fight/flight. Close the eyes and sink into experience, sensation, feeling. Feel the pulse of the blood through the veins, the resistance in the body, the apprehension of opening up. Breathe into it, bring yourself relief, coax the fear out of the muscles and allow them to be free. This is Yoga…

As a yoga instructor who spends time at both my own studio but also at local gyms, I see an array of students all approaching yoga from different needs and mind frames. For many, especially at the gym, the first and most difficult part of their yoga practice is changing their view on healthy exercise. Often, like myself, we are drawn to yoga for a physical workout and find the many other benefits especially the spiritual path along the way. As people walk into the gym for a workout and decide to try the next class on the schedule, they are prepared to feel the muscles burn, the sweat drip and to bring their breath to a pant. This is what one expects from a healthy workout. Surely in order to be fit and healthy we need to ‘feel the burn’?

It can be hard to appreciate yoga in a Western mind frame, as one does not experience the posture but constantly works the posture, fights the body and pushes the limits. This often leads to a shallow breathe and an anxious competitive mind. In modern society we are taught to value achievement, control our environment and work, work, work. It is not easy to sit down on a yoga mat and let that all go. This is the beautiful challenge of yoga in our day and age. It reminds us of another way of approaching exercise, as well as life. As we move into a posture, instead of forcing the body to respond, we breathe our way into it. The breath is like a song serenading the body, soothing the body, releasing the past and bringing us into the present. Focus moves from achievement to experience, from the future to the present. After a yoga class of surrender the body feels alive with awareness and one does not wake the next day with the acid burning discomfort of a forced workout.

By practicing surrender on the yoga mat we come one step closer to practicing surrender in everyday life. Letting go of the ego’s need to constantly achieve, be busy and push, rather allowing ourselves to sit back and experience our existence, taking time out to let go and surrender to the forces of the universe. This brings us to the concept of Ishvara Pranidhana, the yoga sutra that reminds us to surrender to a higher power, to let go of our need to control and instead allow ourselves to be steered forward by the hidden current towards our purpose.

By Cathy Rogers
YOUR YOGA SPACE
072 123 6316
www.youryogaspace.co.za

1. Natural Stress is healthy
2. Grow your brain by learning to DO something you have never done before
3. All resistance causes pain and energy loss
4. Healing can start after acknowledgment
5. Everything has another side to it (The Polarity Principle) therefore every problem is also an opportunity
6. LOVE IT / LEAVE IT / CHANGE IT – make a decision
7. Exercise gets rid of residual stress in the body
8. We lose nutrition under stress – double up under stressful times
9. Conscious breathing brings you into the present
10. Get rid of possessions that drag you down and drain you.  Ask whether this/that uplifts you, otherwise de-clutter to de-stress: (photographs, admin, your desk, house, cupboards etc) including an inventory of your friends – who drains you or stresses you out?
11. Keep things simple, it’s less stressful
12. You don’t solve anything with your stories, so stop complaining and BE the change you want to see
13. Eat the frog first (do the most unpleasant thing on your list first) and get it over with, otherwise you prolong the stress
14. Avoid doing things that don’t align with your vision for life (your value system)
15. Communicate from your authentic self, say what you need to say, otherwise you will keep thinking about it/carrying it.  Get it out, if it hurts it can then start to heal
16. What you share you can own.  What you don’t own, owns you.

    By Jeanne Beukes

Notes from the Consciousness Coaching “Harnessing Stress” For Growth Workshop (www.consciousnesscoaching.co.za)

The Journey of Yoga

Yoga can be much more than a fun way to get a great body

In this article, Cathy Rogers, from Your Yoga Space, describes the unfolding of her own yoga journey and the style of yoga she has developed which reflects this journey, and helps others along their own.

When I started yoga at 17 it was purely to improve my ill health and get fit. It worked like a charm. At 18 I went to England for a gap year, got the usual Heathrow injection and returned 10 kilograms heavier. Again I turned to yoga, this time for weight-loss and I was back to size 32 in no time. I believed yoga to be the best form of exercise out there. I was doing yoga at the local gym and most of the teachers taught purely physical classes with a ‘namaste’ here and an ‘Om’ there. I began to think this was the extent of the spiritual practices yoga offered. In truth I also felt safe in the familiar boundaries of a physical yoga practice. I had been nervous of learning more about the spirituality involved in yoga. I feared I may have to adopt a new religion or that it may lead to some sort of ‘cult’ membership! But then I reached a cross roads in my life: my dream career path lost its appeal and I yearned for something to reignite my passion for life, to help me rework my faltering views on life’s purpose. So in short, I became adventurous.

My gym contract ran out and I began looking for something more – something that could challenge me and push the boundaries of my experience. I found a yoga studio at the end of my street and decided to attend a class. It grabbed me! These classes demonstrated that yoga was more than a physical practice; it was broad, holistic, and uplifting. Best of all, it wasn’t religious or cult-like! I began meeting like-minded people who embraced life and not cars, clothes brands and credit cards. I felt like I had come home after years of meaningless travel. Enjoying this new world I had found, I signed up for yoga teacher training and haven’t looked back.

Yoga is so much more than a healthy body, flat tummy, tight bum and cool postures for showing-off at parties. It can be a lifestyle that provides the practitioner with coping mechanisms for our demanding world. So I have vowed to ensure that the yoga classes I teach will be holistic: incorporating exercises for the body, mind and soul. I teach Hatha and Vinyasa classes with minimal ‘spiritual-talk’ for those whose minds and hearts are beginning to open to new yogic experiences. However, I have developed Journey yoga for those ready to experience more. I believe the body and mind are intimately intertwined and should be exercised together. Thus, in Journey yoga the body and mind are exercised along side one another to further enhance holistic health. Although, Journey yoga is a physical practice it has more emphasis on yogic philosophy, meditation and the mind than most yoga classes out there. I have combined my background in psychology with the yoga philosophies of old, to exercise the mind.

While completing yoga postures and breathing exercises, participants are encouraged to incorporate philosophies into their practice and lives through ‘thought projects’. These mental exercises take many forms to encourage inner reflection. They are based on a monthly theme such as Santosha (contentment), Ishvara Pranidhana (self-surrender), Compassion and so on. So too are the yoga postures, thus, the physical and mental practice work side-by-side towards the same goal.

In addition to the class, participants are provided with journal exercises that can be completed in their own time and in the comfort of their homes. The journal exercises are designed to extend the exploration of the theme, particularly regarding its relevance to their lives. Journal writing becomes especially powerful when our thoughts are written down. They gain clarity as their real perspective emerges. Journal writing is a great way to strengthen the work done in the class.

In Journey Yoga every attempt is made to present theory in an accessible, relevant way. I also try to deliver the material in a way that encourages individual interpretation. And so, the true nature of yoga is honoured as an accepting, loving practice and not a dogma.

The great part about teaching these classes is that I too am taken further on my yoga journey by researching topics and challenging myself to ‘practice what I preach’. I feel blessed during each class because I have a chance to share the many joys of yoga with my students, while they explore their unique yogic paths.

By Cathy Rogers

Try Journey Yoga classes at Your Yoga Space studios in Randburg and Sandton. www.youryogaspace.co.za

Yogic Lessons come in all guises

Just over a decade of living in Belgium has proven a challenging adjustment.  As a South African, detachment from my South African identity, my home, language, culture, family and entire sense of self has been a pain staking evolution. Time and copious amounts of yoga have finally led me to the place of living in the present moment, not one foot in Johannesburg, and the other precariously balanced in a lop-sided samastihi in Antwerp. The fact of this detachment revealed itself recently in a dream. In it I witnessed with intense clarity a plane crash, (of a plane I was due to be on) with a dramatic nosedive of the flight into an African veld. After a few minutes, salt and vinegar chips began to fall from the sky. It should be mentioned that for me salt and vinegar chips represent my connection to home with every flight back from South Africa containing a good stock of them. Belgian’s can make some seriously good chocolate but chips remains the domain of Simba and I gauged through this symbolism that the crash represented the severing of my attachment, with the chips symbolizing past ties to my identity. Or so I thought.

I was recently given an opportunity (amidst a plethora of abundant opportunities) to follow a yoga workshop with a master teacher. The dates did not suit me as it coincided with my birthday, the location required a plane trip, and the choice to leave my husband and two children on this auspicious celebratory day seemed justified in the face of what I had hoped would be exceptional learning. So off I went, punctual, excited and ready for another delicious yoga immersion.

The course was simply put, catastrophic. It was, as I never believed possible a “bad” yoga experience. The workshop was like a yoga boot camp, except without the yoga. It was gruesomely physical, excruciatingly painful, and not once ounce of my body would accept the barrage of abuse I was seemingly imposing on it. And that was just the practice. The philosophy felt vacuous, words without content, intent sans authenticity. All of me screamed out, Namastgo and I left the (12 hour) workshop enraged and in pain.

I had a choice to make. Stay one more day and face the resistance: what resists, persists had been the credo for the workshop, or go home, celebrate the remains of my birthday with the family and indulge in a beautiful celebration, that involved unconditional love and with some luck, gifts. My hearts gave me a clear directive, which I followed and there I found myself, aboard an airplane, on my 37^th birthday on my way home to my husband, two children and Guru, our beloved Shitzu.

When the turbulence started, my instinctive response was fear. Here I found myself mid (turbulent) air, alone, having made a clear choice of yoga over family. That it was my birthday made my impending death all the more poetic. Suddenly I looked down at my feet, where I noticed the numerous packets of salt and vinegar chips I had bought in London. My dream rushed back to me as a clear portend. The plane was facing south in what felt like a rather steep sirsasana, nose down, tail up with yelps from fellow passengers intensifying the already palpable anxiety. I looked ahead of me at the exit sign facing down, reading it as some implicit message of my own imminent exit and then it happened: the shift from being the chaos to witnessing it. There was nowhere to turn but to Source. I tried to call out God’s name in the numerous ways my lifetime’s conditioning had taught me: Ram, OM Namah Shivaya, OM Namo Narayanaya, Adonai and so on and finally settled on God. Not as in God help me but as in I am God. And I evoked this Divine, very personal mantra amidst the turmoil.

I suddenly saw with epiphanic clarity that if I am to die, it would be in complete perfection. That my husband would lose his life partner and my children left without a mother, seemingly unthinkable, was too in perfection and a part of their life’s lesson. I felt deeply that the Universe and Divine Mother would care for, protect and love them unconditionally. I knew with certainty that I was doing all that I needed to in order to realize my dharma and that even with ambitions as yet unfulfilled, all that I was at that moment was all that I needed to be. I understood that no death is untimely and to leave the cloak of this physical form now was not tragic, it just was. That the name of God that I called to evoke peace was really a personal acknowledgement of the Self which encompassed All as One.

Of course, I lived to tell the tale. And it was this extraordinarily beautiful celebration of love and life and utter absorption in the joys of maya (illusion), being in the form, being a wife, a mother, a teacher, a yogini and none of the above: identity within the illusion offering a mirrored reflection of non-identification of Self, all projected against the backdrop of hridayakasha (the spiritual heart centre.) And so I was grateful not for lessons I had ventured out to learn, but for the contrast that experience enabled as a backdrop against which Light would be made apparent. I was really grateful too to be able to hold the people, and dog I love for a little while longer.

By Nicki Forman Levitan

The word that is “yoga”…

Yoga is a constant source of inspiration to so many of us. Many know this truth: yoga
fundamentally changes us. With time, yoga tattoos itself on the inside and we begin to awaken more and more naturally to this “union” that is “yoga” and all that it brings.

There are many ways to practise yoga, many ways to find yoga, many ways to understand yoga – in the end, it’s all yoga – and yoga should be celebrated! Complete Yoga is exactly about celebrating all that is beautiful in life and in yoga. With man’s tendency towards making judgements, creating “isms” and labels for things,
the word “yoga” itself becomes a good word to reflect back on as it reminds us of truth, togetherness, unity, connection and our oneness with all life.

One of the first teachings of yoga is that life is difficult and, once we have accepted these hardships and our personal and collective challenges along the way, we are free to be joyful in the knowledge that the world is always exactly as it should be. This is the “celebration” of yoga – the growing awareness and trust in universal principles that ultimately sets us free.

Therefore, with the intention of celebrating the many divine aspects of life and holistic living, the Complete Yoga team got to cooking up an issue that celebrates and expresses the sacred spirit of yoga. More than anything though, it’s the warmth and sincerity of the proudly growing yoga community that allows us to do what we do.

Through inspiring, encouraging, enlightening and hopefully also, just relaxing you, the message of yoga, as is subliminally written in this issue too, is that you should revel in the wonders and many mysteries of life.
Hopefully you’ll emerge brightened from the experience, and experience is what we yogis hold dear.

There are too many fabulous reads in this issue for me to highlight just one (or even just a few), so let’s rather trade – we share with you and you share with us what this wonderful word “yoga” means to you.

As we grow in consciousness, let our yoga become that shining beacon of light, as we fill the world with our collective radiance. This is the spirit and celebration of yoga – the union, the joining together, the weaving of a collective tapestry that we call yoga and indeed life.

Hari Om Tat Sat,
Angela

If every moment is a new beginning, then every day is a new world…

That’s certainly how it feels in this unpredictable world of rapid change. For lack of a better phrase, it’s actually quite wondrous watching present events unfold. Global financial crisis, war and terror, political reform, democratic subterfuge, ecological and environmental degradation and restoration, the chasms between rich and poor… And, while some say it’s always been this way, to me the world feels different, changed.

World events have caused a shift in global consciousness and a return to many of the values that have been lost in its succession. You can always tell what’s in mass consciousness by what’s “trendy” and “cool”. “Holistic living” and “spiritual wellbeing” are the new catchphrases of a generation seeking to find a more meaningful existence, a manner of living that’s in tune with a global consciousness that’s yearning for real change in the way we live our lives and experience our worlds. Much of what is needed however, can be found in the simple truths and profound teachings of ancient times by men and women who understood and sought to delve into the nature of reality and the “beingness” of mankind.

Yoga is a way back to the truth. Yoga offers us the secrets and tools necessary for living a soulful, conscious and connected life. The realm of yoga is all-encompassing and it’s teachings find application in many and all areas of life. It’s an opening to a new beginning, a new world of discovery, a journey with a vast stretch from the ends of the universe back into the centre of the soul and out again. As Kavi Yogiraj Mani Finger, the founder of the Yoga Teachers Fellowhsip and Complete Yoga magazine used to say, “it’s difficult to describe the experience of yoga, like sugar, you have to taste it for yourself.”

I hope in these pages you can find something to inspire you to engage with yourselves and the world in a deeper, more meaningful way and, it is with deep gratitude to the many people who have travelled this path before me that I present this new full-colour, expanded format Complete Yoga magazine. Without the contributions of the people who have breathed life and soul into this magazine over the years, this would not have been possible.

They say that yoga finds you, and my wish is that Complete Yoga will continue to find a home in the hearts and minds of all yogis for a long time to come. Looking forward to growing in yoga together!

Hari Om Tat Sat,

Angela