do you know the most important part about yoga?

breathing is the key of yoga

Do you know that the most important part about yoga is breathing. Sure, flexibility, muscle strength, meditative spaciousness, spirituality, stamina and emotional clearing are all important aspects as well of this 5,000+ year old practice called yoga.

But, to get to the truth of your yoga, you must breathe. Deep inhale. Deep exhale. Keep doing it.

When in doubt or overwhelmed, just breathe. When depressed, just breathe. When overly excited about something to a point where you get nothing else done, just breathe.

yoga on your mat

It's easiest to practice the deepest meditative breathing while on your mat, emulating colors of fire and feeling in your mind

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Darkness found in your yoga practice

Are you scared to face something?

If you are scared to face something within yourself, you may sometimes feel that time is against you or that you cannot fulfill your wishes because of your fears.

The answers might be in your dark sides that you refuse to see. Yoga can have the potential to be the place to confront what's most deep inside you. This means that you have the power to confront your darkest side of you in your yoga practice.

A place for the bold... But ask yourself, "What am I scared of?"

We hide our darkest parts within our bodies

Deep within our bodies. The best parts stay locked up in our joints and tightest places: hips, necks, shoulders, backs, and even feet. When moving through yoga with deep breath, these gems—as secrets—can become free...

In a big way.

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Diving deep, where are you my fears?

go to the edge

I am now wondering where my fears are, going off the edge to find them in myself, in the depth of who I am. If I am bold enough and I don't turn back, I will be able to renew my patterns. This action will set me free.

In the dark shadows, I imagine I will sail through my depths as if a dream and find the silence I need and have searched for all my life. I know that the best stuff is at the very bottom.

gems and secrets are beacons

More conspicuous and offset against the darkness, the gems and secrets are easier to see and feel. Sometimes they shine with luminosity like a beacon, with my name on them!

The bottom must be a bed of soft sand which I can dig my bare feet into and feel rooted, maybe for the first time. The ground of my soul. To touch this part of me is to release all that I previously imagined was hidden.

Transforming itself, no longer in the dark, I will invite it to be a part of my waking life.

freedom lies in our minds and bodies

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underneath the surface of who i am: yin and yang of the heart

Picking up where I left off in my article on an inquiry into your nature…

The idea of participatory spirituality has some more juice in me at the moment. First, I’ve been on a tangent speaking of shyness and opening up about my true expression. As if in a bit of a conundrum, I go back and forth in my life between befriending stillness and befriending the gems inside me that I can only get to by stirring up the darkness to see what’s lurking beneath that surface.

From the words of a song, “I swear that I can feel you creeping underneath my skin. It feels like heaven to me sometimes.” The feeling is all-encompassing. There is a quality of light within the dark—a yin/yang. The love is what I feel.

I can feel a side of me inside reaching out for expression, asking gently to not vaporize the energy of the expression into an emptiness, thereby bypassing it all together. It is telling me that there is much to be learned in feeling this darkness that I hide within the armor I’ve built like a child building a sand castle.

Sand is a good metaphor for this armor. It is made of rock, symbolizing strength. After many years of weather it can harden to an impenetrable substance, but if air continually moves through the tiny spaces (e.g., breath) between each grain, the wall can easily be knocked down in its softness. A simple symbolic hand can do the trick with one violent strike. Alternatively, I could douse it with my watery essence in a waterfall, or a slow drip to eat away at it slowly.

A soothing Italian proverb leads the way in my life now:

Chi va piano va sano va lontano. Chi va forte va alla morte.

(Who goes slowly, goes healthy and far. Who goes fast, goes faster to death.)

Taking time with the precious gems is most important. They have been in the dark so long, so once they see the light do I expect them to acclimate immediately? Give them time to adjust and evolve to become one with me again in their new form, with light shone upon them.

If I do they will become like a dream that I’ve always imagined but could never reach. Not until now at least.

© 2010 Yoga Robin®