Writing Project

After 30 years of traveling to India, studying, practicing and teaching yoga, it feels like time to record some of my thoughts on paper. I have several projects in mind. The first is a book that would offer students support in practice - advice about diet, injury, breathing, life phases, orientation etc., that I have accumulated over this time. The working title of this book is “Yoga Sadhana - How to Practice Yoga.”

 

The second is a book reflecting on my own personal practice as it has evolved over the years and, in particular, during the period since the coronavirus pandemic closed the shala doors two years ago. Stepping back from teaching has permitted me to go much deeper into my own process and practice. The working title of this book is “Meditations on Pain” - you can read something about my process here: here - and below.

 

For the next 7 months, my intention is to spend at least 50 hrs per month writing. During this time I will stop with online public workshops and aim to teach one live workshop per month. In addition, for those who wish to support my writing project, I will share a monthly piece of writing from the Yoga Sadhana book and a monthly reading/Q&A/practice presentation of The Meditations on Pain Project.

 

In order to support myself during this time I hope to raise some funds through GoFundMe.

 

Meditation on Pain

 

The last two years have provided me with a wonderful opportunity for reflection and deepening of my own personal practice. During this time I have discovered something unique and valuable that I now feel moved to share.

 

It started around ten years ago when I discovered that despite decades of yoga practice when I came to sit for meditation, there was still a lot of tension and pain in my body. A few years later, something my teacher Acharya said caught my attention:

 

“Pains in the body experienced during meditation are caused by previous sins (wrong thoughts and actions).”

 

It had long been my feeling that there is a strong connection between what happens in the body and what happens in the mind, but it did not occur to me that the effect on the body would be long lasting, and I was working with the belief that the yogic stretching could somehow eliminate them.

 

When we feel tension or pain in the body, our instinct is to change our bodily position, stretch, move, and ease the pain. This is what we do in the physical yoga practice of asana. But I discovered that there were still significant tensions and pains in my body even after decades of practice. I concluded that much of this stress simply gets re-distributed but not eliminated.

 

And when one thinks about it, how can stretching and changing the body position eliminate mental suffering that is dependent on thoughts, feelings and memories? Surely, only by reflecting on these past sufferings and coming to terms with them can we have hope of reducing them and eliminating them. I discovered that yoga practice by itself is not enough.

 

Acharya’s statement gave me a new inspiration. What would happen if, instead of trying to physically move the body to eliminate the pain, I would meditate on it? What would happen if I started to deeply explore the sensations in my body?

 

This was the beginning of a fascinating process. As I started to meditate on these sensations, I began to discover the psychological components that underlay them. Through this reflection on the mental component while feeling the physical sensations associated with them, the bodily tensions started to release.

 

BUT just think about all the stresses you have experienced in life - not just what one usually thinks of as causing pain - what about anger, shame, anxiety, jealousy, humiliation…? All of these things cause body stress… and the memories do not just go away, they remain in the unconscious and I discovered that even though we are unconscious of them most of the time, the bodily stress is always there. In a lifetime we have 1000s of experiences that cause us stress and because of the mind-body connection, these events are printed in the body.

 

Over time I developed an array of different tools/methods to explore and release these tensions from various perspectives. This is what I would now like to share.