Question posted here with client permission…written by someone who has a very intense K awakening.
Q: So when you do yoga do you hold the poses for a long time until energy
releases? Or do you do poses until you feel it’s time to move to
whatever feels right? Does the energy release on every pose or
towards the end of your practice.
I have a rough routine I do. It’s different each time. Usually the
next pose pops into my head towards the end of the current pose. I
make up a lot as I go.
Not sure if I should stay in a pose for 10 seconds or if I should hold
it as long as I can until energy releases.
Thanks for the help.
A: Lovely question. It is amazing to me with how this particular kind of awakening goes…and how rare it is…that it is like clockwork even for different people in certain regards. This is exactly how it works through me as well. I get the image close the to the end of the current p….now see that is a good stopping point. Before I type the word “pose”.
If one comes to think and feel about them as poses…then that is what raises the questions that you have. Because they are not poses. And I know you realize that on many levels…but if that question is there of how to know when to move on…then I would say to feel into the true nature of what is happening to you. Really dive into what is happening through you. Savor every posture as a prayer and try to not see them as poses. I can tell you that it doesn’t matter how many you do or how long you hold each one at all.
There are times when I have been unable to do yoga due to being a single dad with a super full day with the kids and with work…when I have 2 minutes to myself before falling asleep…and I put my hands over my head with palms together and ALL the energy that would normally move and shift through 30 minutes of yoga is released in one giant blast that leaves me breathless and makes it hard to stand.
It is good to remember what these prayers are about. For me…I am praying for the energy to have a clear channel. I acknowledge that the energy is natural flow that has been blocked by all my doing and living the ways that I/we must live in these current lives. The energy is loosed from emotions that unlocked and are drifting about that we have not been able to take the time to understand or process. It is nothing short of energetic rebalancing for your whole system. For me, that means a prayer. A prayer for peace. So, I do not hold them for any particular time. I hold them until I find myself in the next one….if there is going to be a next one…one never knows do they?
For me it is also different prayers every single time in a different order. Or rather many different postures but in a different order every single time. I was at a work retreat recently for my retail job and they made it mandatory for us to do yoga while there. It was guided by a teacher and so forth. I have only sat in on one actual yoga class in my entire life. What I call my “vocabulary” (guided movements) have all come from the inside. I have to say it was quite a strange thing to experience this yoga “class”. For the nuanced way that the teacher had us doing things was precisely the way that I have been doing them for 6 years…even though I have never been “taught” and I have never seen anyone else doing them. My practice, like yours, is private and sacred to me. I don’t really share it with anyone…I don’t practice in front of others.
What is strange to me is how mocked and laughed at I would be if I told most people, especially yoga teachers in the West…just where my practice originated from. The provenance of my vocabulary is the same as the where the originators of yoga also “learned” yoga way back when. I do not think many people think about this at all. Where did yoga start? Who made up all these contrived looking postures and poses anyway? All those people in all these classes across America and the world…do they ever wonder? And if we always just say it was some enlightened Indian people from thousands of years ago then we are really missing what they were most likely originally trying to share. Because if this can move through a person like me and a person like you…why not through everyone…if only they would listen and trust what they heard. But that is another story isn’t it? Told through thousands of years of teachers and students.
May I share this response on my blog so that others can see it? I get a lot of yoga questions.
