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Thanks for supporting Yoga with Aria! Blessings, Aria and Kaia Mayland
| | |  | Dear Yogis and Friends,
I hope this finds you happy, healthy and well. It has been almost six months since our daughter Kaia arrived, born right in our home. I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have such a beautiful baby to share Life with. Though my journey as a mom has just begun, I am slowly beginning to reclaim a bit of my pre-mom self by intending to write, teach, and take more classes in 2009. This process is difficult because my total free time per week is probably as much as my pre-mom free time per day, but I am up for the challenge.
Change, after all, is the catchword of the times.
Yoga News:
Donation Yoga is Back
Get a head start on your week with Tuesday Donation Yoga! Beginning January, 2009, we will be meeting Tuesdays at 7:30pm at Dori and Michael's in Mar Vista. If you'd like to join my donation yoga list, please email me with "Donation Yoga" in the subject. Donation Yoga is an email-RSVP style small group class, capped at 8 students. The tiny class size offers you more time to focus on alignment and safety-awareness. New Year's Day Class at Silverlake YogaStart off your New Year with an amazing, heart-opening flow from 11:30am - 1:00pm, at Silverlake Yoga. I am honored to be teaching this very special class and would love to see all of you Eastside Yogis there. May our paths meet soon. Until then, Many Blessings to you in 2009! Blessings, Aria | | New Year's Musings: Getting out of the Rabbit Hole
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One of yoga's greatest teachers, Paramahansa Yogananda, writes, "The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion, may hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice."
That Inner Voice that Yogananda refers to can be thought of as our Soul our Higher Self, or even as God. Though the potential for a calm mind is always present within us, we tend towards hearing loss when it comes to our Inner Voice. Instead, we create a running commentary of our past mistakes and the worries about our future ones. The resulting state of mind is far from the Beautiful Whole that we inhabit: it is an adrenaline-fueled survival state of "me versus everyone else."
I don't condemn this way of thinking: a healthy competitive drive can definitely serve us when it comes to making a living. But unless we periodically shrug it off, it will enter our inner world and severely harm us. Those of us who live a hectic life all the time (and who doesn't these days?) will eventually find ourselves delving even deeper into the illusion of separation, retreating further and further from that desired state of calm mind. This may be why so many of us practice yoga: it makes us feel as if we're on vacation, as if we've left our worries behind. Even if the calm mind only lasts for that hour and a half that we spend on our yoga mat, at least we get glimpses of it and know that it can exist.
That's why Yoga is so much more than just a great workout or relaxing stretch. It is a discipline that fosters a truer perspective on life. We begin to see our lives not as a succession of mistakes or triumphs, but as an experience. We begin to realize that we are eternal beings having a human experience. As living beings, we have agreed to exist within the rules of Time and Space. Yet, even our own scientists tell us that neither of these is constant. Physics has shown us that Time is relative, and that even solid matter is made up of moving particles. The deeper scientists explore those particles, the more space they find. If atoms can wink in and out of existence, then life itself is an illusion.
Hindus recognized this physical illusory state long ago, and called it Maya, a collective dream of separation from the Source. At some point, we realize that everything is Maya, and that our entire life is a trip down the rabbit hole. The trip seems so real, and the illusion is so powerful that most of us forget where we came from. We can barely look at ourselves with love, much less see our neighbors or enemies as aspects of ourselves. Through the practice of Yoga we strive to remember what is real - that we are all connected to one spirit, one breath, one true eternal state.
I write to you as a fellow human traveler who is attempting to bring more conscious action into her own life. When I take focus on the present moment, beginning with my breath, and then paying attention to how my body is feeling, I transcend the present moment and begin to feel glimpses of the eternal free and liberated self. In this state, I like to imagine that one day, perhaps I might transcend Maya, itself.
All of which brings me to an interesting question. Which do you crave in 2009: To liberate your soul from your body? Or, to liberate your soul within your body?
The distinction between "from" and "within" encapsulates the difference between two schools of yoga. One school emphasizes the separation of the mortal body from the eternal soul. This approach to yoga focuses on transcending the body; in many cases, by rejecting our bodily desires. The other school believes that the body is not to be rejected, but rather embraced as a human aspect of the Divine.
Which do you believe? Which experience do you want to gift your energy to in 2009?
Remember, neither approach is right or wrong. Everything is merely an expression of One.
This is the spirit that I hope to channel in my classes this coming year.
Blessings,
Aria
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