It's Inevitable
At a certain point in your yoga journey, you will reach this transition. For some sooner; for others later. But you will reach it.
Let me give a context:
Defined one way, yoga is the development of energy control for the purpose of realizing freedom, AND the resulting freedom itself.
I will say again: yoga is the control of one's energies for freedom.
The most dense form of your energy is your physical body, and this is where we generally focus our attention at the beginning of our yoga journey. This is appropriate.
Now classically, the authentic lineages of yoga knew how to develop all levels of one's energy in an integral fashion: body, breath, mind, emotions, and subtle energy.
But for better or worse, yoga in the States has largely focused on mastering the physical form, and to a lesser degree the breath. This is the general state of Yoga-Asana in the US.
So now there is an increasingly large group of American practitioners that have a sufficient level of mastery of the body, and feel an urge to go farther but don't know where 'farther' is or how to access it.
With this situation, three things result:- A growing fixation with appearance of the body, physical power, and physical achievement
- Greater sensitivity and energetic openness that overwhelms you and knocks you off balance
- A sense of inner disquiet and hollowness around continued body-based yoga
I want to stress: these are good signs! They represent yogic growing pains...you are outgrowing your current skin and are ready for the next levels of energy mastery.
What are these next levels?
- Intensive Work with Breath and Attention- learning to move energy within the body, collect it and focus it
- Tapas- energy to meet challenges and transform them
- Higher Mental and Emotional Mastery- how to choose empowered and helpful mental and emotional states and protect them from negativities (classically called the 'crystalization of the subtle body')
- Channeling- using these high-energy states to connect to greater fields of energy (collective fields) and ground them into the physical world
Cue 'Raja Yoga'
This is the natural progression of Raja Yoga as Patanjali and other Raja Yogis have described it.
With the development of these practices comes an increased fulfillment and success at the levels of health, relationship, career and social abundance (not to mention authentic freedom and realization).
Empowerment Practices specialize in this transition from Yoga-Asana to more subtle yogas. They utilize body-based practices so as to include the initial levels of development in the higher forms.
So if you feel you are reaching glass ceiling in your practice that I just described, I offer you this bridge to your next level.
Without a bridge like this, your practice will eventually become stuck and stale. Now is the time to expand.
Here's to new discoveries,
Eka
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