The body has infinite capabilities which have never been tapped. But today, we will not go into those intangible, unquantifiable areas. We will isolate ourselves to the physical impact of our body on our daily lives. We need our body to be strong and mobile to aid us through our day's work. We would like it to be pain-free and disease-less for us to live seamlessly.
Disease-less and pain-free? Is that an impossible feat that none of us should dream of, despite yoga being redolent of such possibilities? A yoga practitioner will tell you about the feel good factor which radiates inside of them, irrespective of how things are outside. Anybody who steps on the yoga mat every day will vouch for its scintillating effects, on the body and mind.
The Mat, A Stepping Stone to Ease
I take to my mat at least once a day, usually more. My trysts with my mat are legion now for my family. Whenever they see me on it, they know that she is either too happy or contemplative, conflicted or disturbed, or missing a dear one, or is sick, or has some other ailment. All in all, anything wrong or right in my life is shared with my yoga practice. The mat that I talk about is not always a physical reality, it is an indelible space that long years of practice have etched in me. It is my go to place, it's where I recede, burrow, and rise from. A restorative place of deep sharing, illumination, guidance, and healing.
A Path of No-Disease
A new page opens up for me every day. Transformative moments, self-discovery and fresh direction, my mat never fails to slip one or the other into my awareness. I step off each time, a bit more solemnly aware, embracing an innate solitude, a gently uncurling respect for myself. An inner creativity and immensity keeps growing. These are startling realizations, almost unbelievable. Nothing on the outside confirms or denies it. Yet they bring alive an inner world replete with new pathways springing out from dead ends. My mat is my path.
A Daily Practice, An Entry Point
Yoga is a practice, an abhyasa. It is that which is approached every day with devotion for insights (samavesa), in order to enter into one's own nature completely, samantat. In our own nature abounds an intrinsic intelligence that guides everything. Nothing is outside its purview. It is an all-inclusive state, in which the body and mind are connected to the universal consciousness.
Finding the First Freedom
A yoga practitioner can enjoy this connectedness as a freedom to the body and mind. The processes triggered by this connection consist of insights that our body is constantly sending our way. Messages from our organs, muscles, breath, and bones are streamed into our consciousness. If we can rise up from the world of ideas and beliefs to follow their diktat, we are sure to find ease, or the lack of disease. This is the first freedom, from the physical layer or annamaya kosha. Thereafter, the sky is the limit.
A Time to Recalibrate
Yoga works by recalibrating the body's integral healing power. The five pegs on which this recalibration rests are strength, stamina, flexibility, agility and balance. When all five are in equilibrium, equanimity prevails and healing pervades the being.
Yoga is a lilting serenade to the body's unfailing intelligence.
