RockStarYoga
  • perspective: why
  • musings
  • teaching: where, when + which
  • private yoga
  • rasayana: bodywork
  • mentoring + mental arts
  • ceremony + ritual
  • bio: who + what
  • education: what + how
  • connect: talk to me
  • snapshots
    • Yoga Advance - Isla Mujeres 2014
    • Rockstarring
    • Planet K
    • Play-asana
    • Students, Teachers, Friends, Inspirations
    • Easter Island, Patagonia, Chile
    • Turkey, Anatolia, Cappadocia
    • Isla Mujeres
    • Tulum, Yucatan, Coba
  • videos
  • offerings

Ever Ascending Spirals...

25/9/2013

0 Comments

 
Evolution of consciousness cannot follow a straight line, but rather rises in an ever-ascending and ever-expanding spiral of perspective, awareness and integration...
Picture
Have you ever had that experience where, for whatever reason, your attention is drawn towards something, and then, in the next few days, it's all you see, or hear, or pick up on?

Recently, I got in this little trip about spirals, and within this past week, there's been more than enough spiral forms, thoughts, musings and emergences. I began when I was discussing my view of the 'evolution of consciousness'.

I think we learn, cyclically... when we think of cycles, we usually think of the circle or the sine curve (like the biorhythm). But, those are pretty two dimensional, and I look for the third dimension that isn't immediately apparent.

To, me, that's the 'upward' or 'ascending' nature. Hopefully, we're using our experiences, our failures and our successes to learn and grow - to incorporate information so we don't make the same bad choices, or so that we improve ourselves.

Therefore, I have the belief that we are 'ever-ascending and ever-expanding' - in our consciousness, our growth of understanding, and in our process with our own shadows, triggers and core wounds. We remain in the same 'orbit' but continue to rise and expand.

If we are mindful, if we can take the observers mind, then we can look downward, into our past and our cycles and our patterns, and see more clearly what leads to them, where they go, and how we follow them. Each time, it should be easier to see the patterns emerge before we are in their force. Should be...


We are not going in circles, we are going upwards.
The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Picture
The esoteric tradition speaks of a spiral of incarnation. This is why we find the spiral in the philosophical thought from Leonardo Da Vinci to Teilhard de Chardin. In trying to reconcile the ancient cyclical view of time and the current vision of linear time, Teilhard had a very pertinent vision.

He believed that the humanity was evolving along a spiral shape: along the centuries, we always go through the same areas of life, but on the following loop. The same causes producing the same effects, people without memory resume endlessly the same discoveries, the same mistakes, the same records.


However, identity is never complete. One color, one shade, one flavor is enough to change the picture, every age has its colors, flavors and scents. History repeats itself, but not quite the same. It follows the senses of time...

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Picture
It's a debate, but some Hindu scholars believe we are smack dab in the midst of what’s called the Kali Yuga - the fourth, final and darkest stage of a grand cycle of humanity. This age is marked by vice, greed, violence and superstition.

The Kali Yuga is the most intense, nonspiritual period when mankind is most divorced from his or her higher self, where deceit, duplicity and dishonesty run rampant, and our innate and inherent wisdom and virtue is nearly diminished. Soon, all will be dwindling to zilch until Shiva cracks his third eye and it all starts over again.

Or, until we hit the edge of the spiral, the Omega point, and start again from the Alpha point... cyclical in its entirety.



"In the ascending spiral of evolution each new generation absorbs the experiences of the previous level and expands upon them…This "consciousness expansion" has reached a velocity of evolutionary acceleration at which several transformations occur within the life-span of a single generation.

Because of mankind’s inevitable symbiosis with the mind-manifesting hallucinogens of the ecology on the one hand, and his organic partnership with machines on the other, an increasing number of the inhabitants of this planet live virtually in another world."

Gene Youngblood, theorist of media arts and politics


Picture
"In terms of the esoteric sciences, we might say that a human being, like every other unit of life, is a vortex of force, a point of the divine life vibrating in matter at a specific pitch and frequency.

Desire for sensation causes the consciousness to reach outwards from the center to the periphery of the vortex and build its identity around the outer senses where the frictional fires of life are experienced. Through the rotation of successive incarnations, these frictional fires stimulate, sensitive and refine the indwelling life.

To begin with, only the grossest of impacts register on the incarnated aspect of the soul, but over countless incarnations, the consciousness awakens to finer vibrations and sensations, relinquishing its desire for that which is coarser. The ladder of evolution is climbed in this way, consciousness interacting with environment - experiencing and assimilating, reaching a state of satiety and then detaching itself in search of something newer and higher, all the time shifting identity, from one rate of vibration to another. In this way the faculty of mind is developed and the spiraling ladder of consciousness is steadily ascended - a ladder that stretches from the very depths of matter to the very heights of spirit." 

Laurence Newey


So, that's what I'm thinking about, those are the patterns I'm seeing, and in looking back, I hope to see where I've risen and expanded. I also hope to push the perspective forward by understanding and anticipating the cycles as they repeat - like the Sutras say:


Heyam Dukhamanagatam (PYS 2:16) -  avoid future suffering; those aspects which can be understood in the future in order to prevent suffering that may arise should be understood and respected.

Give thanks and praise!!


0 Comments

Fundamentals, Foundation, Get Down, Rock Bottom...

19/9/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
I had the pleasure of spending the last weekend in Tulsa, at a Festival.

I got to teach on Sunday, and while the class was listed as "Rock Your Bhakti" - on of my faves - it was much more an opportunity for a Devotional Flow. A chance to go a little slower, a little deeper and to explore moments, rather than making them.

Now, I'm back home, prepping my 1920's Bungalow for having a new foundation put in - after 80 years, the pier and beam system of tree trunks has collapsed and it shows. I'm living off kilter, so to speak. Makes one thing a lot about foundation, security, solidity and such! Makes me think about what I'm practicing, what I'm teaching, where I'm 'coming from...'

Vinyasa, it's about 'intelligent sequencing' or 'to place in order', not about moving swiftly or getting a hardcore workout. It's a 'work in' and an opportunity to observe how we allow and even use the momentum of our lives to carry us through our days.

I really like to stress to folks to slow way down - like I like to say, 'slow is the new swift.' So, when I teach, we do some great sweaty flows, but like we're moving through molasses or in a thick haze of sensation. I'm working to create a space to experience the very real difference between moving from momentum or moving from intention. The folks in Tulsa seemed to really dig this and dive deep with me.

In a vinyasa practice, you have to create the efficiency in your practice wherever you can find it - retaining the bandhas and minimizing foundation transitions or modifications... if we can keep the foundation steady, and keep the energy contained within the vessel, then we can really create an intentional subtle power in the asana practice. Rather than rushing through it, treating noble asanas as pass-throughs rather than the vessel for experience they can offer - staying present, moving into the sensation instead of away from it; this is what motivates my teaching. 

At times, when practicing, you may be experiencing some real challenges with both balance and having the core strength to be able to hold balances and inversions. It's just what that practice is today, but in the absence of 'feeling the flow' and really harnessing that power, one must concentrate on just looking for more opportunities for grounding, and for minimizing the movements from that stability. 


Move more intentionally, reduce the momentum as you find the intention.

Think of how you might have become 'habitual' in your practice, and learn to mark that moment by creating 'ritual' - imbue the moments with meaning and purpose.

Picture
My lesson - today's lesson is that even when the choreography isn't working out, you just keep dancing.

Even when you stumble, you pick up your step and move it on down the line. You concentrate on setting a stable base, then moving from that base with engagement.

Move into it, even shakily - when you feel off balance, eliminate distractions and just keep on the perseverance and in the work. Concentrate on the transitions between actions - make meaning, erase the momentum that fosters mindlessness. Take some deep breaths, get your purpose, and put meaning into the actions. Not for them to work out, but for you to be able to experience moving from purpose. 

Is there someplace you've been 'failing' lately that you can readdress your efforts? Is there something you've been meaning to do? What's got you down, or held back, or troubled?? Can you try to approach it, mindfully and purposefully and see if you can create an elegant vinyasa off your mat, even if there's a face plant!?

And, give thanks and praise!

0 Comments

Adolescence, Argent Sounds, Ardent Feelings...

12/9/2013

0 Comments

 
"Sound of silver talk to me
Makes you want to feel like a teenager
Until you remember the feelings of
A real live emotional teenager
Then you think again"


LCD Soundsystem
Picture
So, I was teaching a class last week, and that song came on, and we all had a good laugh.

I don't have children, partly because I remember what a nightmare of a child and adolescent I was - with those 'real live emotional teenager' issues.

Yet, I survived.

Talk to a lot of folks who are in that struggle - they are dealing with their adolescent kids, dealing with their own 'left-overs' of adolescence, or for some, just seem kind of energetically stalled there, even two decades later.

I get it - it's very real. And, it's very visceral...

it's also part of nature.

“Puberty is everyone’s first experience of a sentient madness.”

Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst

Picture
That means, the way I read it is that you get to have your own foray there, but if you're really fortunate, you'll get to experience that madness again, in the form of your own children.

What a trip! And, it's exactly what nature intended for us... it's just part of the brain chemistry and how we grow.

The prefrontal cortex has not yet finished developing in adolescents. It’s still adding myelin (the fatty white substance that speeds up and improves neural connections) and until those connections are consolidated--which most researchers now believe is sometime in our mid-twenties—the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain (known collectively as the limbic system) have a more significant influence.

As in 'animal, instinctual and reactive' influence - exactly the opposite of what most parents are hoping for at that time!


This explains why adolescents are such notoriously poor models of self-regulation, and why they’re so much more dramatic--
                                                 “more Kirk than Spock!”
Picture
In adolescence, the brain is also buzzing with more dopamine activity than at any other time in the human life cycle. 

Therefore, everything an adolescent does--everything an adolescent feels—is just a little bit more intense.

“And you never get back to that intensity,”

says BJ Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
Well, maybe on a really good night, with the right friends, and some LCD Soundsystem pumping, you might get close!!

Give thanks and praise, and enjoy!!

0 Comments

Sudden Stillness

5/9/2013

1 Comment

 
Picture
Before the moving stillness, we were:
from this, all came spinning forth
casting stars like motes in eyes.

Then came the spiral of the orbs;
in the midst of the wheel Grace dances
turning like the grist stones grinding grains.

Dance the ring, ‘round and ‘round,
milled into dust, cleaving all bonds;
learning only love and surrender.

Each spins, off-center and out of balance
- moths without flames, hounds without scent
loving Love, but without the lover.

Who has heard Grace entreat
‘forgive me, how long shall I endure?’
spiraling, isolated, alone in incomplete cycles?

Until no longer me and mine,
when the stars and stones cease
spinning Grace with sudden stillness.

1 Comment
    Picture

    Chrispy - Bhagat Singh

    Random thoughts I've had, while teaching, about the teachings, about my teaching, and while talking about teaching.

    Connect with me:
    Facebook: 
    chrispy bhagat singh
     Facebook:
    RockStarYoga
    Facebook:
    RaSaYana
    YouTube:

    chrispy bhagat singh
    Instagram:
    petrastella
    Twitter: 
    petrastella

    Email: 
    rockstar@rockstaryoga.us

    Picture

    Archives

    July 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    Anusara
    Asana
    Asana Practice
    Brain
    Calendar
    Chakras
    Challenge
    Collaboration
    Community
    Compassion
    Discernment
    Experience
    Happiness
    Holy Days
    Lent
    Love
    Magic
    Mindfulness
    Nyt
    Observance
    Patanjali
    Practice
    Resources
    Shadow
    Shine
    Sutras
    Teachers
    Teaching
    Yoga

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.