From Tias Little: If inhalation is the life-sustaining phase of the breath, exhalation is the letting-go phase. Exhalation is like an outgoing tide, ebbing away from the shoreline. Its movement draws us back to the ocean within. Dispelling the breath out of the body is an act of letting go.
This evening we practiced prana mudra (life giving, cooling) and conch mudra (cooling, quieting) and explored how we might practice skilfully in the heat. Our reading this week invokes the quiet coolness of the ocean at low tide...
From Tias Little: If inhalation is the life-sustaining phase of the breath, exhalation is the letting-go phase. Exhalation is like an outgoing tide, ebbing away from the shoreline. Its movement draws us back to the ocean within. Dispelling the breath out of the body is an act of letting go. More from Tias Little on Patanjali's "effortless effort"(II.47). The paragraph speaks eloquently for itself:
Active letting go is to observe frame by frame the process of emptying and releasing. Profound relaxation within the body facilitates greater concentration in meditation and helps cultivate a luminous field of awareness. When there is both physiological ease and psychological space, we yoke to a force much larger than ourselves. This week we'll continue our exploration of what it might mean to be deeply engaged in and responsive to our world, and at the same time "let go". We've practiced part of Patanjali's invitation in this regard previously (Sutra II.46) by balancing stability/firmness (sthira) with softness/ease/open space (sukha). This week we'll add the first half of the subsequent verse (Sutra II.47), which invites 'effortless effort'. Patanjali uses the words prayatna (correct, just, appropriate effort) and shaithilya (through relaxing, unwinding) [translation Bernard Bouanchaud, a French student of TKV Desikachar).
Our reading continues with Tias Little from Chapter One of The Practice Is The Path (2020): We often imagine letting go to be a passive thing, akin to releasing our clasp on a balloon string. However, there is effort involved, sometimes referred to as "nonefforting effort"...right effort is the gateway to the subtle body. |
AuthorMisha Butot RCSW, ERYT 500 is a longtime clinical social worker and senior yoga teacher living in Victoria, BC Archives
April 2024
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