Monday, July 11, 2011

16) Why I have slowed down ?

After a long gap I am blogging again . Anyway ,I have never been a compulsive blogger and even though I am not blogging much ,I continue to keep my journaling activity intact by writing regularly in my private  journal offline .Compared to the past I have slowed down considerably and have cut off most of my outer activities and spend more time in solitude , doing my yoga ,reading ,contemplating and writing.Even with regard to my Yoga teaching activity I have cut down a lot and just confining myself  to few dedicated students .This slowing down and loving solitude rather than activity did not come due to any force or pressure from myself .It was due to natural shift in my perceptions about life in general and my yoga sadhana in particular .This shift happened more prominently after my doing the Sadhana Intensive Course ( SI ) twice at the Sivananda Ashram in Madurai in 2009 and 2010 and also after my visit to Rishikesh in Oct 2010 .While the SI course slowed down my thoughts and gave me a glimpse of how it is when the mind is slowed down due to intense rounds of Pranayama , the visit to Rishikesh kindled in me the power of  slowing down the mind due to "Vichara" i.e path of Self Enquiry  . Surprisingly this Vichara that I am talking about was not the Vichara of Ramana Maharshi ( done using  the method of hunting the "I") or the Vichara of Classical Advaita ( done using the Scriptures ) but rather done using a combination of the techniques given by Byron Katie ( through her technique called "The Work") , the pointers and teachings, dialogues   from J.Krishnamurti , pointers from Eckhart Tolle , Adya Shanti , Leonard Jacobson ,Osho,Poonja (Papaji) , Rameh Balsekar  as well as some insights  from the lectures of Swami Dayananda on his talks on Classical Advaita Texts .So it was a combination of many of the above that pulled my mind more inside instead of it going outward . That is one reason why I am not keen on blogging ,writing emails ,chatting , updating my Face Book etc as all those activities involve me to constantly keep interacting with people from the outside world and I feel a severe drain of energy if I do that .So that is one reason why I keep my interaction with outside people ( both online and offline ) quite less and just interact with a select few close friends and students and rest of the time spend time in  solitude doing yoga , reading ,writing ,contemplating and mantra chanting .As regards my Yoga practice previously it was just the Sivananda Style of  Classical Hatha Yoga but now I am doing a combination of Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga as well as Iyengar based Structural Yoga and with regard to my current reading it is more of  things related to Movement Therapies ( Anatomy , Kinesiology , Yoga etc ) and anything with regard to healing the body and mind .So in short I am basically now doing a sort of research on healing the body and mind using various Yoga techniques as well as other healing therapies as well as non dual techniques and discover for myself what best works for me and later teach that to my students based on my own experience .Just like in my Vichara activity ,where I did not want to get trapped in any specific system like Classical Advaita , Ramana Maharshi etc but preferred to use a system that was a combination of various techniques and teachings from various Non Dual Masters ,similarly with regard to my Yoga practice I   do not want to get trapped in labels like Sivananda , Ashtanga ,Iyengar etc etc but want to take the best from each and develop my own unique way to practice and teach the same .There is lot of hard work in this as it is always easy to follow one system and teach it to others rather than discovering one for urself . I found out that no one system is capable of addressing the needs of all the students however noble it may be  .So trying to solve the problem faced by a student through a single system is like hiring a carpenter who brings only one tool i.e hammer and tries to solve all the carpentry problems using only the hammer and what will he do , he will just be banging on everything .So I do not want to be like that Carpenter having a single tool and I want to equip myself with as many tools as possible to help heal a person physically , mentally .That is what I see as my Dharma for the next phase of my life and I believe that is why Existence is sort of slowing me down to make me focus on the difficult task of being a multi dimensional yoga teacher /healer .How long I will be like this ( i.e in solitude ) I do not know but as of now this is my current state and I leave it to future to decide its own course for me .

2 comments:

  1. Very interesting how the inner journey is aided by different teachers, some from the West some from the East. I find myself in the same situation, the deeper the practice gets the more one wants to explore, or so I feel, what is real in this moment. I like Lyebeth's definition of yoga as a "toolbox" from which you gather the tool you need for the moment you are on.

    Really liked reading this Krishna, even if you slow down you can see the traits of a real aspirant and it is refreshing and beautiful.

    I would LOVE, and this is a request you are not obliged to do anything about AT ALL, but still, I am just putting it out there.. I would love to hear about your pranayama intensive at Sivananda's, I am interested in which types you did, what types, what shcedules....

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  2. Thanks for ur comments Claudia .I will sure update in my future blogs about my experience of the Sadhana Intensive Course (SI) at the Sivananda Ashram . It was really a life changing experience ( in fact every course at the Sivananda Ashram was a life changing experience for me ) .But right now what I am going through is a sort of an inward journey that is really very difficult to describe as you have very little to show to the outside world in the form of so called "achievement" .However I will do my best to share this inner journey of mine through my blogs .But I wish to point out that just because I have written that I have slowed down and prefer to be in solitude it does not mean that I just keep staring at the wall the whole day .I am active with regard to my yoga practice , reading ,writing and my limited yoga classes only that I am nolonger "psychologically obsessed" about any future goals and just learning to live in the present as best as I can .

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