The magic of working from home continues. I am now combining my virtual assistant job with that of being a Kundalini Yoga teacher. I spend part of my limited “working time” designing a complete class. Can you imagine such a joy? I am delighted with my search of kriyas (sequences of asanas), with my choice of pranayamas (breathing tecniques), and the combination of music and specific mantras.

Should we talk now a little bit about Yoga?

When talking about yoga, the caricature that many people have in their minds is that of an excessively flexible person doing impossible postures or on the other end, a cross-legged seated solitary person constantly tangled with the syllable OM. Sometimes, when mentioning that I practice yoga, it is curious to hear friends or acquaintances say “Ah! Too much relaxation! adopting the typical gesture with the hands –thumb finger touching index finger.

If we read any text about yoga, the first thing that we learn is that the word yoga means “to unite or to join”. It sounds beautiful, but joining what? Joining breath and mind? Joining asana –posture- and attention? A sense of union with the Wholeness, with the present? There is some truth in that. There is also the fact that there are many yoga variants. The origins of yoga go back to tens of thousands years. By that time, yogis trained in different techniques that were part of yoga, doing that as part of their daily lives. With passage of time and according to individual needs, yoga started to diverge and different disciplines surged focusing into a particular fragment of what had been an integral yoga discipline. That is why we find many different yoga schools in the present.

Despite this fact and as the word itself implies, yoga, all the techniques have something in common: the fusion of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness. This is the true meaning of union, as it is understood to explain what yoga is. This is not a philosophical or religious doctrine. This consciousness can be perceived as each one desires or is able to, meaning God, Allah, Wholeness, Infinite or Nothingness. The important thing is to learn to develop consciousness in what we think, say, do and before what we merely react.

Develop the consciousness that we are part of the world and that we should stop the inertia that has led us to a state where the only value is my personal wellbeing. Develop the consciousness to dissolve old patterns focused on the ego. We need to respect the beauty and plurality surrounding life. We need to change the way of relating with each other. We need to change habits and see with the innocence of a child.

Yoga does all this. We start learning how to breathe, the first thing a newborn does even before crying. Filling our lungs with oxygen to its maximum capacity, we are filling up with prana -the energy of life- and exhaling completely, we are eliminating the irritant toxics that are accumulating in our blood.

When practicing a determined asana, besides the benefit that posture particularly brings to a determined organ, I will be exploring my body deeply, lengthwise and widthwise. Thus, I will be also applying the technique of staying within a posture, either static or dynamic, with a sense of attention and relaxation at the same time. This will allow me to perceive the reactions and the subtleties of my body and mind. When relaxing, we integrate all the work actively done, incorporating it to our whole being. When relaxing, we also let go, we practice detachment… If we finally let meditation to arrive, we will perceive the world beyond our physical body, our thoughts and emotions. In this inner state, you observe the world as a witness from other perspective.

Do you taste the honey on your lips? This is only a little teaspoon of what yoga is.