EARTHING YOGA: the purpose of yoga mats and the shift in your asana practice to make real life changes
What is earthing yoga? If you are a first timer
and haven´t heard of that concept before, you need to be clear on both
concepts: earthing and yoga. Earthing is the practice of exposing your body or
parts of it to direct contact with Earth or its energy in order to maintain
health in balance. I recommend my first blog on the subject: https://earthingyoga.blogspot.com/2022/03/is-earthing-woo-woo-thing-or-is-there.html
But what is Yoga? Yoga is the life practice of
finding perfect awareness, a conscious union between the divine in your heart
and the universal divine. To get to that point, we need to recognize there´s a
divine in each one of us, and the whole yoga practice is oriented towards this
fulfillment. Asana practice is intended to set your body into perfect health
and endurance, and it´s the practice most westerners know as yoga. Maybe the
majority of globalized yoga practitioners are not interested in the ultimate
spiritual realization of the self, or even we are not focusing our lives into
human peace and such, but the practice of the postures or the mat practice may
have improved our health, thoughts and lives in some ways, even if we didn´t
have those expectations at the beginning.
Purpose of the Yoga Mat
It´s been said that the origins of aerial circus
rely on the theater caravans of gypsies. A few centuries ago, while traveling
around India, some of them saw devotees of the monkey personification of God, Hanuman,
perform contorted postures on robes. They would remain there several minutes or
even hours. When demanded why they would do that, the devotees answered, so
that our bodies are not connected to the energy of Earth and enjoy the full
potential of the postures.
Asana or posture practices were incorporated as a
development of meditation posture. The logics of this progression consist
mainly in getting a shift of perception, from a rigid one mostly oriented to
decode matter and what surrounds us to preserve life to an open focus that
mostly reads energy. If you know little about perception, what you need to
understand now is that perception is something that we learn from the life or
culture we are exposed to from the womb. We learn to perceive certain kinds of
color, shapes, and elements. The elements that don´t belong to the culture we
live in are dismissed; they don´t exist to us -which obviously doesn´t mean
they don´t exist at all or to other people. There is a great book on perception
made by the French Phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty during the fifties
titled: Phenomenology of Perception, which is very nice written, by the way,
and that´s a plus you should always appreciate. Also, there are thousands of
scientific papers on how perception is formed physically and psychologically in
us and how it helps shaping our relationship with reality, or with what we see
as reality. In other words, if you maintain a cultural perception, unless you
come from a family of seers or clairvoyants, you probably are not able to
notice the energy surrounding every object and so on. That shift on perception
achieved from constant meditation and the development of awareness inside and
outside, is what made some yoga masters to suggest some postures to their
students. The main purposes of postures being obtain the perfect health because
it is said that only in perfect health you may achieve Raja Yoga, the highest
Yoga, the permanent conscious union with the Divine.
So, if you know very little about the spiritual
benefits of the most common asanas, you may have thought that asana practice
was a very weird sport related to Indian cultures. But the thing is, to make
your soles look to the sky in lotus posture, which is probably the most famous
of all asanas, is to rearrange the energy flow in your body to reach a
connection with the unmanifested. This posture, if you want to heal all your
illnesses, and to yogis this means mostly mind illnesses, must be practiced on
a mat or any type of cloth or fabric that not only provides a smooth surface
for a long lasting asana, but mainly keep Earth from taking from you the excess
energy that usually sicken us if we don´t connect properly with her, which is
the same energy yogis need to transform inside their bodies through their
practice in order to achieve the Union, the highest goal of Yoga.
The Yoga mat then will help you if you have a
rigorously spiritual yoga practice, or you know enough about asana practice to
transform your energy or just like to feel comfy while exercising. So, if you
are following guru, ask them in advance before taking your practice completely to
the sand, the grass or buying an earthing mat. It doesn´t mean you are going to
be detached from Earth, it´s nothing like that. You can still be connected and
probably should be always the rest of your day. But Yoga, the way it is
intended, and the way it is designed by the real seers, the gurus and highest
Yogis, should be followed as they teach to gain the most of it. Of course, this
is my humble opinion.
On the other hand, if you have no guru, do as you
please as long as you feel it´s safe for you, as you do all the rest of things
in your life. In this case, intention is key to fulfill the purposes you want
to work on with earthing yoga.
That´s why we have developed a practice that may
help you achieve your goals if you put your mindset into it.
Here´s how it works.
Our Earthing Yoga Protocol
Taking in consideration the main purpose of the
fundamental Hatha Yoga postures, we are choosing the ones that work for
everybody equally for maintenance, and with the graduate skill development
there´s also a functional yoga practice of vinyasa sequences or flow sequences
combined with static postures, designed to build strength, resilience,
stability, flexibility, and this you will love, the betterment of your brain functions,
including neuroplasticity.
Nevertheless, this practice would be another
sport like approach to yoga if we don´t introduce the proper spiritual aspect.
It´s essential to have in mind that the physical results of your yoga practice
are mainly demonstrating the increasing development of your emotional and
spiritual growth. Not only that, there should be, from the earthing
perspective, a recognition of the Earth as well as of your own body as
fundamental for your inner education.
How does an Earthing Yoga session look like to us?
We are dividing our sessions into three very distinctive practices:
2. Asana practice or hatha yoga postures for earthing
3. Blessing of Earth and our own energy centers, and healing practices
1. Namaskar or salutation is an opening ritual in which we recognize the importance of this following aspects: the whole creation, the Divine, and our own bodies. We salute them with every full breath, and then we chant three times the sacred syllable OM. We take four seconds to inhale, four seconds to pronounce O, and four seconds to pronounce M. This salutation and chanting opens the portal to fulfill our intentions during the practice and to be more aligned with the whole creation and the Divine. Then, we practice coherent breathing for about twenty minutes to set the brain into the proper state to initiate asana practice and get the most of it.
2. We have chosen the asanas that seem to work better when practiced in direct contact with earth, and we focus our attention on breathing, mostly four counts to inhale and four counts to exhale, except for some postures that may require a more superficial breathing flow, or the ones that are almost effortless in which we may apply a longer and deeper air intake.
3 3. Finally, this is everybody’s favorite part. It´s a combination of some excerpts of the Blessing of the Energy Centers from Dr. Joe Dispenza, some ancient energy work and blessing to the Earth. Most of our students have had really nice mystical experiences or they just feel connected and filled with electromagnetic energy. The central idea is to generate high emotions so that we can influence our bodies, our surroundings and Earth in the most positive way. We are taking Rudolf Steiner statement that high emotions are nothing less than the real nutrition of the soul. Indeed, generating our best emotions is the best give we can give to Humankind and Earth right here right now.
I hope you have felt inspired with my
perspectives on earthing yoga practice, and wish you a life full of adventure, joy
and wisdom!
Namaste
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