Podcast 02 Assimilate, Weave, Meditate

This episode is a dharma talk and meditation on digesting and assimilating our thoughts and emotions. Ayurveda, which is an age old science on balancing your system, we are what we digest, not what we eat, and I think that this is huge. This makes so much sense to me as I look back or reflect on areas where I tend to get stuck in my life, and it literally is something that is not digested, and it is sitting there and building and building. If we keep it sitting there, it bursts in a very often toxic kind of way as it exits out. This is  not only painful for us, but it is painful for those around us. 

This makes so much sense to me as I look back or reflect on areas where I tend to get stuck in my life, and it literally is something that is not digested, and it's sitting there and building and building. If we keep it sitting there, it bursts in a very often toxic kind of way as it exits out. It's not only painful for us, but it's painful for those around us.

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This undigested product, it not only applies to our food, but also our thoughts and emotions, and when left undigested, we can become quite chaotic. We want to make sure that we are taking the time in our daily lives to purify and clean our subconscious. It's arguably more important than any other daily practice. Meditate, meditate, meditate.  I hope that you contemplate and you reflect, and that you're able to go deeper into yourself. I would love if we could all make a commitment to be kind, accepting, and nourishing along the way, so I hope that you enjoy, and I look forward to hearing what you think. Namaste.

All right, so today I was thinking a little bit about, there's something that's in Ayurveda that they call Ama. Ayurveda, if we don't know, it's 5000 plus year old science that basically allows you to get your body working the way it's supposed to so that you can attend to your soul, it's very aligned with yoga. A lot of Ayuveda has to do with the food and the diet, and then the food and the diet combine with what we're experiencing. When our body is working properly, we can attend to our soul, but most of the time our body is working against us because it's gotten a little confused and toxic, and then we're attending to our body and our mind all the time and we don't actually have a relationship to our soul. Does that make sense?

And so the Ama is undigested food, it's undigested anything really. There's a food component and then there's a mind component, and this is what I find very interesting, so it's not the byproduct, the waste. That's supposed to leave us, but what happens is we, because of our incomplete digestion, we're not assimilating properly our food and we're not assimilating our emotions and our thoughts, and then it builds up and then it gets toxic and then it creates lots and lots of issues that can be anything really, any way, any form that it's happening for you.
The next layer of this is that we build up these toxins because we don't know how to process our emotions, or we don't allow ourselves to process. Like Nikole was saying yesterday, "I had a really angry day," but she's not angry today, so she moved it through. You know? That's the point. We have to move it through us, and what happens is, with a lot of us, we get those undigested emotions and then there's something called Vata, and Vata is the air quality. Vata is described as being dry and cold and irregular.

You have undigested stuff and then you have Vata, I think of it as like a wind storm that is completely erratic. What we want to do in the yoga practice is to be able to get that stuff assimilated and out of us so that we can be clear. We talk about directing our prana. It's not that the air doesn't come in and the life force, but we want to be masters of how we move it through us, and we can't do that when we're just full of all this stuff, so there's a couple different ways that what happens is that ... How do we start to move through this? Because I listen to a lot of things and these tell you all these things, but then they don't tell you what to do and I'm like, "Great. That's me. So now what?”

What do you do?

Here's what I'm going to say, and it's not going to be a lot, but the ways to start to move through to get your system on track is diet and exercise, and I think our culture does a lot of diet and exercise. And I don't mean diet, I mean what we're taking in, nourishment we'll say and exercise, but then how do you think you clear your mind?

Meditation. What we don't do, a lot of us, is clear out the garbage in our mind. We spend all of our time clearing out the garbage in everything else, but not our minds, and so what happens is that it literally becomes a heap of subconscious thoughts that just, they build and they build and they build. There's a teaching that says, "Every time you blink your eye, a thousand thoughts come." Maybe we pick up one, so if we pick up one and move it through, 999 go into the subconscious. If you're not cleaning that daily, how can we be balanced in our state? It's just a build up, so much ama.

I always think of it like a street cleaner. As you're meditating, it starts to move through. The gong also does it, it clears the subconscious. There's lots of ways that we can do it, but really meditate, and so the whole point of all of this ... We're going to start with a meditation, but the whole point of all of this is that when we can set our system working properly, we get to be who we're made to be.

This is what I think about with teacher training, what I think we've spent a lot of time in our teacher training doing and setting it up, is we design it so that you can be you. I'm not interested in you being me or me being you, although we do that a lot like, "What she does is so cool. Her outfit's so cool. She's doing this great thing in her life. I want to be like that. I want to travel the world. I want to ..." whatever it is, but that's not your path, as the whole yoga practice is to have an experience of you, and it's got to be, "Well, what are you here for?" You cannot see that when you have all this other crap, so we're going to do a meditation and we'll start with that.

It is a Kundalini mediation, but it's a neutral mind mediation, and it's one that is totally neutral, so you'll have a neutral response. It has some breath in it, and this is why I think it's actually, it's one of my favorite meditations. I do it almost every day, because it works with sound and what you're putting in, bringing in. What we're bringing in is nourishing, nourishing thoughts, elevating thoughts, nourishing food, elevating food, nourishing movements, elevating movements.

When you put that stuff into your system, you actually have less to clean so that's good, and it helps to keep you more clear, and so you're putting in that sound, but then this particular sound is, it's "Sa ta na ma," it's all silence, which is Sat Nam broken up, and Sat Nam means "Truth is your essence," which is what I'm talking about. Your soul, your truth, it's different for each one of us and so you're putting in that sound and that particular sound, the way it vibrates, it clears your subconscious and helps to wipe out old karma so to me that's like, "Okay, one layer, two layer." The third layer, because it has breath with it, it starts to remove the blocks in your system and you can start to direct the prana and when you can direct the prana in a positive way, you become the master.

Manorama always said it's, "We're energy moving through form," which I think is a very cool description, and so those are the three elements and why I like this meditation, so I'm going to explain what we're going to do. The breath begins with four segmented breaths. It's like four sniffs in through the nose, and each time you'll say mentally to yourself, "Sa ta na ma." Then you're going to hold it, suspend the breath, say "Sa ta na ma" four times, and then exhale two times through the nose, so it's segmented and on that one, you mentally say, "Wahe Guru." The Wahe Guru is connection to the infinite, so you're connecting to your soul through that sound, and then you're connecting to the infinite.

It'll look like this, your own pace of course. (Demonstation)

Okay, so when you hold, it's a pause, it's a suspension where the prana and that life force gets to be held in. It's not harsh ... Yeah, so it's soft.

We'll just do it maybe three or four minutes, and then we'll move. Hands can be up or down, whatever you choose, maybe thumb and index together. Have the eyes closed, internal gaze up. Take an inhale first through the nose. Now open the mouth, exhale completely naval to spine and then begin.
(Do the meditation 3-5 minutes)

And take a full inhale. Let's pause and suspend the breath, internal gaze up towards the third eye and press the tongue to the roof of the mouth. And through the nose exhale, and just take a moment, allow the eyes to remain closed just a couple breaths longer.

As we move through our practice, just that attention and helping to weave the prana in a way that is useful, and so it's very different than controlling or directing, not that ... Notice the word "weave." It is a very different word.

Also to invite that idea that we can become masters, that weaving our own prana in a purposeful and meaningful way allows the soul to lead and the result is that you get to do what you are meant to do here on this planet, your life's work, your purpose, your dharma.