Being Present

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
BUDDHA

Have you ever seen this ‘Fruit of Heaven’, Mangosteen (Garcinia Mangostana)? Native to Asia it was said to be sampled by Queen Victoria who gave it her gracious stamp of approval.

Ah, but the taste! You pick up the ripe (purple/reddish) fruit and right away you notice a curious difference—it’s leaves are light green, rounded, soft, and quite plump. The outside skin resembles passionfruit and at the bottom forms a perfect circle of petals like a tiny relief sculpture to prepare you for the most beautiful natural adventure awaiting you inside. The petals equate to the exact number of the sections of white/pinkish pulp inside.

Your first taste is momentarily slightly sour, you bite into the soft, giving luscious pulp and the sweet explosion of flavour, almost overpowering, envelops you. With each taste, you travel ever deeper into the life force of this amazing fruit—nothing more exists– you are captured, you’re awareness is absolute and heightened—you are revelling in your own presence and deliciously present.

The core opening practices of Svaroopa® Yoga are like that. They take you away from the ingrained pattern of your life and your mind – transforming your present moment.

With yoga, just as in eating and fully appreciating a mangosteen, you need to first actually experience what you are experiencing. 

And of course, your experiences may not entirely be to your liking. When you are well aligned and propped in a Svaroopa® Yoga pose, the pose reaches into all the tight areas of your spine: it precisely targets the deepest tensions in your body rather than focusing only on moving what already moves or continuing along the well-worn grooves of habitual thinking and postures of your body.

This means that you begin to feel things you never felt before. Usually the pose releases those deep spinal tensions before you are able to feel how tight they are. For experienced students, this process is easy; new students, this may be uncomfortable or a little painful. Live in the experience this feeling brings and know that you  have found a deeper level of tension because the pose made you able to find it; the pose is working on dissolving it. Your teacher helps you with your presence by backing  you out of the deeper angles, provides extra props or even realigns you or gives an adjustment—so you will get the internal release without pain or discomfort.

Stay with this feeling, even though you may experience resistance on an emotional level with boredom or frustration, fear or impatience. The practices work on your mind and emotions in the same way that a pose works with your body.  Each pose creates an angle of access to the tightest muscles in your body. Once you angle in there, you wait patiently and within a minute or two your muscles begin to soften. The same thing happens with your mind and emotions, like the Mangosteen experience – you are transported away from the normal to the extraordinary.

Your experience is one of profound release and presence—it’s an amazing sensation to feel the deep internal unravelling—a blissful “Mangosteen” experience—your own personal awareness.

Love from Lynne