Hello again,
Good day,
Welcome to day four of Beginner's Mind where we'll be covering this sequence of a typical practice or sadhana.
As always I hope that yesterday's information was helpful for you,
I hope you're able to carry something forward about poses and I hope that if you have questions that you're not being shy about asking them to either the community or to myself,
Please I would encourage you again to ask your questions,
There's no sense staying confused,
Ask away,
Fire away.
So the sequence of a typical sadhana begins with a motivation or intention setting or a theme of that practice and we take a moment to set the intention of that practice or the theme or whatever it is to just kind of orient ourselves to the process.
If it's intention setting and we're going to set an intention of patience,
We're taking a second to remind ourselves that during this practice one of our main goals is to remain patient.
The next step is the purification and the purification is kind of a point where we get ourselves ready for the practice on somewhat of an energetic level and this can take the form of some deep breaths,
You know a pratayama or a specific breathing pattern designed to center the mind,
Smudging sound like a singing bowl or whatever and it's just a moment to sit and be still,
Purify and cleanse some of the energy and get your mind and body ready to practice.
After that is the the main sadhana where we perform the exercise as it's intended for the duration that we've intended to sit for.
After that our three steps that sort of kind of mesh into each other sometimes.
We've got gratitude,
Letting go and a dedication.
We'll start with dedication.
The dedication is not necessarily something that you will pause and you know I dedicate this to myself or to my kids or whatever although you could absolutely I know nothing wrong with that but the dedication becomes a point that's somewhat intrinsic to these last three steps.
After the main sadhana we typically take a moment to let go where we focus on releasing control,
Releasing any of the control that's remaining from before the practice or control that we've somewhat unintentionally provided or applied during the practice.
We just release it and we just let the mind be.
And then we take a moment for gratitude.
We'll typically take a moment for gratitude for having taken or given ourselves the time and space for that practice that day because it's not always easy to make time in your day.
And then gratitude for any range of things that you felt or experienced during your practice whether it was a moment of peace,
Whether it was a moment that you're able to let a distraction go,
Whether it was a moment or a string of moments in which you were able to stay with your breath,
Whatever you feel grateful for in that practice or in that day.
And that might be something that's suggested to you.
Maybe the instructor will say something like,
You know gratitude for a moment in which you felt true freedom or true peace.
And sometimes that can kind of alert you to,
Oh I did?
Those couple of moments of peace I am really grateful for that.
So the gratitude is a very important step.
So that's it.
I just wanted to make everybody aware of the sequence so that as they happen you can be aware of what's going on during each practice and when you get to the point that you're practicing on your own you can apply these.
So that not that your practices will be structured and rigid I mean that's kind of the opposite of what we're going for here but these steps are helpful and some sort of structure helps from a practice just being an exercise of mind wandering.
Thanks for listening.
I hope you enjoy your practice today.
