Good morning.
Welcome to class.
Please sit tall in preparation for our practice.
We honor the lineage through which these teachings have come.
Bhagvan Lakulish,
Dadaji,
Swami Kripalvananjai,
Bapuji,
Yogi Amrit Desai,
Gurudev,
And to and through each one of us.
May this practice lead us from unreal to real,
Lead us from darkness to light,
Lead us from time-bound consciousness to the timeless state of being.
When you allow yourself to receive with total attention to feeling what is present,
That is when the prayer gets heard by the self that you are.
Remain with the eyes closed.
Make sure that your body is comfortable in an upright seated position.
If you need to place support under the sitz bones,
Do so.
Resting the palms on the thighs,
The palms can be down for grounding or quieting the mind.
Palms can be up for opening the heart,
Receiving.
Really feel the contact of your sitz bones on the floor.
Feel the spine as it extends up from the sitz bones out through the crown of the head.
See if you can find the place of ease where your head balances over the spine,
Relaxing the jaw.
Let the tip of the tongue rest just behind the front teeth if it feels natural to you,
Allowing the tongue to curl gently and touch just behind the front teeth.
If this feels like something you need to do with effort,
Then disregard and just focus on relaxing the inside of your mouth and your jaw.
Without struggle or strain,
Beginning to deepen your breath,
Breathing through the nose,
Dirgah,
Pranayama,
The full yogic breath.
As you inhale,
Allowing the abdomen to expand,
Then breathing into the middle chest,
And finally allowing the breath to fill the lungs,
Breathing into the upper chest,
Exhaling,
Relaxing the upper chest,
The shoulders,
The ribs,
And allowing the belly button to move in toward the spine to complete the exhalation.
Continue on your own with this breath,
Cultivating the qualities of smooth,
Deep,
Steady,
Unbroken stream of breath.
And now as you breathe,
Adding the ujjayi constriction in the back of the throat,
Very gentle.
The ocean sounding breath,
The victorious breath.
And let that sound be a focal point for your mind's attention so that all of you becomes present to the felt experience of breath,
The sound and sensations of your own breath,
Dreaming steadily in and out.
Everything the mind does to question or try or doubt or distract is a movement out of the alignment that you are cultivating now.
Do not fight with your mind.
Redirect your attention.
Steady breath,
Steady mind.
Relax your body.
Breathing into alignment with yourself is not about fighting.
Releasing any effort to breathe now.
And simply feel the energetic impact of the breath as felt in the form of sensations in the body.
Sense the stillness in which those sensations are arising.
Allow yourself to make the connection to the part of you that exists beyond the mind by dropping below the mind into feeling and being.
Notice that in reality there is nothing outside of this being.
It is only through a simple loss of perspective that we get confused.
And any time we find ourselves lost,
Flailing amongst the waves,
It is only a matter of letting go.
Allowing ourselves to sink below the surface,
Into the stillness below the mind.
And now we enter into the posture of consciousness where we deliberately open ourselves and engage externally,
Engage with the world of forms,
And practice simultaneously maintaining the connection to the inner dimension.
As you exhale,
Softly opening the eyes.
