Over the past several weeks, we practiced asanas utilizing yoga actions that engage the subtle body — Pranamaya Kosha (energy body), Manomaya Kosha (mental-emotional body), and Vijnanamaya Kosha (wisdom/intuitive body). As you may have discovered personally, the holistic impacts dampen our compensation patterns and habits while opening deeper pathways to healing and growth. This progression of creating strength, flexibility, and ease can be summed up as effortless effort. When we successfully engage and strengthen our subtle body, we begin to navigate the intersection between our physical nature (Annamaya Kosha) and our spiritual essence (Anandamaya Kosha). Boldly put, we come face-to-face with the mysteries of life.
When we successfully integrate our five koshas (bodies), our capacity and abundance are limitless. In practical terms and with minimal effort, we can now access all the resources we need, both internally and externally. Living life through the principle of effortless effort implies that we surrender our will/ego (Manomaya Kosha). As we move deeper through the layers/bodies of our being toward our essence, we recognize that our inner genius meshes with Life’s outer genius in unplanned and fulfilling ways. And these emerging experiences are gifts that both have had a hand in creating. Why work alone when you can collaborate with such a profound co-creator as Life. This reminds me of the old Hebrew mantra No matter how dark the tapestry Life weaves for us, there’s always a thread of grace. Another interpretation is that in every dark cloud lies a silver lining.
The silver lining lying beneath the darkness, tension, or dis-ease of one’s inner experience is freedom from suffering. Engaging our subtle body’s resources disables not only the symptoms but the true source of our suffering, moving us into ease, contentment, and joy. Use the following four subtle yoga actions to find your own experience of effortless effort and joy. I’ve repeated the first three spinal joint actions below. Find each of them in the wide-legged forward fold (Prasarita Padottanasana), and then practice the fourth action. Notice how all four actions, when combined, take the weight off the spine.
Subtle Yoga Actions:
1. Find the joint at the bottom of the sacrum and the top of the tailbone. Use your breath and awareness to create space between these two portions of the spine.
Notice your inner experience. How is your body responding — outer hips relaxing and opening, femurs grounding, lower belly scooping in and up (Mula Bandha), etc.?
2. Now, move to the next spinal ‘joint’ located at the top of the sacrum and bottom of the lumbar (the L5-S1 joint). With your breath and awareness, create space between the sacrum and lumbar joint.
Again, notice if you feel the joint opening or other impacts emerging without you consciously bringing any of this about — the charging of your legs (Apana Vayu), the straightening of the knees, the gathering of the transversus abdominus toward the mid-line in the front body (Uddiyana Bandha), etc.
3. Once you have a sense of these two pelvic joints, move your breath and awareness up the spine to the Lumbar-thoracic joint between L1 and T12. Breathe into that space.
Notice the space and sensations created — the energetic lift of the breast bone in the front body, the release of the shoulders and shoulder blades down the back body, the broadening of the upper chest in the front body, etc.
Subtle Yoga Actions:
4. Finally, bring your awareness and breath to the bottom of the cervical spine and the top of the thoracic spine between C7 and T1. Breathe into that space, and notice what emerges — the inner collarbones expand away from each other, the neck softens and lengthens, C7 moves in toward the inner throat, readiness for activating the Jalandara Bandha, etc.
For more yoga actions and teachings, click here. Namaste.
