There is an Isha Kriya Meditation where you inhale while thinking “I am not the body” and exhale while thinking “I am not even the mind.” You end with some “aums” and it is a nice, short reset for the day. I like to do it in the afternoon after I complete my yoga routine.
Even though I would agree that I am not the body, I do appreciate it and how it allows me to experience this life. Yoga has been my go-to over the years to get it tuned up after I have strayed from a disciplined path.
Flashback to My First Yoga Routine
I started doing yoga when I was nineteen and in college. I remember one of my professors talking about yoga as a spiritual process and I was all in. At that time in my life, I was rebelling against the religious doctrine I was raised in and hungry for options that felt more natural to me. The only problem was that in the mid to late 1990s, I didn’t really have a lot of yoga options to get me started. In those days, the public library was my main knowledge repository. It didn’t always offer up a lot as I was in a rural area, but it usually got me another step in the right direction.
The only book on yoga that I could find at that time was Richard Hittleman’s “Yoga: 28 Exercise Plan.” I love it and think the exercise plan is stellar. The only drawback is that it was published in 1969 and is certainly aimed at housewives so there is a lot of outdated weirdness about women and their roles referenced in the “thoughts for the day” sections. Otherwise, I find the program and the plan at the end so helpful that I cycled through the three routines every day for years before it began to fall out of habit.
What I love about Hittleman’s program is that after the three days, you have essentially stretched and massaged-by-movement all the parts of the body. That seems to do a body good.
Falling Out of Habit
It is interesting to note that the times when my body began to “thicken” and I had more weight than I liked or felt comfortable with was when I stopped doing this yoga program for long periods of time. I certainly felt this way after I went through basic law enforcement training (when I became a Park Ranger) and it seemed that there was no time or energy for that yoga program. I worked out and studied law. That was my life. I had to build up more muscle than I was used to.
I remember somebody telling me that I looked “swol” which has never actually been a goal of mine, but useful when you need to pass the Police Officer Physical Abilities Test. I never felt like I was able to establish any true routine after I became a Park Ranger and I didn’t even think about the missing yoga routines until I noticed my midsection thickening.
Now, I’m sure food, my age (over 40), stress, and other hereditary factors probably played a part in that, but the thicker I am, the less that I feel like myself. I also felt that my mobility was hindered by the extra-ness and that my body felt tight in general.
Back to Basics—with Breath and Stretch
Anyway, I’m not trying to sell anyone on this book (even though the plan is awesome!). Some folks might not even like it. (Sidenote: I never did a downward dog until I was in my 30s and finally attended an actual yoga class. That’s right – there are no downward dogs in that book! I do love the downward dog pose and am glad I came across it.)
In life, you learn to find what you like and piece things together in a way that works for you. I find myself coming back to Hittleman’s book and exercise plan as something foundational to my physical health and mobility.
When I began doing Shambhavi Mahamudra daily back in July, I really became aware of how tight my muscles had gotten and how I was limited in some of my stretching. The preliminary stretches I have to do prior to starting Shambhavi helped loosen up some of the tightness in my legs and lower back. I loved the improvement and sought more.
The first 40 days of Shambhavi Mahamudra I committed to and performed the kriya twice a day – in the morning and in the evening. After the 40 days, I was only required to do the kriya in the morning. However, since I was accustomed to preserving that time in the evening, I decided to fill it with the Hittleman yoga program. I started the book again as if I never did it before and have been working through the three day cycle plan as I did in my college days.
The Vehicle of Awareness
That was a lot of preface for this:
My body is my vehicle in this world and I know its chemistry can have an effect on my mood if I am not giving it the best fuel or keeping it maintained. It is a part of being a human that takes some effort to learn what works for you and what works against you. I’m still sorting through a lot and it can be difficult to isolate or decipher what causes what due to the overwhelming number of things that can affect the body.
Intuition can be a useful tool.
In short, I find that it is worth the work.
I am fascinated by and enjoy feeling the movement of muscles in my legs and arms and fingers and toes as I do things. There is so much that the body does on auto-pilot (breathing, pumping blood, digesting food, managing hormones and other internal chemistry). It is pretty freakin’ cool that we get to use it to experience this planet and interact with one another.
I am not the body, but I do love it, even in my sometimes perceived imperfection.