Liberated Yoga
Yoga is for everyone!
Archives: 2016
Transitioning into Fall with Ayurveda
As the weather cools, the Fall season brings with it dryness, winds, bone-chilling mornings, but also anxiety, insomnia, cold hands and feet, dry skin, and inability to concentrate. The study of Ayurveda names it the Vata season . We all have at least a little of Vata in our constitutions, and some of us have way too much of it. Vata is dry, cold, and light. It is the wind element in the body, governs movement, inspiration (and if you get too much of it - lunacy), joint...
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Determine Your Dosha: Vata, Pitta, Kapha
There are many web sites out there that can help get a general idea of your Dosha, and I am not going to do that here. If you need a starting point, here is one that seemed pretty accurate and short: Banyan Dosha Quiz . In this blog I want to take things a little further and help you fine tune your findings and deepen your awareness of the forces that shape us. Question 1: Consider your background and the DNA stock that you come from. What is average for your genetic pool? Say, you come fr...
Neuroplasticity - Ananda Maya
In the previous blog we talked about how social programming often determines the way we feel, act, and think. It is the layer of us where we obtain and develop a sense of belonging, our place in the social matrix, the roles we play there, and our Dharma - or ways we contribute to it. In the domain of the Ananda Maya we can transcend further, into a realm of pure joy and contentment, by rewiring our brain. Let's take a look at what neuroplasticity is. ...
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The Social Matrix - Vijnana Maya
To one degree or another, we are all a product of our upbringing, our personal experiences, genetics, and ingrained social expectations. I am constantly amazed at how much those things influence my daily life, my attitudes towards people and things, my views on events. Some of this "social programming" I have chosen consciously, some, I am sure, I am not even aware of. The stuff that I am aware of, however, is vast, powerful, occasionally overwhelming, always fascinating. Vijnana is transla...
Beautiful Mind - Mano Maya
We are continuing a series of discussions about the many dimensions of a human being. We have talked about the physical body, the Ana Maya , the Emotional dimension, Prana Maya , and are now moving on to the Mano Maya - the Mental body, our Mind. The next blog will be devoted to the social/cultural conditioning - Vijnana Maya, and the series will end with the Ananda Maya, the Bliss body, or our spiritual realm. As was already mentioned before in this series, all the dimensions are inter-d...
The Emotional Body - Prana Maya
In the previous post we talked about the body, Ana Maya as physical health in many of its manifestations - positive body image, healthy and attractive physique coupled with acceptance of one's flaws and a desire for self-improvement. In this blog we will cover the emotional body - Prana Maya, which is yet another important resource that makes our life more fulfilling. And one word comes to mind particularly when I think of this layer of the human being - LOVE - because love in all of its mani...
Body Positive in Yoga - Ana Maya
In my previous blog on the many dimensions of a human being I talked about the Ana Maya as the body of food as the most gross, rudimentary fabric making up a human being. I talked about the more subtle layers, such as the Prana Maya , Mano Maya, Vijnana and Ananda Mayas, the energetic bodies, which animate the physical body. I described the Pancha Maya Kosha model from the Eastern perspective, moving from the more subtle layers to the more tangible ones, with the Ana Maya being last. However...
Pancha Maya Koshas - what comes first, the body, or the soul?
The whole purpose of Yoga is to learn who we are, because if we know who we are, then we will be able to live more fulfilling lives, be able to solve the problems that we have, and maybe, who knows, be content. The Pancha Maya Kosha model is one way of examining ourselves to gain a deeper understanding of who we are. Pancha means five. Maya means "dimensions" or "layers". Koshas means "container." The ancient Yogic view of the human being is that there is more than just the physical body,...
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Balance the Five Elements
The ancient teaching of Ayurveda, the sister-science of Yoga, talks about the five elements of the manifest world: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Ether (Space). They are represented in the human body by the bones, fluids, muscles, breath, and inner spaces/cavities, respectively. Consciousness journeys through these elements towards Matter, and from Matter it evolves back into pure Consciousness. It is all too easy for these elements to become out of balance. The...
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Yoga is Union
The Sanskrit word Yoga means union. But union of what with what? On the one hand, it means the union of the body with the spirit. What does that mean? To me, it means spiritualization of the body by removing the separation between the body and spirit, and recognizing, through experience, that the body is an embodiment of the spirit, and vice versa in the sense that "as above, so below." The mind creates this separation through its ability to analyze and to cr...
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