The Energy of an Asana

In Ananda Yoga,
they emphasize finding the deeper,
spiritual essence of each pose.

There are a bunch of quite nice
affirmations that come from the community's leader,
and part of the training is to not only learn
the Sanskrit,
(Balasana, child's pose)
but to learn as well
the affirmation
that goes with each pose
(for Balasana:
I relax from outer involvement
into my inner haven of peace.)

This allows one to use yoga
as a tool to come deeper
into oneself.

Today,
we had a class in
which first we all did a pose,
for which we have not yet learned
the affirmation,
Parvakonasana, the side angle pose.

We held it for about five minutes each
side,
which was hard,
but we had a chair into which to sort of
do and not do the pose, as we sat into chair
and kept the shape.

Then we all felt what image came
(for me a river,
for others fountains, waterfalls, and others i don't
remember, flowers, hearts, sunshine, maybe),
and then to feel for our own affirmation;

I got:
A river of strength and love
flows through me
from Earth to Sky.

Then for the second half of the class
we were to come up with our own pick
of pose,
and see what we arrived at.

I'd been missing headstand,Sirshasana
and certainly didn't do it for ten
minutes,
but all this work on the spine
and bringing energy to the brain,
and i arrived at a flooding down
thtough the spinal cord of light.

I put this into an affirmation:
Through the center of my spine,
grace
floods into
my brain.

Maybe you had to be there.
who knows.

Love
Chris