Yoga: An Integrative Practice for All
To practice yoga is to bring together (yoga: “to yoke” or “to bind”) one’s breath, movement, emotion, thought, and spirit, combining awareness of these energies in a steady and continuous frame of attention: a firm and gentle, singularly-centered flowing focus, or ekagrata, “one-pointed consciousness.” We may thus think of yoga as an integrative practice.
In order to appreciate the many-in-one nature of ekagrata, think of an opposite state–where one’s breath, movement, thought, emotion, and spirit feel sluggishly, aggravatingly disorganized and chaotic; where one’s attention is helplessly scattered to and fro, blunting one’s effort to concentrate–and then imagine bringing calmness, liveliness, and grace to such a disordered state. Yoga, as cultivation of ekagrata, provides one such way whereby one can solidly accomplish and gracefully maintain such transformation.
The transformation one can experience through the integrative practice of yoga brings one to notice a deepening of tranquillity and alertness. Feelings of floating contentment and receptivity often open, too, in the midst of an asana (pose) sequence. Such states indicate the emergence of sattva (clear and lively peace), which grows from one’s practice in a steady and flowing frame of attention.
This path of experience is open to all people. This is because yoga is not reducible to its common outward indicators, such as flexibility in difficult asanas (poses). True yoga occurs in ekagrata, in one’s interweaving of breath, emotion, thought, body, and spirit. This means that someone holding a challenging asana might or might not be practicing yoga, whereas someone in a wheelchair, for example, concentrating on integrating movement, breath, emotion, thought, and spirit, may experience yoga and grow sattva.
This practice, available to everyone, reveals healing power within oneself. Steady combination of one’s energies produces medicinal effects. When one enters peaceful, lively concentration in the midst of yoga, one becomes capable of relief and change. Not only does one’s body become more flexible; one’s nervous system becomes more resilient.
One may greatly benefit by learning yoga in a special place such as a studio or from a site such as this one. Reserving a space for focus, simplification, and temporary withdrawal from other places and processes can help one to grow a strong practice. Fortunately, yoga need not remain in the special locations where we learn to practice it. Yoga as cultivation of ekagrata is always portable and always free.
From the alphabet of concepts, forms, and techniques we learn in practice, we can develop an expressive, adaptive, creative language of practice-in-the-midst-of-life, often a fleeting and subtle, but no less substantive inflection in feeling, thought, and action, wherein we recognize that, in any given situation, we find ourselves living in configurations of breath, emotion, body, thought, and spirit. We can learn to appreciate and alter these limitless configurations, even if only through the act of becoming self-aware. This broader form of practice I fondly call “Momentasana,” a manner of interacting with the living, evolving configuration of a moment.
One may find courses on yoga, yoga nidra, creative writing, and lucid dreaming here on the Momentasana Yoga website. Each writing, audio file, or video-based class is designed with the intent to support a practitioner’s independent experience and full, clear understanding.
The materials also present invitations to connect with me and with others to go more deeply into personal explorations of yoga and a range of complementary creative practices. While some of these materials may only interest teachers, all of the programs–as with all other meditations, practices, and writings on Momentasana–are open to any practitioner.
Please watch this site for announcements about workshops and forthcoming programs; and please feel free to contact me {Mark Spring} to discuss options for personal training, group immersions, and custom-designed workshops for individuals or organizations.
Discussion Topics
Momentasana “Discussions” are focused, 5-to-15-minute modules that illuminate yoga concepts and techniques. These discussions enhance practitioners’ experiences of meditations, practices, and trainings.
The following passages in this column highlight current and forthcoming discussion topics that practitioners at all levels of experience can explore at this site.
In the first Momentasana discussion module, listeners explore the concept of the “Starling-Cloud of Perception,” an analogy for a mindfulness strategy involving the practice of merging breath, body-sensation scanning, and full-body awareness within poses.
Juxtaposition of Work and Rest
Asanas offer practitioners an opportunity to juxtapose work and rest, noticing by virtue of close comparison the productive relationship that holds between these modalities. Rest energizes work; work prepares for and deepens rest. In asanas such as the locust pose, this comparison affords chances for an especially rich reflection whereby a third perspective opens, a point of view that crosses both working and resting states without reducing to either one of them. This liberating meditative state deepens self-awareness and facilitates balanced work-rest management practice and mentality in moment-to-moment life.
Stages within an Asana
Yoga poses can evolve, moment-to-moment and breath-by-breath. Finding a pose quickly exists as one type of opportunity and challenge for a practice, but it is certainly not a requirement for yoga, nor is it always the most health-promoting option. Meditative movement and concentration bring rich information to a practitioner’s evolving awareness; this ever-updating information supports stages of increased comfort, steadiness, confidence, and exploration within the pose, reaching finer degrees of subtlety as the practitioner listens to and adjusts the inner dimensions of the pose. The pose is alive. Even in the case of externally graceful and apparently motionless asana expressions, the internal dimension of the pose vibrates and flows with change.
Breath Pose-Inflation
In the original yoga philosophy, first recorded by Patanjali approximately 2,600 years ago, we learn an important standard for poses: that poses combine sukha (comfort) and sthira (steadiness). Like a firm handshake, a well-struck pose should be strong yet restful, assertive yet receptive, energized yet relaxed. We know we have found a health-promoting expression of a pose when we feel this combination of qualities in it.
Mechanically, we can move ourselves only so far into a comfortable and steady expression of the pose, wherein the body reaches a comfortable tautness and well-tuned expression of power. Through the breath, however, practitioners may experience a deepening, even a completion or fulfillment, of the pose, by drawing the inhale breath into the shape of the pose, especially where the pose is most active. The effect of this “inflation” technique is akin to filling an already-filled mug to the brim, and just above the brim, so that all contents remain fully contained while somehow slightly exceeding the container’s edge. This subtly ecstatic experience is available in all poses, and it facilitates a practitioner’s safe and stable development of strength and flexibility in a yoga practice.
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Modules on This Site
The menu at the top of this page lists categories of services–discussions, meditations, yoga classes, and trainings. One may learn more about and buy lifetime access to files from links one finds at each page. One may also find all of these files organized in the “Store” page.
Module Descriptions
These files usually range in length from five to 15 minutes. The focus of each file centers on concepts and techniques that enhance one’s understanding and practice of yoga.
Teachers may find these discussions useful in holding conversations with students about yoga philosophy, asana practice, and meditation.
Beginning yoga students may likewise find these short, clear discussions useful for gaining footholds (pun not initially intended–but, upon reflection, heartily endorsed) in their respective yoga practices.
Ranging from ten to 30 minutes in length, these meditations guide practitioners in mindfulness-based sequences of seated, ground-based, and resting poses.
Core features of these meditations include breath-focused training, body-scan sensing, and concrete discussions of yoga philosophy.
The meditations engage practitioners in training with breath, thought, emotion, and spirit in the context of seated and lighter physical postures and sequences.
Some of the meditations are audio files featuring full-length flow classes with precise verbal guidance; focusing on yoga nidra meditations, which unfold in the savasana resting pose, close to a dream state; or emphasizing richer listening experiences in outdoor meditations that draw energy from natural soundscapes.
Practicing yoga creatively in wilderness settings is a point of emphasis in Momentasana classes, including in the first-ever offerings posted at this site. Landscapes, natural soundscapes, and spontaneous events in each setting inspire reflections, awaken creativity, and elicit a strong sense of our connection to the living world.
These yoga flow classes range from 45 to 120 minutes in length, and they always include elements of discussion and meditation,woven throughout each asana routine. Each longer session includes at least 15 minutes in a resting transitional sequence, which often includes the profoundly relaxing technique of body-scan sensing coupled to calming meditation.
Practitioners at all levels may benefit from these classes– and, as ever, in any routine, I encourage all practitioners, especially beginners, to work within a smooth, calm breath and a combined sense of comfort (sukha) and steadiness (sthira), honoring one’s independence and inner teacher, especially with respect to pace, exertion, and flexibility.
While each of the aforementioned modules may prove beneficial to teachers (we learn constantly from one another in each of these formats), these concept-heavy, specially-designated training modules will likely appeal most strongly to teachers seeking to expand their skills as teachers and practitioners of yoga nidra, which is a type of extended yogic meditation that occurs in savasana while the practitioner hovers on the edges of sleep and dream.
Practitioners at any level of experience may appreciate the training modules as much as teachers do, so long as they expect to focus primarily on literature as much as or more than a physical yoga practice in these special instances.
Yoga Nidra, Creative Writing, & Lucid Dreaming
One can profoundly benefit from practicing three complementary integrative arts in each stage of one’s day: one can create, learn, play, and heal while asleep (lucid dreaming); one can pause difficulties, confront challenges, gather knowledge, make discoveries, and experience liberation while alert and awake (creative writing); and one can explore, relax, and transform while riding the edge of dreams and wakeful alertness (yoga nidra). Each one of these practices offers its own unique forms of liberation, challenge, and joy.
Bringing these practices into degrees of mutually-reinforcing alignment affords one special opportunities to enhance one’s creativity and strengthen one’s security and resilience in the midst of life’s imposing challenges, and to cultivate grace and flexibility in pursuit of life’s exciting, sometimes-elusive prospects, such as fulfillment of goals that require many years of persistence and sacrifice.
Such alignment of practices is possible because each practice grows from complementary skill sets, and each practice is integrative, i.e., marked by the act of bringing disparate elements of one’s attention and experience into synergistic, coherent relationship.
One’s effort to grow each practice and align them advantageously begins by understanding more about each form of creativity. From this foundational understanding, one may begin to perceive and experience alignments and mutually-enriching sequences of integrative practice. This interplay of creative modalities draws from both spontaneous imagination and strategic intention in an open-ended flow, often punctuated by stages of felt completion, restful reflection, and calm inner-noticing.
In order to learn more about how to align lucid dreaming, creative writing, and yoga nidra, consider the following passages, which present essential information about these integrative practices.
LUCID DREAMING
Lucid dreaming occurs when wakeful alertness and dream states merge. Some people experience lucid dreams from early childhood; others do not experience dream recall. One can work, however, to cultivate both capacities.
Scholars and proponents of lucid-dreaming practice often speak of the benefits of “dream control” within lucid states. For people who experience nightmares, the prospect of control holds deep appeal–and the claim is true: control is possible; total change of one’s sleep-and-dream life is possible. Seeking liberation from nightmares and consequent life-stress and insomnia is one of the major reasons people turn for help from lucid dreaming. With equal enthusiasm and perhaps in even greater numbers, people take interest in lucid dreams in search of exhilaration, understanding, and creative inspiration one can draw from dream experiences.
“Control,” however, is only one kind of interaction one may cultivate in lucid dream states. It is this much broader concept–interaction–that I wholly prefer to the important but narrower concept of “control,” which still rests within the fold of “interaction.” I may wish, for example, to learn how to let go of control in some instances; I may want to observe; I might want to practice stillness in the midst of overwhelming action; I might, at least, want to think specifically about which aspects (personal will? actions of others? weather or setting?) of a dream I wish to control and which to let alone–and, in some instances, I may experience a powerful need to gain control of a dream’s whole narrative. Lucid dreamers who think of “interaction” as a goal, aslant from but retaining the possibility of “control,” may more easily initiate and combine any of these modes of perception and action within lucid dreams.
One may develop techniques specific to each mode of action and perception (e.g., learn breath and body-relaxation techniques to end nightmares and change dream-scenes); and one may learn to improvise techniques within each unique dream.
For the moment, let us conclude by noticing the integrative nature of lucid dreaming: one’s emotions, layers of thought, and bodily experiences compellingly come together within a frame of attention, and the manner in which these elements of one’s experience converge in the dream state becomes responsive to one’s awareness, if not also to one’s will, within lucidity.
Creative actions that draw upon each of these elements–emotion, body, thought, breath, and spirit–become possible within lucid dream experiences, all the more so if one exercises openness and judgment with respect to the forms of interaction–ranging from receptivity to control–one is willing to accept and cultivate in each different dream experience.
CREATIVE WRITING
Creative writing ranges from many modalities of free-writing and journaling, to creative nonfiction (e.g., memoir writing), to composition, to many forms of drama, fiction, and poetry. Each mode of creative writing affords writers special opportunities for growth, expression, and discovery. Each mode also calls for different kinds of endurance, technique, perspective, restraint (or, sometimes, impulsivity), control (or, sometimes, release of control), openness, and expressiveness.
Within each type of writing, one may find numerous sub-types and distinct styles. This abundant variety gives a vivid and clear indication of our diversity and our versatility, and it implies the possibility that one may find many advantageous pathways into creative writing.
Let us note a core feature that links all of these forms of creative writing: the integrative nature of the work. The writer becomes purposefully immersed in thoughts, reflections; experiences and engages with emotions; draws from energy and memory within the body; and, ultimately, seeks to weave these energies into words, into arrangements of words, into songs and speeches, into statements. The poet Hart Crane refers to poetry as “a momentary stay from chaos,” and the actor-poet John Lithgow defines poetry as ” a fusion of music, meaning, and emotion.” The act of writing involves a wide range of modalities, passive and active: concentrating, choosing, receiving, resisting, feeling, thinking, free-associating, analyzing, testing, defying, accepting, and arranging–all of these actions and more interweave in a writer’s effort.
Notably, writers often draw from a well of vivid sensory imagination, a mode of perception that grows within and derives from novel inner experiences–dreaming, day-dreaming, modeling, envisioning. A writer’s challenge involves arranging words in such a way that does justice to the particularity of the felt and sensed world revealed in sensory imagination. One may engage in many types of exercise to grow this capacity.
Let us pause on a concluding note, for now, by noticing the similarity of creative writing and lucid dreaming: in both practices, states of waking alertness and immersive sensory imagination productively and interactively blend in the creator’s field of attention. Within this field of attention, one grows skills, evolves perspectives, discovers inner truths, conceives visions, and crafts messages. The practice of creative writing thus affords one many pathways to growth, self-discovery, liberation, and fulfillment.
YOGA NIDRA
Yoga nidra amplifies the contented feeling and consolidates the benefits of yoga asana and meditation practices. Nidra (“yogic sleep”) occurs in a profoundly relaxed state that strongly compares to a R.E.M. dream-stage of sleep. In such a state, one’s nervous system is pliable, resilient, and open to profound healing shifts.
Nidra is so particularly potent a healing practice that the United States military has adopted a form of it to treat soldiers returning from war with PTSD. Deep healing and deep change become possible through yoga nidra.
One can self-guide a nidra practice, but the most common form of nidra practice is to enter resting meditation with a trained yoga instructor-guide who sets a narrative frame throughout the practice. This frame provides a basis for the practitioner to explore and choose divergent and convergent pathways through the expansive meditation.
A yoga nidra immersion may last anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours; approximately 30 minutes, however, is the most typical duration. Emerging from a nidra meditation requires 15 to 20 minutes of patience. It is wise to take a walk, drink herbal tea, and enjoy extended relaxing activity during this post-practice phase in order to help one’s system to integrate the practice while coming back to wakeful alertness.
Yoga nidra meditation bears many similarities to lucid dreaming and creative writing. It occurs within a dream-like state that borders deep sleep; it involves conscious, creative decision-making; it awakens vivid sensory imagination; it involves poetic and narrative elements; and it operates as a practice of intuitive synthesis of language, intention (sankalpa), receptivity, and intricately-detailed perception of bodily sensation, memories, emotions, and imagined states of experience. As such, nidra, like creative writing and lucid dreaming, is a deeply integrative practice.
Nidra practitioners can call upon their skills and experiences in both creative writing and lucid dreaming to engage more deeply and resourcefully with the nidra meditation narrative. Nidra meditation can likewise equip lucid dreamers and creative writers with techniques and experiences that enhance their pursuits in each of these integrative practices.
COMBINING YOGA, WRITING, and DREAMING
All people may productively pursue various means of aligning the integrative practices of yoga nidra, creative writing, and lucid dreaming. Teachers of yoga nidra may especially benefit from exploring how to align lucidity, creative writing, and yoga practice. First-hand experience in exploring and linking skill-sets in each modality can provide valuable resources to call upon when guiding others into their private nidra journeys.
One may find courses on yoga nidra, creative writing, and lucid dreaming here on the Momentasana Yoga website. While some of these materials may only interest teachers, all of the programs–as with all other meditations, practices, and writings on Momentasana–are open to any practitioner.
Each writing, audio file, or video-based class is designed with the intent to support a practitioner’s independent experience and full, clear understanding. The materials also present invitations to connect with me and with others to go more deeply into personal explorations of yoga and a range of complementary creative practices.
Please watch this site for announcements about workshops and forthcoming programs; and please feel free to contact me {Mark Spring} to discuss options for personal training, group immersions, and custom-designed workshops for individuals or organizations.
momentasana.yoga@gmail.com