Meditation. Best cake ever. by Gabriela Binello

Many people come to classes asking for "meditation". In some cases, they are moved by their own personal interest. In some others, they just follow their therapist´s suggestion.

Meditation could be one of the most nurturing experience in life. However, neither a place, nor a teacher, a special course or magic practice can ever guarantee me the achievement of this goal: meditation in itself. Even when it is a pre-requisite to find a good teacher (particularly at the beginning) it is important to make a difference between the practice (for example a meditation class) and the experience of meditation in itself.

Firstly, the only thing that a good teacher can do is to combine the tools efficiently so as to provide a good guidance to the meditation-seeker. For this goal, the teacher needs to know very well his student. This means that the teacher needs to observe accurately. This means the teacher should practice meditation himself (not being a good lecturer on meditation, not a good reader of meditation books but a meditation practioner). 

Meditation as an experience is when the cake smells and tastes really good All I could have done before (as a teacher) is choosing the best ingredients, adjusting the quantities, blending the mixture in the correct moment, providing the correct temperature... and then just wait till it is cooked. The integration and result of all those steps will no more depend on my intervention.

This is important to remind because only then I can differentiate clearly between practising meditation and really achieving meditation. Both walk very close together but they need to be separated to understand them. Most probably I would achieve meditation after practising (the correct practise)  for a long time. And surely, that glimpse of that experience of meditation would be enough to hold my practice forever.

Meditation is the expansion of our consciousness. It implies the capacity of holding a focus. It is connecting with our real Truth. It is the reencounter with our "Observer". It is reaching a place of calm and fulfilment. The place where our endless talkative mind stays silent. A state where I feel grateful for nothing in particular; just being.

All these are nice and enchanting words. They could be true but they are only words if I do not practice.

 I do not achieve meditation because someone says "all the cells in your body are grateful". I do not achieve it through an external voice that suggests me to see a world full of love and peace (specially if I am  not even being  able to sit down properly on a chair without having backpain). I do not reach meditation when someone -even with the best intention- asks me to listen to my inner silence. Understanding the great difference between theory and practice (between what it should happen and what is REALLY happening) is one of the first things we need to clean if we really want to experience meditation. This could be discouraging for many seekers of instant results. But, then, our house would have started to smell as the best cake ever...

Vairagya: within our natural flow by Gabriela Binello

“This nice weather lightens me up” is something I have been listening for the last days. Together with September (in the southern hemisphere), arrive the “new sprouts” and the “contracts” for personal renovation. Maybe spring is one of the most popular seasons of the year. However, change -on its own-, permeates other inner aspects.

For something new to appear, something else has to disappear. The new flower cannot blossom if the previous leaf had not fallen. T-shirts cannot enter on the same shelf where the pullovers are. Body heat will not decrease if I continue eating thick soups and stews. Yoga sutras do not speak on sweaters, dried leaves or thick soups but YES they speak on VAIRAGYA as one of the main axis for transformation[i]. Vairagya is detachment. Surrender. The opposite of resistance. Tol let go.

If you, my dear friend, do not need to change anything in your life, this note ends here. If, on the contrary, you need to have some more friendly relationship with “change”, maybe some reflections that come from more than two thousand years ago may help.

The Yoga sutras of Patanjali leave for granted different levels of vairagya. The first levels deal with the idea of practice together with effort. For example, it is possible that if I have great attachment to chocolate, one of the ways to “calm” that urge could be throughout some discipline (not buying chocolate, for ex.) But, as long as I sustain that practice of not buying chocolate, naturally this urge will start to decrease gradually. Of course this includes some effort and, specially, some self inquiry. Vairagya here requires will power but it is something possible for most of us.

More subtle and profound levels of vairagya (or detachment) should come as a natural consequence of that previous effort and most probably would be associated with the des-identification of my personal ego (the “I-ness” that differentiates me from the “others”, the one that labels, classifies and feeds my high or low self esteem, both equally). As an example here we can see FEAR as one of the most popular negative emotions in our times. The super expansion of fear goes together with the great need of control. And power. Control of what? Of what is MINE: MY car, MY house, MY bike, MY books, MY ideas… As if I could be identified by any of them. Or even in a more profound level, the need to control MY family, MY husband, MY wife, MY brothers, MY friends, MY children, MY pets. As if I could be able to have some incidence in the destiny of other human beings. Or, last but not least, the once and again health and safe measures and rules that REASSURE me a permanent contract of longevity and comfort-warm life.

Yoga sutras also say that we all –human beings- know very well what fear is about. (YS II.9) This has to do with our natural instinct of survival and the urge to live (YS IV.10). However, the exacerbation of society of control, measurement and  prediction (associated with super-expansion of EGO since man THINKS he can control nature and life) makes our fears explode to unimaginable levels. To such an extent that which we end defining ourselves by the quantity or the specificity of our last phobia or panic attack.

Also, many times our ego makes a clear link with disease.  I have “this” disease and I “become that” disease (disease or any situation that drives me to a role of victim). So all my mind frame spin around “this” (if I am better or worse; if I am in a good phase or relapsing, etc.). The symptoms here are true but there is an undeniable attachment to define myself within negativity. The only idea of getting out of this negative cycle could be as much frightening (who am “I” apart from the one who suffers?) as unfathomable.

The highest levels of vairagya have some correspondence with subtle levels of consciousness in which change does not affect me (YS I.15; YS I.16). A place where there is no desire for anything in particular; basically, I AM. This has nothing to do with apathy, abandonment or indolence. It is a state of clarity, fulfillment and peace. It is more than obvious that I cannot reach that subtle place making any effort. Like with meditation, I can only follow certain technics, tips, hints, etc. but this will happen if it is meant to happen. This highest levels of vairagya can be associated with the highest levels of consciousness (Samadhi; YS I.47, YS I.48, YS I.49: YS I.50, YS I.51).

“Change” will happen even if we do not even move a finger to help this. But if we are allowed to “taste” any anticipation of the reach of fulfillment of our real transformation surely we will choose this path. Transformation here stands for: an internal re-arrangement that allows us to express something we already have which is hidden; our true potential” (YS IV. 2, YS IV.12).

Winter is ending in the southern hemisphere. This cycle needs to END for spring to come. The new flowers depend on their own nature to blossom as much as on their detachment for the previous ones that were in that place. I do not believe in prescribed formulas to all; each of us should know how, when, where. But… there is NO change WITHOUT change. There is no change if we do not allow some new space; if we do not let go something we have been carrying before. It is possible that this can make us suffer but we will suffer even more if we fight against something that already IS. All the times we do this we are swimming against the flow (our own nature). And even after some time, we can end believing about the possibility of having been safe and sound always in the same place.

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[i] Transformation here can be read also as a state of yoga (nirodha or even samadhi).  YS I.2; YS I.12; YS IV.2.

Healing. A light-hearted experience by Gabriela Binello

To heal. Healing. Two words that I hear very often.

Some people associate curing with healing. Some people establish certain differences; mainly, curing will always depend on external assistance and healing will focus on all the layers of the human being (a process which definitely will include emotional and deep psyche stuff). This is the reason why we can talk about healing without curing. Though, however, we cannot think of curing if we hadn 't healed before.

Every one of us have been sick once. Every one have suffered once. Since the moment we are born, we know the finite reality of our body. Yogis, in their search for answers which lead to understand why we suffer and how to dis-engage from that, found some technics (basically, the control of energy, apart from other food and lifestyles habits) which “slow down” the natural decay of our human nature. However, it is possible that the main “key” of yoga in our modern society does not only deal with anti-stress technics or -best case scenario- mind control. Maybe, that key can open one of the doors that locks the true potential of Yoga; its ultimate goal: heal-ing¹.

Yoga understands each human being as a unique combination of what it WAS (generational history background; its “genetics”, if we had to find a correlate to west's approach), IS and WILL BE².  We are what we were and will be. We are what we were, according to the “heritage” we bring (8 generations back). And we are what we will be, according to what we are going to do with what we bring; our unique opportunity to draw another map within a territory full of past traces and impressions. All this process being played every moment in a non-sequential progression of time.

The translation for this could be: we can write our own destiny. This is not easy, it is more than obvious but, is it worthy trying?

From this perspective, what does yoga propose? Basically:

1. only when we experiment a profound feeling of acceptance, we will start healing. Acceptance of what is happening right now, of what we bring; that which still forms part of what we are. Quitting from the useless battle against “the other” (which includes: “the illness” that can limitate my actions, the legacy of each family background, the traumatic experiences, the actual-context-relationships or whichever person or situation that leads me to a “ever-lasting-suffering-status”; even a very small and hidden part of ourselves).We can spend the whole life fighting this battle; in many cases searching or doing all kind of therapies or treatments that focus on the past or on providing us band-aids for our wounds.
2. That acceptance is NOT resignation, depression, dullness, abandonment, conformism. The difference between this two is only understood when we experiment a very simple and profound feeling of opennes, lightness and fluidity.

All of us have experimented any of these sensations once without -even- stepping into a yoga class (just to think on deep, profound and healthy relationships, contact with nature, art or even sparkles of this openness that catch us by surprise). So then, what yoga proposes are tools that help us to  “remember” that state. Tools, technics that guide us in our walk towards openness, lightness and fluidity. Until one day, maybe, we can rescind those tools because we do not need them any more.

In sanskrit, one of the words that define “illness” is vyadhi (Vy-adhi). Vyadhi, or one way of naming illness in yoga, is the disconnection with that which is deep within us.

Another word that could be associated to “illness” in sanskrit is duhkha (duh-kha); the constriction or pressure within a space that should always be free, fluid.

Each story is unique; each person deals with its own and specific combination of past-present-future in a timeless time. It does not matter which technic or tool we use to dis-engage from suffering. We would only start healing when we reconnect with that experience of INTEGRATION with our intimate self within. And we would know that this is ACTUALLY happening because we would feel light and fluid.

How can we start then? Well, it could be useful to take the external tools and PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE throughout our own experience. This implies the luck of magical solutions from outside but only tools (I also include deep links with teacher and teachings) that will only be appropriate when we make them resonate with our true essence, our true intelligence (which is just a spark of THE Intelligence and THE Truth). For this, yoga also proposes us to go and look for some “allies” who know how to play the game of acceptance:

--apeksitvat: the profound desire of knowing. Of knowing us.

--sraddha: the conviction that the light within us will guide and give us strength to “scuba dive” -even- in a deep sea during a new moon night...

--svatantram: the independance to discriminate and follow that personal light.

--Isvara pranidhana: the trust and surrender (humility) in a Higher Intelligence that supports us.

And there is much more...

But each of us, in our unique and sacred personal language, would have to recognize and translate these words.

Then, we would have started to heal.

1 I understand the “ultimate goal” of yoga as the discrimination and understanding that liberate us from suffering. In this perspective I am bringing out the idea of healing: YS I.29; YS II.25; YS III.35; YS IV.34, among others.

2YS III.14; YS IV.12; YS IV.14.

Some information of our classes

Group Classes:
We work in small group classes. We look forward to applying yoga´s tools according to each person´s need.
In asana´s classes, we combine small or long vinyasas with respiration rules during the whole class. In almost all of our classes we include pranayama at the end of the practice. In some groups we use mantras and chanting.

Personal Practices:
Personal practices are the best option for people who decide to include yoga in her/his everyday routine. Throughout regular appointments and taking into account several issues (health, dietary habits, lifestyle, time available, family constitution, etc.) the teacher creates a personal practice suitable for that student.

Please, make contact before coming to a first class.