by Susana García Blanco | Dec 30, 2014 | Uncategorized
2014 is saying farewell. One of the most intense years of my life. December 31st is day of change of cycle and I would like to share with you a ritual of closing and renewal, inspired (among many other sources) by Solstice rituals, my own Goddess and mantra practices and my teacher Sally Kempton (to whom I literally copy for some parts of the ritual). You will need two papers (or your journal), something to write, a candle and a bit of your time on the last day of the year. Do it alone or in good company.You can add to the ritual the power of the Goddesses mantras that I offer or you can skip that part and just go for the simple ritual.
Closing and renewal ritual
- Light a candle as a symbol of the light to guide you.
- Write in a paper a list of the most important events in the year: describe the challenges you faced, the important accomplishments, the moments you regret,… Read your list (for yourslef or in loud voice). Offer it to the Universe, to the Goddess, to the Divine,… EVERYTHING! The positive and the negative. What made you smile and what made you cry. You can use these words or your own: “I offer these thoughts and actions to Grace. May all that is of benefit come to fruition. May all mistakes be dissolved. In the year to come, may my life be of benefit,may I know my own freedom. May I be loving. May I be loved” When you have made your offering burn the paper or tear it into tiny pieces and bury it. You are offering the karmas and actions of 2014. Dissolving them, you are free to start the next year.
Offer a mantra to Goddess Kali. Her liberating energy helps dissolving obstacles and limitations, opening the path for the new. A powerful mantra, that carries at the same time the energy of dissolution and manifestation, and you can repeat 9 times (or 108!) is OM AIM HRIM KLIM CHAMUNDAYE VICHE SVAHA
- In a new paper, make a list of intentios for the year 2015. We are creating what in sanskrit is called SANKALPA (a mental construction that is already manifesting in the future). Rather than making resolutions (difficult to follow!), make a list of the things you would like to give birht to your life. Contemplate which are the things you really enjoy. What is that delights you? Don´t put limits to your dreams, to your wishes, to your vision. In Ghandi´s words, “Be the change you want to see in the World” Write your intentions in present time, as if they are already happening. You can create intentions in different planes: material, emotional, energetic, spiritual,… Be as precises and clear as you want, but it is very important that they are expressed in posiitive form and in present time. (for example, “In 2015 I don´t want to be ill” will not be an efficient way of expressing your intention. To attract what you desire you should say something like “In 2015 my body is strong and healthy, and I have enough energy to fulfill my dharma, for myself and others”.
You can also create a general intention. Mine, that I will share in more depth at the beginning of the year is inspired in a Joseph Campbell´s quote “Follow your bliss”
- Contemplate how your intentions for the New Year are good for you and for others, for your community, for your family, for the world. May they be filled with your wishes of growth, of wisdom, of love.
Invoke Saraswati, the energy of wisdom, intuition, speech and knowledge to illuminate your intention and the way to its manifestation, repeating 9 times the mantra OM AIM SARASWATIAYE NAMAH
- Now imagine that your intentions have materialized. How do you feel? Close your eyes and allow that your heart and your body soak in those sensations.
It is Goddess Laksmi the one that carries the energy of full manifestation. Repite 11 times one of her mantras as OM SRIM HRIM
- Read this blessing, from my teacher Sally Kempton, or use your own words of inspiration.
“May I let go of the struggle. May I be able to do the work that I need to do in my way. May inspiration fill me. May my most intimate relationships serve to the expansion of my heart. May my life be of benefit for all around me. May love be may pole star. May the Goddess bless me at every step! “
Happy Year 2015 !
by Susana García Blanco | Oct 17, 2014 | Uncategorized
The first post in the blog of my brand new web page.
What it started as a text about Yoga Therapeutics has become by itself a contemplation about the presence of Shiva y Shakti, maybe philosophical concepts that a priori can sound as foreign and distant, in my practice and, specifically, in yoga when practiced with a therapeutic goal. Curiously, a few days ago, my friend Zaira Leal, posted in Facebook a beautiful text, titled “Shakti in your practice”, which view I totally share and that I think, here, I complement.
In Tantra, the concepts of Shiva y Shakti are essencial to understand both the Absolute and the world we are living in. esenciales para entender tanto lo Absoluto como el propio Universo y el mundo en que vivimos. One way of contemplating Shiva and Shakti is as the masculine and femenine forms of the Divine, of the Absolute, of the Universal.
They often appeared represented as deities with human forms. Some times as lovers whose illuminated conversations give place to the most beautiful and powerful texts of Philosophy and Meditation. At other times, fused in a unique form as Ardhanarishwara, half Shiva, half Shakti. Always symbolizing the sacred union between the masculine and the feminine, between the complementary opposites.
But, what do we mean by masculine and feminine? And, returning to the origin of my contemplation, how do they manifest in the yoga practice?
We can interprete masculine and feminine from two different perspectives. In the relative world, they relate to gender, like for animals or human beings. The masculine represents, among other things, strength, tenacity, perseverance, action, penetration. The femenine is personified by qualities as softness, receptivity, adaptability, nurturance, space. Both are needed in our yoga practice. My teacher Sianna always reminds us that Tantric texts talk about how every practice has to have two components: fire (agni) and nectar (soma). The solar and the lunar. On one hand, as the insistent friction between two stones, our practice must be able to create fire (agni), that from all elements is the one intimately linked to transmutation. On the other hand, there is in any yoga practice a more sutil, more feminine component, that as Moon light (soma) connects us with the essence of pleasure and sweetness of the Universe.
Then there is the vision of masculine and feminine from the Absolute. From this perspective, Shiva is Awareness. Yes, with capital letter. Because there are different levels of awareness and Shiva is the purest, most clear, most aware awareness. In one of the forms that appear in the Myths, Shiva is the yogi, that from the top of Mount Kailash, has a 360 degrees vision. Shiva IS and, also, is the witness of all that is. Shakti is the creative power of the Absolute that gives birth to Universes, stars, planets, living beings… that give birth to us. One of the condensed forms of this Universal power is the vital force, prana, that manifests, among other ways as the breath. So, in a tangible way, inside myself, Shiva is awareness and Shakti is the breath. It is not by chance that yogis from ancestral times have experimented with methods that work with awareness and breath. It is not by chance either that, as Shiva and Shakti, they go always hand by hand.
In Yoga Therapeutics, we look for the soma, the sweet nectar of good health. The first rule for a therapeutic action is that it feels good (with an injury, actions that eradicate or lessen the pain). And so the feminine qualities of patient listening, sensitivity are truly important. But in most cases, the change in physical patterns (and mental and emotional) that are needed to get out of pain, it is not going to happen without the fire. The fire of a regular practice; the fire of the constant repetitions of a particular action; the fire of the heat that is generated in our muscles and that allow that muscular chains and fascia are molded as wet clay.
In Anusara yoga, we work therapeutically using the Universal Principles of AlignmentTM, the same that we use in our daily yoga practice. No difference. But when your body (or someone´s body) is suffering from an injury, there is a small margin for error in alignment. Pain is there to bring awareness and the breath is there to recall space. At a personal level, when I had an injury or limitation (and I can think as well of emotional limitations), sometimes, in the moments, I experienced it as a going backwards in my asana practice. With time, with no exception, I have always seen how the increasing attention, the precision that comes with awareness, the pranic flow that comes deepening the connection with the breath, have taken me to a new place in my practice through a deep learning.
If you are going through an injury at the moment, if you have a physical limitation in your practice, if you do not feel well in your body, make your practice your friend. Dedicate it even a little bit more time and energy! And it is not necessary to wait to have an injury to make your yoga a therapeutic practice. Bring full awareness to any movement, to any action. Do not let anything be mechanical or with lack of attention. Contemplate your yoga practice in general and your asana practice in particular. Where is the fire? Where is the nectar? How do they relate to each other? And awareness? And the breath? And prepare yourself for a new level of experience.
by Susana García Blanco | Apr 20, 2014 | Uncategorized
As the year started, and I was contemplating my dedication and focus for 2014, both in yoga and in my life, there was a word coming repetitively to my mind: breath. I decided to dedicate this year to its study, observation and expansion; to let my practice to be more deeply guided by this dance of the Shakti that is the constant pulse between inhalation and exhalation and the spaces in between.
Decided also to slow down the traveling, and living in Morocco, from where is not so easy to follow the rhythm of yoga studies of the last 15 years, I signed up for some yoga courses on-line, some of them with teachers who I barely knew, fully following my intuition. All of them are helping me to deepen my relationship with the breath in various ways: through pranayama (see definition in Newsletter Inspiration); the use of breathing in Yoga Therapeutics; anatomy and the observation of the shape changes that happened in the body with the movement of the breath; the practice of vinyasa flow; or the meditation techniques from ancestral texts that use the breath as an instrument for the expansion of Consciousness. I am deeply grateful to Sally Kempton, Leslie Kaminoff, Noah Mazé, Christina Sells and Gioconda Parker.
There is always a mix of excitement and even fear about how the Universe will manifest its teachings when I ask a question. My curiosity about the breath brought a double tremble to my being. So I cannot really say that I was surprised when the year started marked by my father´s bad health. Instead of experimenting with the apnea below the Moroccan waves, I have spent nights in a hospital pending on his breath. Then, after a very traumatic surgery, today it is a month since I have been seeing him sleeping connected to a automatic respirator. During this time, I have hold my breath many time listening the news from the doctors. I have felt the lack of air in my lungs and literally I have been unable to breath. Wow! I experienced what people feel when they are anxious. I never thought it was so, so physical! I observe how my breath changes many times during the day: when I wait for the doctor news, when I visit my father every day wishing for him to open his eyes and look at me, when I sing healing mantras, during some nights when sleeping gets difficult. Even hoe my breath is different some days during my practice. Paradoxically, although I am also dedicating myself to the practice of pranayama, some days my study of the breath is to deal with the changes that happen in my breath due to the tension, confusion, anxiety, sadness and the giant fluctuations of my family emotional state. A great reminder of how the breath is prana, the breath is life. A tangible experience of how the energetic body (PRANAmaya kosha) interwaves with all the rest: with the physical body (anomaya kosha) and with the mental and emotional body (manomaya kosha). How a moment perception changes when I see it from the infinite questions of my mind (manomayakosha) or in the moments in which I am able to connect with a bigger vision (vijnanamaya kosha) and how this affects the rhythm and quality of my breath and helps me to connect with a place of deep calm and tranquility (anandamaya kosha).
Still immerse in this experience is difficult to get all the lessons and teachings. I am sure they will keep on showing as sparkling jewels. But now I can express with clarity a deep gratitude. Gratitude to the practices of the past years that are helping me (and my family) so much in navigating this tortuous waters with a great inner calm. And my gratitude to all of you there, some close by, others sending your warmth and support in many different ways. Your energy is felt and appreciated. We live in a bubble of love that comforts us and gives us strength.
I would like to apologize for any non-answered emails, for any delay. I try to attend to the most urgent things and walk day by day. I don´t want to put the excuse that I don´t have energy. Sometimes that is totally true. At other times, it is simply that I feel this moment as so important, so sublime, so sacred that is bringing me very inside and there is the need to respect that. Slowly, as this moment is expanding itself in time, I am returning more and more to a relative normality. But still a big practice of living every moment, every step, every sadness, every smile.
by Susana García Blanco | Dec 24, 2013 | Uncategorized
These are some of the calmer Christmas I remember. Since I arrived to my parents´home I feel immerse in a beautiful peaceful kind of silence. It is not that everything is silent but I feel a deep quietness inside. The typical Christmas hurries are not here and there is time for everything. Yes, serenity ….
These Christmas are, no doubt, special for me. I feel HAPPY that were are all together one more year. It has been a hard one for my family and there is a great happiness and appreciation for being able to get together to enjoy dinner and the nice company. These feeling of appreciation and gratefulness makes that every moment, every small detail is beautiful: a little shopping, laying the table for dinner or wrapping the gifts with love.
LOVE. That is the w
ord that sounds today in my heart. At noon I was with my mom in a Monastery in my hometown. In the lonelinees of its ancient stone church, with its very high domes, with its profound inciense smell, with its solemn silence (silence again…) I contemplated today´s meaning. In the pagan tradition, we celebrate the solstice, the honoring of the darkness as the pulsation of the light. What a powerful time of inner vision to revise the places in our lives where the light is missing and in the darkness of the heart, to plant new seeds for the new cycle. In the Christian tradition, it is the celebration of the embodiment of Love. The Divine becomes man, becomes Earth. The Tantric tradition says that this is happening constantly: the subtle energies of the Universe, of love, awareness, wisdom, bliss, get embodied, create this world and transform into us and everything around us and all our experiences.
All our experiences. All. From here a new contemplation, a new appreciation (and maybe you don´t want to keep on reading because I am not sure it is about Christmas any more). The new appreciation of the Castilian lands where I was born, where I grew up, this place that I never fully connected with.
Today I was thinking what is it Divine in here? And suddenly, observing its vast plains, I felt how here God becomes infinite space; He
becomes both ice and burning sun; and for sure He becomes the food and the wine. I might have just been born here to admire its infinite oceans of golden wheat, its blue skies of light, either in summer or winter time, the powerful desert-like sunsets, the many ways in which the sense of taste is awakened and delighted.
Sorry for the detour. I was considering to edit everything and send just a simple greeting but this is a powerful making peace with my origins. And everything started with Love and with Christmas….
I lift my glass for the happiness and peace that comes from gratitude and recognition. Merry Christmas, from my heart, and my wishes for a 2014 full of light and strength in which the pulsing energy of love that makes the Universe manifest itself in all the different facets of our lives. Enjoy!!!.
NAMASTE
Susana
by Susana García Blanco | Oct 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
This weekend starts the Navaratri celebration (literally “nine nights”). During these days, and their nights, it is celebrated Goddess Durgaás victory over the demon Mahisa, the victory of light over darkness; Durga´s power to transform our lives dissolving everything it is not useful anymore. Each of those nine days is dedicated to honor one of the forms in which Durga appears, each of the forms in which the femenine power manifests itself.
Mahisa was a terrible demon that was threatening with destroying all the worlds. It is considered in Hindu Mythology that there is a balance of power between Devas (literally light or luminous) and Asura (the demons). The Devas are the Gods and they represent the bright parts of ourselves, in alignment with the Universal energy: our generosity, our compassion, our will power …. They are the energy in the moments when we act guided from the heart and following the highest motivations. The Asuras are the beings that have won great power through their yogic practices and they use that power in an egoistic way. We can easily feel that asuric power in the world today just opening a newspaper and reading a couple of news. Also in our own actions or thoughts when they come from resentment, envy, greediness,… In the Tantric vision of Mithology we are all the characters in every story and that ideal search for balance between Devas and Asuras is nothing else that the search for balance between the different parts of ourselves. It is yoga.
But lets go to the story… a brief version of the story. Mahisa had received a boon from Brahma because of his intense ascetic practices by which no man or God could ever kill him. He totally forgot about the power of the femenine… Big mistake !! With all the power acquired through those practices, he dedicated himself to terrorize and conquer all the worlds, even the Deva´s. Given the terrible threat from Mahisa, the three main Gods, Brahmma, Vishnu and Shiva get together to find a solution. They gather their powerful energies as a blinding ray of light and, from that flaming light, Goddess Durga is born. All the Gods offer to her their most powerful weapons as a gift: (that is the reason why Durga has so many arms… from eight to thousand!!). The Goddes, fierce and stunningly beautiful at the same time, shows up in the gardens of Mahisa´s palace. After some exchange of impressions, the battle with Mahisa starts. Mahisa usually takes the shape of a buffalo or a bull, resembling the insistent and stubborn ways in which our misalingments and our unconscious tendencies show up in our lives. He is also known for shape-shifting. (Does this sound familiar, how all those tendencies that seem dissolved, part of the past, show up in a new way? ) Durga has all her arms in her multiple arms. During the battle, as Mahisa takes different shapes, she uses the right weapon to confront him . Because Durga is interested in the change that takes place from inside. In teaching us which are our resources to face the different life situations as the challenges shape-shift. This is a happy ending story. Durga aniquilates the Demon Mahisa, after an ardous battle, cutting his head with her sword that represents the light of knowledge that defeats darkness. All the Gods rush towards her and fall to her feer, honoring as Maha Devi (lthe Great Goddess). ¨Devi, you ended our torment … You are our Mother, our protectress… Please, listen to us and protect us always when we are in danger” This is Navaratri´s prayer. And this is the active power of the femenine, represented by Durga, that carries us through deep transformations, that guides us in the moments in life when the challenges seem unsurmountable. Durga is the part of our being that does not get intimidated in front of injustice, that is not afraid to tell the truth or to let go of anything harmful or that it does not help us, no matter the amount of attachment we feel. Durga infuses with the warrior energy as she gives the unconditional love and protection of a mother. In these days of Navaratri that starts on october 5th, ask her for help. Invoke her presence with her mantra OM DUM DURGA JAY NAMAH, contemplate which are your asuras in this moment of your life and offer them to her. Allow yourself to feel how here strength and resources are your own.
