What Does It Feel Like?

Have you ever been on a long airplane flight or train ride! Or worked at your desk for hours without stopping? Or done anything where you've been stationary for extended time spans? Most of us have. You're in the seat of the airplane or car, for example, cramped and unable to move much; your back, neck, and legs ache; your shoulders stiffen and become increasingly tense; and the very inactivity makes you uncomfortable, antsy, and tired. Surely, this is familiar.

At the end of the trip when you finally climb out of` your seat, what do you do? Just naturally, without even thinking about it, you move and stretch. Haven't you done this? You can observe people at airports doing this all the time. You stretch, wriggle, writhe, arch your back, shrug, and circle your shoulders, turn your head, stretch your neck ... and this makes you feel better. It helps get the kinks out.

A similar thing happens first thing in the morning when you wake up. Actually, most people do not stretch on waking, though you have probably done it occasionally, and you've certainly seen animals do it, especially cats and dogs. If you try it tomorrow morning, though, if when you awaken you stretch, wriggle, and writhe for a few moments - squeezing and stretching your muscles, exhilarating yourself with the feeling of stretch and energy flow, and allowing yourself to assume various spontaneous contortions - you may be surprised at how nice it feels and how quickly you wake up. Yoga is something like this.

Yoga is a sophisticated system for achieving radiant physical health, superb mental clarity and therefore peace of mind, as well as spiritual insight, knowledge edge, and understanding. It is a complete system for total psychosomatic spiritual health. It's a way of learning to live in happy harmony with life. And, as with a cat stretching as it awakens, yoga wakes you up - gently - and makes you feel wonderful. The more yoga you do, the more awake you will become, both literally and figuratively, and it feels wonderful while you are doing it.

In yoga you stretch as though it were first thing in the morning, much like a yawn. Do it now. Yawn. Open your mouth and initiate a yawn. Observe how the yawn comes from deep inside you and reverberates outward. Feel the energy of the yawn radiating outward into the atmosphere. Notice how pleasant it feels. Do it again. This is the action and feeling to become familiar with ... that of expanding and stretching yourself open from the inside out.

Now do several slow neck rolls. Sitting erect, lower your chin toward the breastbone and allow your head to hang limply. Look downward or close your eyes, and simply relax in this position for ten or twenty seconds. Breathe softly. Allow the stretch to penetrate. Feel what's happening. Then raise your head, tip it to the right, and allow your head to relax toward the right shoulder. Experience the sensations of stretch along the left side of your neck as you allow the stretch to penetrate and deepen. Relax, so the stretched part elongates. Be here ten or twenty seconds. Then tip your head to the left and be here for the same length of time, relaxing. Again, allow the stretch to penetrate, experience the sensations of stretch, and savor how it actually feels. Then come back to center.

Now tip your head to the right and slowly roll your face downward toward your chest, rolling your head to the left so your left ear comes near the left shoulder . Then do the reverse: Roll your face downward toward the chest again and tip your head to the right Go one direction then the other, slowly, gently ten or twelve times. Notice that doing this with your eyes closed enables you to experience the various sensations with more clarity. Then come back to center.

Now do several head circles or neck rolls. Move your head in small then large circles, first one direction then the other, slowly. Writhe gently into the area of your neck, letting your head move around as though it had a life of its own. Feel what you're doing as you do this. Intuitively "follow" the various sensations of stretch. Press gently into tight areas. Pay close attention to every subtle sensation. Make it sensual, full of feeling. Be spontaneous. Creatively explore this area of yourself. Don't mindlessly swing your head from side to side or attempt to make the biggest possible arc. Be mindful. Go slowly and concentrate on experiencing, the changing sensations of stretch. Be attentive to where it's painful, where it's pleasurable, and where there isn't much feeling. Experience the various sensations  as attentively as you can, whatever they are, and be curious about what's in there. Do this for the perfect length of time. Stop when you feel you've done enough. Bring your head back to center, be still, and then be aware how you feel.

Now stand erect with your feet apart, your arms outstretched in the air, and gently stretch and slowly writhe as though it were first thing in the morning, you've just woken up, and you feel like stretching! Do a whole body neck roll. Writhe with your whole body. Stretch everywhere, energize everywhere. Flood all parts of you. Wake yourself up - gently, slowly, sensually. Make it feel good. And immerse yourself fully in what you're doing as you are doing it. Stretch your whole body open from the inside out. Press into the various tight spots you find. Release the contracted areas, pent-up energy. Do this for a minute or so. Be attentive to where it's pleasurable, where it's painful, and where there isn't much sensation. Feel deeply. Concentrate on experiencing the ever-changing sensations of stretch. Experience every part of yourself. Immerse yourself so fully that you're momentarily not thinking about anything else. Then stop the gentle writhing, stand still for a few moments, and be aware of how you feel after having done this.

These are excellent examples of what it feels like to do yoga. They also convey the friendly attitude and total involvement you should bring to your yoga practice. The main difference between these examples and the actual practice is that yoga is more deliberate. You will be moving in perfect coordination with your breathing and assuming very specific positions.

The various asanas are actually very precise tools. Each yoga posture, or asana - pronounced AAH-suh-nuh - is a specific shape or template in which the stretching occurs. The idea is to use these tools or shapes to help create more space in your body. Your body is the visible and tangible portion of your energy field, and each pose is like a map into a specific area of that field. You create more space by undoing the tight spots, releasing tensions. Therefore, a large part of the practice is about deliberately roving through your body looking for the contracted painful areas. Using the various poses as maps into yourself, or places to look, you then endeavor to stretch, open, and release the contracted areas. This is extremely pleasurable once you get a feeling for it.

Think, for example, of massage. When someone asks you to rub their neck or shoulders, usually it's because they are experiencing some degree of pain or discomfort in that area. Your job is to look for the tight, sore, and tender areas and then rub, deliberately pressing into and flirting with the knots of tension that cause the pain. These knots are the areas you are attempting to undo, ease away, and erase. As you do this, however, it is not effective or intelligent to go directly into the sore area and press as hard as you can. The tight area will contract further and become even less willing to release its excessive grip and open. Therefore, you proceed slowly. You approach the contracted areas with care and come at them from various angles - circling the area, pressing with varying intensities, gradually working your way into the center of the tightness and dissolving it altogether.

In yoga, you do much the same thing, but differently. Using the pose both as a map and tool, you deliberately explore yourself, looking for tight, sore, or painful areas within yourself. You look for them so you can erase them. You then gently stretch them, press and squeeze them, breathe into them, relax and release them, and thereby ease away the tension and open the contracted area. This allows new energy to flush through you, nourishing undernourished areas, soothing chronic pain, and improving energy flow throughout the whole of you - revitalizing you. You can actually increase your vitality and improve your experience of you. This is done slowly, carefully, with sensitivity and feeling - enjoying what you are doing. You creatively and intuitively make subtle internal adjustments in the poses as you deliberately search for even the smallest knots of  tension. This is not an attack against yourself, remember, and it should not feel like one.  It's a loving gesture.

This is like going through your garden and pulling out the weeds. If you do this daily, eventually you'll have only baby weeds, and your work will be considerably easier. When you are really weed free, the poses will feel clean, and there will be the experience of free flowing, unobstructed energy.

Like the yawn, the early morning stretch, the neck roll and massage, yoga feels wonderful. And why not? You're releasing tension, relieving pain, and improving proving energy flow. It's liberating, energizing, healing. It's exhilarating. As you move inward and take care of every part of yourself, as you sweep through your energy field and ease away the pain - pulling out the weeds, creating more space and comfort, flooding yourself with new life - you'll not only realize you are taking superb care of yourself, that you are undergoing a deep cleansing and healing, and that you are truly making yourself more radiant, but your outlook on life is changing. You'll find yourself being different, and as a consequence, you'll understand the world and everyone in it differently, too.

More importantly, though, you'll realize you are not becoming different ... you're becoming who you've always been. You're consciously "becoming" the genuine, authentic You - the You that is the Son or Daughter of God, the Father Mother. This is radical! It's not just "feeling good" - and it's not just physical.

This is only an approximation, remember. It's as close as I can get to describing  what yoga feels like to me. Actually, yoga is more studied than simple stretching. It's slower, more deliberate and conscious. It does not have the same random exuberance as an early morning yawn and stretch, for the most part. Yet it feels better! Sometimes you will press firmly as you stretch, other times you'll stretch with less intensity and be soft. Your intent will change and flow according to the need. Sometimes you will stay on one specific spot, remaining motionless, letting the stretch penetrate; other times you will work the area more generally. Yoga has many moods.   One is not better than another.

The idea is to be increasingly sensitive, appropriate in the moment, so that each moment of practice feels perfect, alluring, desirable - and then to be as wholehearted as possible. The more yoga you do, the easier this will be, and the better you'll get at doing it. Getting "better" at yoga is not only a matter of becoming stronger and more flexible, of becoming more proficient in the poses, but of getting better at finding the specific alignment in each pose - moment by moment by moment - that feels perfect to you, and of wholeheartedly immersing yourself in the experience. The ability to immerse yourself in your conscious experience of the poses and meditations, to be more and more fully present in the Now, is what will cause this awareness to infiltrate naturally into the rest of your life. This, of course, is what it's all about.

Your breathing is the key. Breathing brings the poses to life. It's what animates the stretches and gives yoga its fluidity and flow. As you immerse yourself  in the flowing rise-and-fall rhythm of your breathing, you'll begin to sense that really there is only one breath; even an hour of yoga is just one long continuous stream of breath flowing in and out. The idea, the training, is to make your awareness as continuous as the breath. You do this by staying with the breath continuously, breathing consciously. Therefore, pay attention to your breathing; listen to it, feel it, taste it, savor and enjoy it. This flowing awareness of unbroken continuity will bring an integrated and increasingly meaningful sense to your practice.

What makes asana practice especially interesting, however, is the fact that you are working with an energy field - your energy field. You are not just stretching and squeezing muscles, bones, skin, and tissues - simply being therapeutic. You are changing your energy pattern, the way your energy flows. The pattern is expressed in your muscles and tissues, and this is where you'll feel the changes taking place, but what you're changing is the underlying pattern. Consistent asana and meditation practice will improve the way your energy flows, and this will change the way you experience yourself - transforming the way you perceive and relate to the world.

The various asanas and meditations have proven themselves to be especially effective at relaxing tense, painful areas of your body and in strengthening weak areas. They have powerful therapeutic value in dealing with physical and psyche logical problems. They improve circulation and glandular function. They retard aging. They increase the strength, stamina, and flexibility you need for other activities. They increase your sensitivity. They enhance your looks, your posture, your skin and muscle tone. You'll find it easier to sit comfortably in meditation and remain attuned to the creative life force energy within you. The practice of yoga will help bring a welcome, renewed vitality to your life. You will feel more alive as you allow the creative life force to flow through you unobstructed. This feels good.

Learning yoga will often feel as though you are learning something you already know how to do. This is not surprising since we are all familiar with the wonderful feeling of stretching and yawning after a restful sleep and of spontaneously taking a deep breath in clean mountain air. Yoga is a way of consciously bringing these natural surges into daily life. The joy and refreshment of a deep, full breath in combination with the exhilaration of a deep, strong stretch is rejuvenating. To deepen your breath is literally to inspire yourself, and to stretch, expand, and allow greater openness in your energy field is to experience, acknowledge, and embrace a bigger sense of who you are. As you embrace the fullness of yourself without inhibition or apology, you will be able more fully to participate in the world in a constructive and meaningful way.

Be happy you know how to practice. The practice will make you happy.