Tune In

One of the most sublime and transportive singing voices I've heard is that of Karnamitra Dasi. I've had the privilege of not only hearing her sing but of her speaking about how she sings. She describes trying to find the very center of the note that she's singing and to penetrate deeply into its purity and vibration. When you listen to her sing, you get a sense of what she's talking about. It's through countless hours of practice that she is able to find the center in what seems to be an effortless way.

This week is about tuning in. It's about exploring the energetic body through our asana practice and trying to sense the underlying buzz of universal energy that lies within everything. I was inspired to practice tuning in this week not only with myself but with all classes after reading a quote from Matthew Sanford.

I distinctly remember a talk that was given by Matthew a few years ago at a yoga therapy symposium. Matthew was in a car accident in which his sister and father were killed and left him paralyzed from the chest down. He's now an adaptive yoga instructor in Minnesota and has offered a different lens which we can look through and examine how we approach our practice. Here's the quote that got me thinking about tuning in:

"I can't lift my legs. I can't flex the muscles. But I feel a hum, a tingling, a buzz. My yoga practice is trying to understand the asanas. The instructions in an asana are intended to amplify your connection to that hum, and I don't mean this in a touchy-feely New Age way. I literally mean there's a hum.

Because of my paralysis, I understand and appreciate that the sound Om is actually calibrated to that buzz, to that hum. So my yoga practice is trying to watch how alignment and precision amplify that hum through both my paralyzed and unparalyzed body."

~Matthew Sanford, Yoga International, I Don't Overcome My Body: I Adapt Yoga to My Body

As Matthew spoke, he sits with his legs stretched out in front of him and pushes through his heels and he feels this hum. He said the medical profession had it wrong when they told him he would never feel again. He said what he feels is beyond what they could understand.

This tuning in is tapping into a current that runs through everything and is described as prana or chi-the Universal life force. We get a sense when things feel dissonant in our lives, a feeling when things are just that little bit off. And we know the more connected we get to the deeper and more subtle layers of our human experience, the more we are able to find resonance and harmony quickly. When we do so, we can naturally bring ourselves back into balance and open the gateways to higher states of consciousness.

You may recall the early stages of your yoga practice...things felt unfamiliar and sometimes confusing. You were likely focused on putting your feet in the "correct" position, syncing your breath all the while trying to settle the thoughts of self-judgment. This past week in classes, we've been trying to broaden our awareness to the experience as a whole-sensing one. One way to experiment with this is to sense the underlying current of energy that's always flowing through the body. Sit quietly and settle into the sensations of your breath. Next, focus simply on your hands. Bring your awareness into what you can detect-tingling, buzzing, the hum described by Matthew Sanford. As you focus into your hands, see if you can pull the tingling further up your arms as though you're pulling on long gloves.

It certainly becomes more challenging as we begin to move, but we can sense moments of this undercurrent by pausing throughout the practice. When you stand in tree pose or Warrior Two, bring your awareness back to your hands and reconnect to the hum.

Everything vibrates and when we establish consistency in our practice it supports us in being able to plug into this frequency more readily. When we resonate within our own being, that vibration tunes us into all else. This is one way that we benefit from plugging in!