Integrity & Iyengar Yoga: A place to begin.
Yoga Connections
Leaky energy leads to lack of integrity, which I believe comes from ignorance of our highest self.
We are human, but consider the idea that we have a divine spirit in the confinement of this human form that can teach us how to navigate the earth plane with more integrity. Integrity is hard to uphold regardless of spiritual path, age, gender, race or status.
Some people adhere to strict religious dogma or other rigid authority to keep them in line. But relying on someone else to tell us how to behave has its pitfalls eventually. We want to build an internal sense of integrity.
I believe Iyengar Yoga can help us with that, here’s why: The Iyengar Method teaches you to rely on your inner teacher. Imagine for a moment learning to hear a voice that is the highest part of yourself to show you how to move in the world? The Iyengar Method is a systematic and synchronistic way to connect to that divine part of yourself.
The Method follows an 8-limbed path that does have guidelines. It encourages you to study the 196 (or 197) Sutra’s written by the Sage Patañjali to ponder over and over along the way —until you have a visceral understanding of why this over-5000-year-old-proven path has the ability to expedite your evolution. Ultimately, it eliminates the need for rules because you get to a place where you see they are a part of you instead of something outside of you.
The Iyengar Method also requires that you begin your practice by taking classes with a Certified Iyengar Instructor. The Iyengar Method of teaching yoga takes you from the ‘periphery to the core’ and then ‘the core to periphery’ and back again, bringing awareness to every fiber of your being: your arms and legs, your muscles and bones, your bodily systems, your trillions of cells, your breath, and your life-force energy.
From awareness, you move to alignment. From alignment, you move to clarity. From clarity, you move to wisdom. All along the way you refine and evolve until you get to the essence of your divinity. That’s the part of you that innately knows how to behave in the universe.
Once you get a glimpse of your highest most authentic self, you sense freedom there like you’ve never known before -freedom from your base desires and more. Eventually, you connect right action with that sense of freedom, which seals the leaks in your energy, and keeps you centered in integrity, so your evolution can accelerate forward and upward.
Namaste.
By Rhonda Geraci, Iyengar practitioner, Certified Iyengar Instructor & freelance writer