Full Class Video
Topic 3 • Teaching With Shakti: Letting the AUM sound roll through your cues
The Path of Shakti & Inner/Outer Oms
Getting Bigger as a Teacher: The current setting for yogic transformation is the yoga mat. It may not have been this way a hundred, or a thousand years ago, but that is the setting we find ourselves in today. This means that as yoga teachers, we must bring more than just a fun and engaging sequence to the classroom, we also have to bring an internalized state, an open heart and quiet mind. This is what makes our yoga classes transformational, for both our students and ourselves. This is the essence of teaching from inside.
The Dance of Teaching from Inside: Teaching from inside is a topic we cover in our level one 200 hour training. We say that it’s a seed we are planting, because that’s all it can be at any single moment— a seed we must grow with effort over time. We are revisiting the concept of teaching from inside in this training, because teaching from inside is a dance— a dance of internal and external awareness. When we teach we must address the external world, but if that’s all we give our students, we aren’t fulfilling the true mission of the yogic tradition. Teaching from inside is the work of re-finding center as we work through our external circumstances— this is something that eventually occurs in every setting of our life, but the practice of teaching yoga allows us to really dive into this experience and try it fully. And this dance defines the depth of our practice and experience.
The magic of Vimarsha: As we have discussed, the light of our awareness shines outwardly illuminating the world around us, known as Prakasha. By this light we move through our life and accomplish our infinite daily tasks. In the context of a yoga class, this is the awareness we use to cue our class, the sequence we plan and the words we use to guide our class through those shapes. The magic happens, though, when we reflect our awareness back to the source of that light while we teach, known as Vimarsha. This turn of awareness encompasses the external world, which is only a fraction of reality, and expands our awareness to include the un-seen inner worlds from which that external reality emanates. The all encompassing reflective awareness was described by Swami Muktananda as the beginning of all spiritual practice. This is what is meant in Kashmir Shaivism by using the path of Shakti to re-discover Shiva, or as Swami Rudrananda taught it, using our life as fuel for growth.
The Path of Shakti: As Swami Lakshmanjoo comments in the preface to the Vijnana Bhairava, “This is the journey we have to do, the journey we have to do in the field of Shakti, not in the field of Shiva [because] there is no journey [in Shiva]…So, the path is Śakti, the path is not Śiva. Energy is the real path you have to tread.” The journey he speaks of is our spiritual growth, the work of our practice. This journey occurs in the field of Shakti, meaning the field of manifestation, our individual karmic arenas. We might think we can just ‘cut to the chase’ and have a spiritual practice because we have decided to, like taking a helicopter to a mountain top instead of hiking it— but our lives quickly show us that there is a lot of work to do on our way to the summit. This is the path of Shakti, the path of working with your everyday life to generate spiritual growth. This means that we have to turn into our energetic state in a variety of changing conditions, and that working with our energy is really what we are here to figure out.
Re-Center, Re-Discover: Working with our energy, or using our life for spiritual growth, as we teach is a profound practice that can only be accomplished in the very moment of teaching. It is one of the highest Uppayas, paths, of spiritual growth because it happens so spontaneously, and because it is such a moving target. It is assumed that we will be pulled away from center as we teach, that is not only ok, but part of the process. This is when we slow down, re-center, and keep dancing with the shakti, keep cueing and re-finding center. This is the dance of Shiva and shakti this training seeks to help us participate in, using our external life to re-discover what’s inside of us. These two worlds are not separate, in fact, they are the very means of finding each other. We discover Shiva through Shakti.
Inner and Outer Oms: One way to explore this dance is through an experiment in chanting the OM sound. First we can externalize our “om," as if we were yelling outside “Dinner’s Ready”. This represents teaching from the head, teaching from an externalized space of awareness, teaching the poses as shapes instead of as energy. It might seem exaggerated when we chant it out loud this way, but I think we would all be surprised to learn that teaching without inner focus is not far off from this experience. Then we will go to the other extreme, chanting OM silently, with no external voice at all. This is like Shiva on the mountain top. It feels good, but eventually this realization must be tested within the context of our life. From these two experiences we chant OM from the Middle Path— Feeling within while chanting outside. This is how we we use Shakti to discover Shiva— its more interactive, it takes steady participation, over and over again. We don’t just chant OM once, we chant it hundreds of times.
Practice to Experience: It is not possible to explain this middle path in words, as it is by definition an intuitive space between the 1s and 0s of our mind’s computation. Nonetheless, as the Sutras teach, this space is easy to experience first hand with practice. This middle path is the path we dance on when we teach, a shifting ground of center between our inner and outer realities. The only way to improve our capacity to teach from this middle path is with practice, which is what we want to focus on today and subsequent classes.
Matrika Shakti and Teaching from the heart
Zones of Awareness: There is one more layer to the power of this practice-- it infuses your cues with shakti, spiritual energy. In the science of mantra we are taught that there are three primary zones of experience, the mouth, the throat and the heart/navel. As we move deeper into these zones, the inner vibration of the mantra becomes more powerful and external manifestation becomes quieter. Though our cues in yoga class are not necessarily mantras, when we teach from the heart we are in infusing our words with this powerful inner vibration.
As Swami Muktananda teaches: “Everyone is aware of the speech of the tongue. It is called Vaikhari and corresponds to the gross body. With the subtle intellect, one can also know the second level of speech, which is in the throat. There, words have taken form but have not yet emerged. This level is called Madhyama and corresponds to the subtle body. At a deeper level, words exist in the heart. This is the third level of speech, Paśyanti, which corresponds to the causal body. Here, words are hidden, and what arises at this level is Matrika… The moment one understands the Matrika Shakti and its work, one is no longer a human being. When the Matrika Shakti expands within, in this very body one becomes Shiva.” (Nothing Exists Not Shiva, p. 7-9)
These three levels of speech describe the experience of cueing with heart, and cueing with Shakti. Its interesting to note that Muktananda says that in the heart, words are hidden, and all that exists is the matrika, the vibrational power. This means that teaching from the heart can feel very vulnerable, its as if you are letting go of the words— which might seem irresponsible as a teacher, but that’s why we practice beforehand, we take time to establish the pathways of the posture or sequence, and then we let that go as we teach.
Indescribable Yet Experienceable: “This state is, in fact, indescribable, It can’t be described. It can’t be told. Internally It happens; It is filled with your own ecstasy, your own ānanda. It is beyond the apprehension of vikalpa, beyond thought.” Verses 14-16 Vijnana Bhairava. Everywhere we look in the yogic tradition we see that the state we are reaching for is indescribable and not comprehendible by our mind— it is specifically beyond our mind, and is filled with Bliss.
Slowly Unfurling: Getting there in our cueing is very similar to how we are getting there in our bodies. We bring our awareness inside and slowly unfurl it externally, bridging the inner an outer worlds by consciously rolling from the inside to the outside, just like we did in our movement practice. This is how we retain inner sensation while moving externally. In terms of chanting, this would look like a rolling AUM, using the mantra A-U-M to roll our awareness from inside to out. The OM sound actually consists of three distinct sounds that carry us through the three levels of speech and mantra according to the teachings of Kashmir Shaivism.
Sounds of AUM: The first sound is a soft a, like the a in ‘aloha’. This sounds resonates in the belly and upper chest, corresponding to the heart and navel centers. This sound is not the most audible, but has a powerful inner vibration. In the science of Yoga, this first syllable of the AUM sound represents Brahma, the creator. The second syllable, “AU” or “O” starts to bring the sound forward and up, rolling along the throat and upper pallet. This would correspond to the sustaining force of the universe, represented by Vishnu. And the final sound of “M” brings the sound out to the pursed lips, the dissolution of the vibration associated with Shiva. This one sound rolls our awareness from inside to out, and when we practice it consciously can help us feel the power of heart as we connect with and cue our class.
Rolling AUMs: Putting this into practice is called the “Rolling AUM”. Each participant allows themself to breathe naturally, and when they are ready they begin the sound of AUM from the A sound in the belly and chest, allowing it to roll forward and up to the AU sound in the throat and back of the pallet, and finally to the M sound in the front pallet and pursed lips. Then each student inhales at their own pace and practices the rolling AUM again. Ideally, the AUM sound from each student naturally begins to overlap with each other in an organic fashion that creates a sea of AUMS, and can help us feel the spaciousness of the dance between the inner and outer world.
Teaching from Inside Today: Our goal is to bring this practice onto our teaching mats today. To do that we want to finish with one more OM practice— an everyday OM that you can bring into your day in a variety of circumstances. This is the intoned OM, produced by a simple humm. This was taught by Paul Reps. The practice couldn’t be simpler— inhale your highest potential, and exhale as you hum the OM sound. This allows you to tune directly into the vibration, to feel something lower than your words and head. As you are able to keep your focus on this space inside, your next words will naturally be walking that middle path of shakti— using your life circumstances to uncover your true nature.
Topic 4: Creativity is Receptivity: How to Catch the Shooting Star of Inspiration through the Spacious Awareness of Surrender.
Catching the Shooting Star of Inspiration
Star Gazing: Have you ever laid on the grass during a meteor shower, trying to see a shooting star? Then you know, by trial and error, that the best way to see a shooting star isn’t to look here and there constantly, or to localize your awareness to just one section of the sky— because the minute you do that someone will yell, ‘there’s one!” And you miss it. The best way to see a shooting star is to soften your gaze and try to see the whole sky while remaining aware also of the small movements that may occur in that space. This allows us to sense the first spark of movement, and then direct our focus when the time comes. Otherwise we always seem to miss the moment, no matter how fast we try to look when our friend calls out, its never fast enough to catch the star. In the same way, we must learn how to soften our gaze and feel a spaciousness inside ourselves as we move on our mats in order to catch the spark of inspiration when it flashes through us. When we do it correctly, we see more stars then we ever dreamed we could.
Grace descends Spontaneously: The work of creating a meaningful path through a posture, or sequence of postures, is a patient process, much like watching for shooting stars. We have to do both the work of creating the space, as well as the work of remaining aware for inspiration to happen in that space. In the yogic tradition, this inspiration is known as Grace, and when it descends, it goes by quickly. Terms used to literally describe the descent of Grace in the Sutras are “Spontaneously Emerges”, “Sprints Up” and “Flashes Suddenly”. We can’t make it happen, all we can do is prepare to receive it when it occurs— much like a shooting star.
In his commentary to Shiva Sutra 1.7, Jai Deva Singh asks, if we can’t make grace unfold by practicing, then what is the point of practicing? “What is the value of the upayas or Yogic disciplines mentioned in the Siva-Sutras? The answer is that though [the Self] remains as the background of all we are and do, we are unaware of it. It is not a feature of our normal consciousness. The paths of Yoga are mentioned so that we may prepare ourselves for its reception.”
On the mat: On our mats we prepare to receive the shooting star of inspiration by establish our awareness inside with stillness, and then maintaining that inner awareness as we ripple through some form of intero-surfing. This process slowly builds our capacity for inner and outer awareness as we move into postures. As we work in postures we try to maintain our spacious awareness, much like keeping our gaze soft as we look up into the night sky. We move without too much doership, feeling for what wants to happen in the posture. As Muktananda taught, when we allow our energetic source to dictate our postures, they serve us and our growth.
So we stay spacious and move from that spaciousness. Ideally, this awareness itself will guide you towards an exploration of a primary movement or posture, as well as guide you towards your next posture. Sometimes the hardest part of the process is being willing to stay spacious and repeat a posture until the inspiration moves you. As we continue to unfold our sequence from the space of awareness, we can circle back to previous postures and repeat the flow in a lighter way in order to allow it to inform our next posture. This allows us to feel the sequence as a whole as we create it.
Tips for staying spacious as you move through a sequence:
Move in a Pose & Listen closely to the moment as it ends
If you feel inspired towards a second movement, do it, if not, repeat the first one.
After finishing second movement, go back to beginning and do movements 1 & 2, listening closely to the moment as it ends.
If you feel inspiration towards a third movement, do it, if not, repeat first two movements and keep feeling.
Notice how your body finds the most efficient path through the sequence
Notice what might not be working as you repeat it, and let that go
Homework for this Topic:
Create 3 Shakti Flows (Sequences), each with about 3-5 postures or movements
Try to stay in one level for your whole Shakti flow, Floor/Middle/Standing, in order to work for that spaciousness
One from Floor
One from Middle
One from Standing
Make sure the Shakti flow easily returns to the beginning from the end in order for it to be repeated