🥳 Celebrate the Holidays: Cultivate Your Yoga Practice

We wish for Happiness, Health, and Peace every day; including this holiday season!

Celebrating in this way can be an important part of your yoga practice. Holidays can be a time to celebrate with others, a time to reflect, and a time to reset your intention.  Here are five elements to weave into the fabric of your practice.

1. Muditā.  Celebrating the happiness of others might be a challenge, and maybe the hardest of the four.  Muditā is one of the four Divine Abodes; one of the sacred places we sit in meditation.  The rough translation is “sympathetic joy” or the joy experienced when another is successful.  Consider the feeling a parent has when a child graduates from college, wins a competition, or earns high praise from a teacher.  Now, practice that with a friend or distant relative you only see a few times a year, or maybe every few years.  Practice being joyful when your friend gets the end-of-year bonus, but your employer doesn’t offer a bonus.  Or, to make it more practical, practice sending joy to the yogi in front of you or beside you during class, when that person is calm & serene throughout a challenging posture.  After class, you might go out of your way to thank them for their positive energy.  Even this tiny gesture can be a sacred celebration.

2. Upekshā.  Holidays can provide opportunities to pause, or they can be full of hustle & bustle.  Upekshā means equanimity or balanced perspective is an integral part of practice, both on and off our mats.  When we realize this balance during each yoga class, we can be mindful of the neural pathways we create when we are triggered by stress.  This is a unique element of Sol Hot Yoga – there is an undercurrent of intensity, balanced by deliberate pauses and breaks.  Perhaps, the Bhagavad Gita offers some encouraging wisdom:

”Perform svādharma (your purpose) with a balanced mind, abandoning attachment to success and failure.  Such upekshā is yoga.”  (II. 48)

”Be steadfast in joy & sorrow, gain & loss, victory & defeat.  Fight for the sake of svādharma.” (II. 38)

3 .  Karunā. Like most Sanskrit words, this is difficult to find a direct translation.  Sometimes Karunā is translated as compassion or empathy; yet, even these fall a little short of the original intention.  Thich Nhat Hanh was a renowned Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, poet, and peace activist.  He described Karunā as a deep & transformative quality of the heart, rooted in mindfulness, understanding, and inter-connectedness of beings.  His teachings emphasized that, first, true Karunā arises from recognizing how your suffering may cause suffering in others.  Then, taking concrete steps to alleviate the suffering in the present moment.  The root cause of the suffering is an over-active ego, which is steered by comparing, competing, and complaining.  Here, Patañjali offers very sage advice in one simple Yoga Sutra:

”When disturbed by negative thoughts, cultivate their opposite.” (Yoga Sutra 2.33)

4. Santosha. This word usually translates as contentment, and is one of five personal observances (“must do”) in the Yoga Sutras.  During the holidays this part of our practice, like the others above, can be challenging to maintain.  Especially in our times, we have instant access to gratification right at our fingertips, inviting door-to-door delivery services to deliver presents right to your doorstep within minutes.  It is important to realize that true happiness does not come in these packages, or from external achievements or possessions.  These external input only serve to feed the ego’s struggle for self-preservation.  Gratitude is the antidote.

Gratitude grounds us in the present; reminding us that we already are more than enough.  Santosha is not about remembering that what you have is enough; it is remaining mindful of the fact that what you ARE is more than enough.  This requires a willing and earnest detachment from the external stuff.

The stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius offers this advice from his collection of Meditations:

”Reflect on how swiftly all things pass away and are no more – the works of Nature and the works of humans.’

’You have the power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

5. Metta.  Finally, we come back to Loving-Kindness (metta). Maybe we saved the best for last!  This practice is described by the Buddha, Patañjali, and throughout the teachings of Jesus Christ. This is a very deep practice, and like the others above, requires a high degree of mindfulness.  Sometimes that word is discombobulated, so here’s our working definition:  Awareness + Intention + a mind full of less = Mindfulness.  When we step outside the ego’s circular patterns it creates in our minds, we can pause & bring a one-pointed focus on true center.  It’s that level of focus that we aspire to develop during every Sol Hot Yoga class.

When we arrive on our mats for our practice, when we are standing with svādharma (our purpose); then, we arrive at center.  From that point we can focus awareness our true intention.  Let your intention reside in these Divine Abodes and every moment can be a holiday to celebrate.  It is this type of intention that can send Happiness, Health, and Peace to others, which Buddha described in the Metta Sutta. It is this type of intention that Jesus shared with his disciple John, “the one He most loved.”

“A new testament I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34-35

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” – John 15:12-13

“This is my command: Love each other.” John 15:17

Perhaps you’ve noticed these words on the poster above our water fountain.  No need to wait for Mountain Pose! With your genuine mindfulness, each sip can be a practice of this sacred celebration.  Remember, what you are, not what your ego says you are.  You are an abundant & transcendent source of Love.  From that source, your svādharma becomes a practice of service & sharing through your own moving meditation: replace hatred with loving-kindness, replace jealousy with joy for others, replace fear with trust, and replace greed with generosity.

”When practicing with others, the mind becomes purified by cultivating Maitrī, Muditā, Karunā, and Upekshā.” (Yoga Sutra 1.33)

Set your intention & sign up for your next class!