ESOTERIC YOGA
  • Home
  • About
    • Founder
    • History of Yoga
    • Classes & Programs
    • Yoga Training
  • Esoteric Yoga
    • Esoteric Yoga
    • Sitting Yoga
    • The Purpose of Esoteric Yoga
    • Stillness
    • Science of Movement
  • Find a class
    • Classes & Presenters
    • Yoga Classes and Programs
  • Testimonials
  • Articles
    • Video & Audio
  • FAQ's
  • Contact

Yoga Articles

Integrating Yoga into our Everyday Living

From Distraction to Connection with Esoteric Yoga

13/5/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
I have had many phases in my life and one that stands out was my spiritual phase. It was at a time in my life when it felt like I was missing something and I started looking for ways to ‘find myself’. I now know that I was searching from my head, rather from within myself, where the true answers can be found.
During this time I was inspired to do yoga.
I thought that this was a very ‘spiritual’ thing to do and that it would therefore help me find myself.

Being a fanatic, straight from the start I was sitting on a yoga mat four times a week in the basement of this little yoga studio in Amsterdam. I lost weight, made unnatural breathing noises, got more muscles and felt more energized. The anxiety and feeling of missing something stayed, but then there was no attention on those things on the mat. I tried many different yoga styles, had a yoga flirt here and there, learned how to stand on my head and even regularly took my yoga enthusiasm to India, where I would often stay. I was very much focused on my body, and how my ability to touch my toes and how long I could endure a certain posture. I loved to watch others and compare my yoga abilities.

I was alone on my mat, but in my head I was busy. I was not what you would describe as present in the moment. The anxiety and feeling of missing something was still there, so the search for myself continued. I went to various different yoga styles in this search: hot yoga, slow yoga and even slower yoga, until one day I got the honest realisation – I was using yoga as a distraction.

After many years of searching in this ‘spiritual yoga phase’ I was still suffering from anxiety, I did not accept myself and I still had the feeling that I was missing something. I did have a very tight and fit body and could do many of the yoga postures with ease, but as soon as I got off my yoga mat, I was all over the place, and mostly busy with the next thing, unable to stay present.

I started to question the yoga I was doing. Isn’t yoga about union, being one with yourself, in every moment of the day? Isn’t yoga about being in connection with your body and about embracing the inner stillness, to bring that into the world? Why did I not feel like that, even though I was doing so much yoga? Most of the days I woke up feeling anxious, anything but still, or present in my body.

Over the last few years I have learnt that yoga is not something you do, but in fact what you live. Yoga for me now has nothing to do with a yoga mat, a sauna, India, downward dog or going on a retreat. And no, it also has nothing to do with if and for how long I can stand on my head. Yoga is in every moment of the day and this is what I am now practicing.

Currently I am doing an online Esoteric Yoga class once a week, while I am laying on my couch at home with many pillows and blankets. During this hour I am laying down and sitting up, and am hardly doing anything else.
It is not about the doing, but about my quality of being.
When I started Esoteric yoga, I was confronted with deep levels of anxiety within me. I found the classes extremely boring, wanted to run away, thought the presenter was very irritating and I was dying for some action. I could not be with myself for one hour and needed distraction to avoid what I was feeling in the present moment.

Nowadays, I am doing yoga every day, with ups and downs. I am doing yoga without a mat, but right here while sitting in my chair writing this article. Or while I am cooking, talking with somebody, walking to work or getting into bed. Then I am in stillness and with myself. Nobody is watching, there is no one to compare myself with, no challenging postures, no music, no incense, nothing to achieve and with a stomach that is slightly more round, because more and more I am not nervously holding my belly in. I feel less anxious and the feeling of missing something has diminished.

When I am in yoga (in union with me), there is actually nothing to miss and nothing to be anxious about.
 

Author: Mariette Reineke
Photographer: Geraldine Burrell
2 Comments
Peta Lehane
19/8/2017 05:04:34 pm

Hi Mariette, I love when you say yoga is not something you do but what you live. Bringing yoga, the true union of being with me, into my day to day life has been an exquisite journey ever since I began to practise Esoteric Yoga. Reconnecting to that innermost place of stillness during a session, then naturally expands into my every-thing. It has given me that sense of purpose and completeness in my life that I, too, had been searching for. And it was within me the whole time.

Reply
Amparo Lorente Cháfer
19/11/2017 04:40:05 pm

I find is key what you say here Mariette: "It is not about the doing, but about my quality of being."
It's very easy to get lost identifying ourselves with what we do instead of what we are. What most supports me from Esoteric Yoga is the awareness I bring to my movements during the session and the rest of the day. I achieve a stillness in which I recognize myself, not because of the movements itself, but by the quality in which I move. There is full respect by what I feel and how I feel to move and then I'm honouring myself in those moments. This experience establishes a new marker for me during the session that accompanyes me during the day, as a reminder that I can continue honouring me everytime and everywhere, no matter what I do... just for being me.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    The authors of the articles on this site are written by practitioners and students of Esoteric Yoga.

    Enjoy feeling the embodiment of a yoga modality that is deeply appreciated for the richness that it brings to ones everyday living.

    For further reading about Esoteric Yoga please also visit: https://www.unimedliving.com/yoga

    Archives

    September 2021
    July 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Picture
"Esoteric Yoga develops the quality
that becomes the movement
that you will magnify throughout your body."
Serge Benhayon
STAY CONNECTED
CONTACT US

© COPYRIGHT 2016. SERGE BENHAYON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

The material on this website is based upon the principles of The Ageless Wisdom which offers an energetic understanding of life. Any references to science are references to energetic science as presented by the Ageless Wisdom, and not to evidence-based science in mankind’s modern era. Any references to specific aspects of Medicine are to illustrate the relevance of energetic wisdom, as presented by the Ageless Wisdom, in the interplay of bodily illness and disease rather than contradicting the current theories of disease causation or in any way to replace epidemiology. The principles conveyed on this website are philosophical and religious, and thus are not verified within the evidence-based rationales and critical appraisal process of evidence-based science including CONSORT2010 compliant double blind randomised controlled trials. The presentations and teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine do not diagnose, treat, prevent or offer any therapeutic cure to any disease or illness; they are complementary-to-medicine and never a replacement of or alternative to conventional medicine. If you have any question or concern about the cause, diagnosis, prevention or treatment of any disease or illness, you should consult a registered medical practitioner.
  • Home
  • About
    • Founder
    • History of Yoga
    • Classes & Programs
    • Yoga Training
  • Esoteric Yoga
    • Esoteric Yoga
    • Sitting Yoga
    • The Purpose of Esoteric Yoga
    • Stillness
    • Science of Movement
  • Find a class
    • Classes & Presenters
    • Yoga Classes and Programs
  • Testimonials
  • Articles
    • Video & Audio
  • FAQ's
  • Contact