Sweat Lodge Ceremony July 1, 2009
Posted by admin in : Spiritual Growth Tags:expectations, Intentions, judgments, Native American, purification, Summer Solstice, Sweat Lodge , 1 comment so farI attended my 3rd sweat lodge purification ceremony on the Saturday before Summer Solstice. I felt the turn of the season was a good time to do it, as sweats are a traditional Native American ceremony designed to purify the mind, body, and spirit. They help bring you to a place of balance within yourself and are a great way to find communion with Mother Nature.
One of the purposes of attending a sweat is for spiritual and emotional healing and growth so typically a person will fast for 24 hours preceding the sweat as a means to prepare the body for purification. While you physically prepare the body, you also prepare the mental and spiritual bodies by praying and setting intentions, as lodges are a healthy way to release baggage and a safe haven to seek guidance from spirit.
Rituals and traditions vary so each ceremony is a little different depending upon who leads it. The first two experiences were with the same guy so I was a bit disappointed when I found out he wasn’t running the 3rd, but trusted everything was in divine order and knew either way I would get whatever I needed. Out of curiosity, I asked him why he wasn’t leading and he told me his energy was wrapped up in something else and he didn’t want to perform the ritual unless he was fully present and committed to the journey of everyone involved so he entrusted the ceremony to a respected friend.
Another thing I didn’t expect were children to participate and although it was beautiful to expose little beings to something so spiritually enriching, their energy was very distracting because they couldn’t take the heat or smoke. They were in and out quite a bit and I could hear them moving about every time they stepped out for some fresh air. There were also quite a few people who were new so the heat was a little much for them. In honor of the children and those who were sweating for the first time, the lodge leader decided to leave the flap open for the last two rounds.
The reason the lodge was kept dark was because it represented the womb. The darkness was a symbol of human ignorance before the great awakening of spirit. It created a safe place for people to voice their prayers as the dark put aside all physical, spiritual and cultural differences. Since it wasn’t dark inside, I didn’t feel completely safe to recite my prayers and I found myself silently judging the distractions from the children and for the differences in how the ceremony was being run. I didn’t like the thoughts that were sub-consciously surfacing or how insensitive I was being towards the people I was supposed to love. What happened to the “one” mentality and who was I to judge and where was my compassion?
I sat with this for a couple days and finally realized spirit was just answering my prayers. Sweat lodges are known for bringing issues to light and one of my intentions for that evening was to release myself from the steady stream of unyielding judgments that ran through my sub-conscious. All the irritations I was feeling had deep meaning, as they made me realize what I still needed to work on. The spiritual journey isn’t always as we expect so it’s important to be open because you never know when someone or something is going to cross your path for the purposes of awakening your consciousness.
Yoga Teacher Training June 25, 2008
Posted by admin in : Yoga Tags:balance, Eight Limbs of Yoga, meditate, Pantanjali, pranayama, purification, transformation, yoga teacher training , 3comments
Yoga Teacher Training is a remarkable journey! I graduated the 200 hour course at Peachtree Yoga Center in February 2008 and then went directly in to the Advanced Teacher Training program. Combined, these courses literally revolutionized the way I live. At first, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to get out of it, but I knew intuitively it was something I needed to do.
I went in thinking I knew who I was, but found out there was a completely different person beneath all the layers of memories, experiences and influences programmed from the past. I spent my whole life reacting to life and then suffering from the consequences of my reactions. My mind defined me according to my career, material possessions, relationships, social status, and other things that lived outside of me (having nothing to do with “me”).
Teaching Training explored not just the physical, but the emotional, the mental, and the energetic body. We were given the proper tools to get in and change old self-defeating thought patterns and emotional programming. This purification led me to a place of stillness and balance. I didn’t realize the importance of Pantanjali’s 8 limbs of yoga until I took the course and was taught the value of incorporating these principals of moral conduct in to my everyday life. It wasn’t just about the physical practice or learning how to teach the poses. It was about being ethical and having integrity and living life from a place of authenticity. It was about having self-discipline and detaching from the external world and the roles we play . It was about breathing and cultivating a sense of internal awareness of who we are beyond the labels and material possessions. It was about concentration and meditation. It was about enlightenment being a journey and not a destination.
It was about finding a delicate balance of effort and inertia. I spent years trying to achieve a place of equanimity where the lows weren’t so low and the highs weren’t so high, but it wasn’t until teacher training that I learned how to achieve a place of stillness amongst the activity of every day life. I didn’t want to become a monk and go live in the mountains and meditate. I wanted to live every day life with every day people without being attached or having expectations or letting the world’s suffering affect me. I wanted to experience life from a place of peace. I wanted to dance with life and breathe in to existence without feeling fear or anger for all the ignorance.
The 8 limbs helped me understand why balance was so important and why asanas on their own couldn’t bring a state of equanimity. It was an enriching and profound discovery that led me to adopt these principals personally and professionally. The mediation and pranayama played a huge component in my transformation. By use of a mantra I was able to empower myself to go beyond the ensuing thoughts. I was able to drop in to a place of silence where I experienced an eternal freedom. I found a place of stillness where there was infinite possibilities and untold wisdom. Once you know who you are the world opens up to you…the sky’s the limit. The world becomes yours because you realize you are the world and the world is you…there is no separation of self and the whole…there is no longer an ”I.” It’s about union…the divine whole of all the individual counterparts that make up the universe.
When you reach this place, which is your true essential nature, everything in your life changes. Your relationships improve because you finally have the ability to communicate from a place of truth and truth is always about love…loving yourself and the world in which we live. It makes you a better teacher because you are practicing what you teach.
I will be forever in debt and utterly grateful to my divine teachers at Peachtree. Teacher Training gave me a safe space to do the work I needed to grow and open my eyes to something far greater than anything I ever expected. I weaved myself a little cocoon where I went deep within myself and flew out a beautiful radiant butterfly who was finally free. Peachtree is the Mother Tree and Graham and Ursula are the inner being of that tree. They are the soul of the studio and they speak the truth…they live the truth…they are the truth. They truly get it and they dedicate their lives unselfishly to helping others find their own truth…their internal light…the light that shines out from within.