Have you ever spent time and energy finding that perfect apartment or house for you to stay? Some place which you can call “home” and not just a house. Let us not forget that our real “Home” is our body, this is where “we” reside as a Being. In today’s hectic world we get so busy with life that we tend to take our body for granted, abuse it and then expect it to perform optimally to satisfy our never ending desires. The real journey of Self Love starts when we start at least appreciating if not loving our body. If you don’t like your home, your life becomes uncomfortable, right? Loving your body and feeling comfortable in it is like coming back to a safe, secure, cozy home.

Exercise for Day One:
Reflect on the topic of taking your body for granted and ask yourself if you are taking your body for granted and abusing or mistreating it. If yes, recognize and accept this fact and try to explore ways you can mend this state.
Meditation – Sit in a comfortable position with a straight spine. Close your eyes and play some soft music in the background if you want. For the next 20 minutes or so try to visualize your body as your HOME and how is it that you would make it beautiful, cozy and comfortable. Let your creative juices flow, enjoy the feeling as you see your body internally transformed into a “Home for your Being”.

Day 2

“I Love Me” exercise

Requirements - Paper, a pen and a bathroom sized large mirror.

Make sure you are undisturbed in a safe and secure space. On the piece of paper, draw a line vertically down the middle, thus making 2 parts on the paper.

On the first square write “Things I Like about Myself” and on the other side “Things I’d Like to work upon”.

Now, keep the paper and pen aside and look at yourself in the mirror. Quietly observe yourself. Study your body from your head to your toes. Start taking deep breaths, as you look yourself. Say to yourself “I love you”. Repeat it for a few times, making it more and more loving and personal.

After you have said this, pick up the pencil and paper and write down something that you like about yourself. Follow that with something that you’d like to change and work upon. Continue to alternate, making a list of about 5 likes and 5 things to change.

It will take a lot of courage to do this exercise, but it will also allow you to face all your fears. Try and be fearless. Some emotions might come up. Emotions like shame, disgust, sadness might cloud your mind. Acknowledge these emotions but do not get carried away by them. Just watch them from a distance.

After you have finished writing the points, look at yourself again and place your right hand on your left shoulder and left hand on your right shoulder, dip your head and give yourself a nice tight hug. Stay in this hug for as long as you feel comfortable. Watch how you feel and once again, repeat to yourself, “I love you”, “I am there for you”.

Day 3

“Me and the Nonjudgmental Nature”

Today we step out. After spending two days indoors I think today we should step out.

Most of the times the reason for our low self love is the view others have of us and what we think people perceive us as.

So today we step out and go somewhere where we wont be judged, and that is in the nature.

Take an hour off from your busy schedule, wear your walking shoes and just step out by yourself. Go somewhere quiet and peaceful, preferably in a park or so. Look around, look at the trees, look at the leaves (or may be snow on the branches) tune into the silence and joy around. Admire the way the nature receives you, openly, without judgement and notions.

Nature truly knows how to love… a tree lets anyone rest and relax under its branches, a thief or a prince all are alike when it comes to the shadow and shade. Love is given unconditionally by the tree.

Sit here for a while. Now, gently keep your left hand on your right hand and know that you are in company of your Self. Close your eyes and connect deeply with the love within and around. Absorb and recognize this loving that you sense, and let it fill your heart with a feeling of acceptance.

If the vast expanse of nature can love and accept you for what you are, then it is also possible for you to accept and love yourself for what you are.

Let this feeling of acceptance and Love register deeply in your mind and heart.

Day 4

“Being Grateful”

On the first two days we embraced our body, later we tried to accept ourselves without any judgment. Now, it’s time to count our blessings.

Being in state of low self esteem and low self love makes us myopic towards the good things in life. One of the best ways to stay balanced in the positive state of mind is to be Grateful, and this is exactly what we are going to do today.

Today’s exercises are simple, yet very effective and empowering.

1) Make a list of 5 things you are grateful for in your life. Things that give you strength and joy.
2) Meet in person, make a call or write an email to 3 people who you would like to thank and express your gratitude towards them for being there for you.
3) After you have done the above 2 exercises, sit for 15 minutes for your quiet time and go over the above two exercises in the mind. Recognize, accept and feel grateful for the people and experiences that you have had. Internalize this gratefulness and feel happy for the moments that have shaped you into a wonderful person that you ARE.

Day 5

“Forgive and be free”

The Heart wants to love the Self but it cannot love itself because it is filled with past regrets and feelings of being compromised.

How can we fill a glass which is already filled? We need to make space so something new can enter that space.

The same way, today we will cleanse the cup of our heart. Today we will try to at least forgive one person from our past, someone who still lives in our heart-mind complex for many years.

1) Sit in a quiet and secure place
2) Close your eyes and look in your memory.
3) Think of someone who you want to deeply forget.
4) Don’t try too hard, forgive the person who comes first in your mind.
5) Visualize that person, keep your left hand on your heart.
6) And with all honesty and sincerity, as you EXHALE say to yourself mentally “I deeply forgive you”
7) As you INHALE say to yourself mentally “I love myself”
8) Keep the breaths soft, slow and deep.
9) Repeat this exercise as much as you want, till it starts getting a texture of being mechanical or dishonest.
10) You can try to repeat the exercise many times in the day too.
11) What is important is not to identify with the limiting emotions that come up but to stay with the intent of forgiveness on the exhale and Love on the inhale.
12) I am sure at the end of these exercises you will feel a deep sense of lightness and satisfaction.

Forgiveness is not easy, but a deeper sense of letting go through forgiveness can be cultivated by repeated practice. The exhales will let go of the heaviness of the heart and the simultaneous inhales will fill Love in your heart.

Day 6

“I DESERVE IT”

On the sixth day of exploration and experimentation, we will treat ourselves :) We deserve the good things and the Love that the Universe has to offer, and today we are going to relish it WITHOUT guilt.

Today’s exercise is simple and I am sure for most of us it is the most enjoyable :)

1) Make a list of 2-3 things that you like to do, or eat, or shop or any other things that make you really, deeply feel joyful and happy.
2) Sit in a quiet and secure place, close your eyes. Remember what you have written on the piece of paper and visualize yourself experiencing , enjoying and relishing those 2-3 things.
3) Watch the emotions that may come up. Sometimes the mind might start questioning the intent , the purpose, or just start sending thoughts of you not deserving those good things. Whatever it is, just watch these emotions and every time a compromising thought comes in your mind, mentally repeat to yourself “I deserve the happiness, joy and Love that the Universe has to offer”.
4) After 10-15 minutes of this mental exercise, go ahead pamper yourself, manifest those joyful thought in action.
5) Enjoy and relish those things that you have planned with totality, sincerity and without any guilt.

Remember, as Yoga says, we all are Pure potential in nature, we just don’t know it as we are blinded by the limiting reality. Bit by bit we all can savor the flavors of unconditional Love, compassion and Bliss.

Why settle for less when you deserve the best, right ?

Day 7

“Meditate and Heal”

I wish to thank all of you for going on the journey of Self Love with us on the group. It has been such an amazing journey over the last six days, so many of you have given these methods a try and generated amazing feedback. I hope our journey of exploring Self Love does not end here and that it continuous to greater scales.

Today I would like to love you and leave you with a small guided meditation recorded during one of my workshops. It is uploaded on Youtube on Yogaprasad channel and can be accessed anytime when you feel like going inwards to heal yourself and love yourself.

Hope you enjoy the meditation. Remember that you are an amazing person and the reason that you are here in this world is to Love and to manifest the universal grace.

As part of the Yogaprasad Yoga Teacher’s Training and Self Development Immersion we decided to visit the local school in an isolated valley at the foothills of the Himalayas. Seeing those children was an emotional experience for all of us. Such innocent beings walking miles from their home to get educated in the hope of a brighter future that it can bring into their lives. We distributed some medical supplies and art materials, which the participants of the course had brought from their respective countries. The innocence of their smiles and the sense of wonder in the eyes of the little children struck a chord within our hearts. It is this young generation that we Yogis are seeing to inspire. Enough of the age old limitations that we have endured, this new generation should fly in their own freedom and bliss. This is exactly why the school visit was planned and it did plant a seed of motivation in the hearts of the aspiring Yoga teachers. This seed will be watered ceaselessly by them with sincere practice and dedicated effort towards refining their skills.

If the Yoga teachers have to become more than teacher, an inspiration, then they need to understand that their own Hearts are the only channel through which they can and should operate. Opening the heart and allowing to feel the compassion brings the “union” of yoga closer. Yoga can be taught by the mind but it is the heart that should motivate the teaching. All Masters of the past have expressed the need and importance of working through the Heart. It’s the heart that is the seat of our soul and it’s the same heart that can allow us to reach out to those in need of yoga with sincerity and open-mindedness.

Titibhasana

Titibhasana

Step-by-step

Start in a squatting position in which your stance less than the distance between your shoulders. Lower your trunk onto the legs, move the pelvis to the front. Now slowly straighten your legs, raise the pelvis up to knee height.
Move the left upper arm and shoulder away from the posterior left thigh above the knee, and rest the left hand flat on the ground, on the outside of the foot. Repeat on the right side.
Now slowly raise yourself. Push your hands into the ground, move your weight backwards. The inner thighs should be placed as high as possible.
Inhale and stretch and straighten the legs on the sides so that your pelvis remains in a high position and legs aligned parallel to the ground.
Lengthen your arms and raise your torso upwards by widening your shoulder blades apart.
Look ahead, and stay in the position for about 10 seconds or as much as your body allows you to, and then come out of the asana by exhaling and returning your feet to the ground.

Benefits

Stretches the back torso and inner groins.
Provides strength to the arms and wrists.
Tones and tightens the belly.
Enhances the overall sense of balance.
Calms the mind by relieving from tension, stress and anxiety.
Strengthens the wrist

Hanumanasana

Hanumanasana
This posture is dedicated to the Monkey God Hanuman, who is an epitome of strength of surrender. Physically this posture is an intense stretch of the thigh area.

Step-by-step

Kneel on the floor. Extend your right leg forward and bend your torso with an exhale so that both your hands are on the floor.
Slowly start sliding your right foot forward. As the front leg straightens, resume pressing the left knee back, and carefully descend the front of the left thigh and the back of the right leg (and the base of the pelvis) to the floor. Make sure the center of the right knee points directly up toward the ceiling.
Please make sure that the back leg does not extend to the side back. Extend the front leg by keeping it active and engaged.
If the hip doesn’t reach the floor then hold your body weight on your hands. If it reaches the floor join the hands together in prayer position.
Hold the position for 30 seconds to one minute depending on your comfort level. To come out, press your hands to the floor, turn the front leg out slightly, and slowly return the front heel and the back knee to their starting positions. Then reverse the legs and repeat for the same length of time.

The famous yoga guru, Shri. Pattabhi Jois, once said “practice, practice and everything is coming”. This one small sentence has probably launched a thousand yoga studios across the world. But, my thought is, are we reading the word “practice” in the right spirit? Do we all need to widen our definition of “practice” in the context of Yoga.

Probably the word “practice” has been literally translated from the Sanskrit word “Sadhana”.

Yoga is a science of gradual evolution towards our True nature of loving, empowered and energized Being. Following the methods of Yoga, in a wholesome sense over a period of time under the guidance of a teacher and being open to the grace is called Sadhana.

Asanas seem to be dominating the field of sadhana in recent years. People derive a great sense of joy and pride mastering asanas. It is very easy to get caught up refining the asanas for years and conveniently ignoring the field of psychological exploration. As we start practicing asanas our self awareness increases. We start understanding the ways of our body and it’s sensations. This awareness, if encouraged, broadens its field to the mind zone. Thus, if the asanas are practiced properly and under an able guide, they would definitely loosen up the dense subconscious tendencies of our mind, which will result in some deeper psychological issues to surface. This is when an honest and sincere review of the issues that come up should be conducted. This is a part of the process of refinement (sadhana) according to Hatha Yoga.

This refinement or transformation happens gradually and subtly. If the Yogi is involved “unconsciously” or mechanically in the sadhana there is a danger of getting “stuck”, leading to frustration, competition and in the end dropping out of the path. In fact somewhere deep down within we know there are skeletons in our mental closet and that’s why for years we “entertain” ourselves with the asana practice in order to avoid facing the fears within, which start coming up as we venture into exploring the mind.

This is a major issue in many yoga enthusiasts.

Here are some tips to help us avoid this trap:

• The Yoga sadhana has the inherent power to gradually take you from feeling of limitedness of body-mind complex to the final stage of identification with the True Self. That is why it is of at most importance to have a wider view of sadhana, wider in the sense of the sadhana being the means to liberation of body-mind complex and not just muscular stretches.
• Be patient, because on spiritual path it is not about how fast you get there.
• Have faith in Yoga, the Guru, and your own self effort.
• Since yoga is practiced also in social set ups like yoga studios etc, it is natural that the mind would start competing. Therefore it is necessary to remember that yoga is the process of “individual” refinement. So just keep your eyes on your own sadhana and do not get confused or distracted by others sadhana.
• It would not be wrong on my part if I said that Sadhana is a process of trade. Be sure to give something to receive something, this is how energy is transformed and karmas are balanced. That’s why the process of sadhana has also been called as a Yajna or a sacrifice. The Yogi voluntarily offers his/her negatives into the fire (tapas) of his self effort and this is balanced by the reward of feeling and being liberated.
• Finally, look at Sadhana-self exploration with joy and a sense of wonderment. It is beautiful how life brings us exactly the things that we need to learn. Till we learn, the experiences keep coming again and again. This is the basis of the Divine plan for us. In our myopia we just don’t see it. Every hardship is nothing but freedom in disguise. If we view life in this way, life in itself becomes a Sadhana.

It feels nice to be back with you on the site. It has been a whirlwind tour of 12 weeks across 11 countries, and what a tour it was! If I can sum up my experience in one word I would say “awakening”. Yes, the world is waking up. There is a wave of personal uprising, which is spinning off into people’s movement.

One of the reasons why my tours are such a huge learning experience for me is because of the local flavor. Which so ever country I visit, I chose to live with the locals, and experience their company, culture, cuisine and chaos. Superficially it looks like every country in itself is in some or other crisis and that at the base level humans are not happy. If we don’t look deep enough we feel as if the society as a whole has lost all options and is succumbing under the pressure of future and is dragged down by the guilt of past.

But amidst this gloomy overview I have seen a light of hope, a spark still burning, little movement of “awakening”. People across the world have started asking questions, squeezing out of comfort zones and pushing against the walls of their limiting belief systems. It is no more about accepting things hands down in hopelessness, the time for action has come, welcome.

The unrest as such is a movement towards stabilization of not only some countries but also the whole humanity. As our Yogi ancestors would have told us, the Earth is one country and all of humanity is its citizens.

Not just in Yoga philosophy but this has been a common wisdom across ages. One of my favorite Roman philosopher Seneca wrote that there are two kinds of citizenship. About one of them he said “terminus civitatis nostrae cum sole metimur” (we measure the boundaries of our citizenship by the path of the sun) and about the other he describes as “cui nos adscripsit condicio nascendi” (the one assigned to us by an accident of birth). If we want to create a more peaceful world, all of us in every country should come together and focus on the first type of citizenship. And this is what I see happening now. With internet technology closing in the divides between countries and social networking sites becoming the sanctums of solidarity, that little spark has started growing into a flame of freedom, freedom from limited view of life, humanity and our potential to be good and do good.

How can Yoga help us kindle this flame of freedom that is sweeping across the world? First of all it is important to understand the basis of yoga which is Yoga is a science of conscious living and realizing our true nature, which is Love and freedom. If we remind ourselves to work with this ideology and ground ourselves in this belief the future that we will create will have an inherent strength.

Secondly, we all need to take a big conscious step towards personal responsibility. It’s high time we humans start becoming responsible for our own life and the life of humanity in general. Each action put forth as an individual, corporation or a country should have some accountability. This is not just in case of political organizations but also the corporate Goliaths who have been taking human society on a mindlessly manipulative spree. When a person understands the implications of his/her own actions and acts responsibly, the society as a whole, since it is made up of individuals will develop a common consciousness. That is when we will see the humanity moving towards a common goal, a “summum bonam” as they say.

And last but not the least, let us all look at each other as “human beings” first. Beyond the color and the race the same red blood flows in our veins, beyond the country and commerce we all breath the same air. Yes, it is hard because we have been conditioned by society over years to segregate each other on basis of these hollow classifications, but it’s now time to look beyond it. We all have been blessed with a conscious mind, and the will to consciously choose. So, let this be the moment in which the whole humanity chooses as One. The only way we can manage this is by consciously reminding ourselves that we are all in our own stages of personal development, and not to be judgmental and prejudiced on basis of the above.

This revolution that has taken the globe in its stride will simmer with us recognizing the fire of freedom within and then letting it light a few fires around in our immediate family and neighborhood. Let us all contribute our own part in this process by being the change that we want to see.

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