How To Look Better Naked And Get The Keys To The Universe
How many topics can a blogger write about yoga? When it comes to the physical benefits of the practice there seems to be only one category that sums it up. Looking better naked. Somehow that became the goal. Now, who are we aiming to look better than? Are we striving to look better than our current self or someone else? Both options take us far away from the present moment, where everything is happening.
I get the whole physical benefits of yoga is awesome thing. It's useful to live in a healthy, vibrant, functioning body. A regular yoga practice along with healthy life choices, and a good deal of self-respect and personal growth, can take you there. But the truth is, there is no "there." Once you get there, it turns into here, so why not enjoy being here right now?
If you are fixated about being there, you'll miss out on here, and never get there anyway. Life has a way of playing these tricks on us as a test and a challenge to wake up and live our lives. Physical yoga shows us there is always a pose that we can't do, so get over it already. There is nowhere to go. You're already here. Now that doesn't mean you don't have to try. Laziness will also keep you knocked out of the moment. Awareness guides us back in. Use what you need. Relax what you don't. Give away the rest to the Salvation Army.
Ram Dass says, "The most exquisite paradox: As soon as you give it all up you can have it all."
We have the knowledge and intuition to maintain health, but we ignore it by taking ourselves out of the present. We plan meal times instead of eating when we are hungry. We go on diets instead of living healthy. We have deferred life plans instead of choosing and doing our passion.
Our world encourages us to detach from the moment, put ourselves down, and live for something other than where we are right now. We're taught that it's selfish, irresponsible to live in the moment, when the truth is it's the only responsible thing to do for ourselves, the people around us, and even our futures. We're also taught that aging is terrible, and we must do everything to combat the process in fear of being discarded and losing our power.
It's true the practice of yoga can make you look and feel younger than your years. A healthy lifestyle earns you a vibrant appearance and a body filled with energy. More interestingly the practice of yoga can bring us, possibly, maybe, with a lot of work, to conscious aging. Being in the moment, instead of attempting to cheat the moments and relish in the past, can free us from our unnecessary worries, concerns and fears about our mortality. We've all had at least glimpses of this, for however short or long they've lasted. We realize the awesomeness of the universe, the richness of our being, and our ability to connect with people on a soul level. Once we realize that level of being alive exists, why would we go back to anything else? Because it's crazy hard and almost impossible to maintain a lifetime in awareness, especially when we have lives, families, jobs, and ambitions...but it's possible and worth the try.
I was on a retreat about a year ago, and after a couple days of being in nature, practicing yoga, eating wholesome food made with love and awareness, and then actually settling into what I was experiencing, I saw something amazing. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and iridescent dotted lines started to form and connect everything that was in my range of vision. The lines were vibrant and pulsating and very real. They looked like laser beams. I'm not sure how long I was seeing this but the moment when I noticed myself noticing that I was seeing something unusual and special they started to fade. I tried to will them back, and they faded completely. I'm convinced the formula for the flux capacitor was revealing itself to me so I could phone in the 4th installment of Back to the Future. The moment of recognition that something is happening different from what we think or expect is the moment the inner-workings of the universe say goodbye for now.
When I was a little kid I saw similar things. I saw very bright colors, brighter than is what in our color spectrum and richer than neon, dance in lines and waves around my room. I saw them every night when I went to sleep. The moment my light was turned off, darkness would roll in and my own personal light show of the universe began. It was even different every night. How kind of the universe to offer me diversity in my visions. I never second guessed it and I always knew it would be there waiting for me. I suppose the colors stopped visiting around the time I got busy planning moments that hadn't happened yet. Every once in a while, maybe after an inspiring day or sometimes when I just get caught off guard, the colors pay me a visit again.
We all have these experiences, however rare or frequent. The cool thing is the universe is always there, ready to reveal itself to us and show us how amazing we truly are, if only we are in the moment.
Living in the moment frees us from our ideas about our selves, our bodies, and what we think our lives should be. Everything that exists and everything we need is right here with us right now. We can become un-concerned with what we have and don't have and be our best and most present self fully right where we are. When we can view life in the present as a series of experiences and amazing moments, instead of just steps that get us somewhere else, the range of possibility expands beyond what we think our limitations are or should be.
Follow Tara Stiles on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tarastiles
Sadie Nardini: Your Yoga Poses Aren't 5,000 Years Old: A New Perspective on "Old" Yoga
Only when we let go of the belief that yoga, or anything for that matter, must remain static in order to be pure, are we free to work together to create our most life-enhancing future
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This is an interesting blog - in that you quote Guru Ram Dass, who was a great spiritual Mystic but certainly not a yogi as we perceive them to be in the world today. In the old days, the practice of Yoga was so difficult and dangerous that it required a Teacher to instruct the student - as many dangers lie within when practiced alone. In today's world - no matter the hype - Yoga exercise is great for a healthy body and that too helps us to feel better about ourselves. Much has been written on this subject. However, no matter how great yoga exercises can be - they don't develop our inner progress and awareness, nor can they help us at the moment of passing, nor can they help us to achieve self realization and God realization.
I like what you said about living in the present. Yes, the present that we are experiencing is the past we created via thought and deed. The present we are living in thought and deed becomes the future, and on and on. It has been said that we are what we think, i.e. thoughts are things. All resides within the consciousness of man. It was a misleading title but a nice post.
Attila Honey
AttilatheHoney.com
as a woman moving through midlife, and a teacher of all this good stuff for more than 20 years, i felt all i had known, experienced, and became, was lost. i forgot about "being in the moment"...it was and is like i have amnesia to the spiritual being i was and how i was so able to be present in ways most were not. now i feel like i am my own student. your article awakened me as i now will move to my my mat to meditate and do some re-inspired yoga. thank you.
Hold the phone, here. I thought "living for the moment" was what got our culture in the mess it's in, now?
The future doesn't take care of itself - it never has. The past is gone, the present is only a fleeting moment, and the future is the only thing coming.
I'm not so much into lookin' good naked, as I am into gettin' a good look at naked women. ;-D
Regardless of exercise or yoga there are very few people who look great naked. Have you forgotten about moles, warts, hairy people and other things better left covered. Exercise for better health but keep your clothes on.
Being in the moment IS Yoga.
Visions are a mere distraction.
The yogic exercises that pass for yoga in the west have about as much to do with Yoga as Christmas shopping has to do with Jesus.
Happier since I stopped "shoulding" on myself.
I've always believed that the more time you spend naked, the more care you take of what can be seen. simple logic.
Patanjali's Yoga Sutra outlines a quite rational approach to disciplining the mind/body to live a life of logic, self-control, and ethical behaviour. As such, I find that it is perhaps our best hope for avoiding self-destruction as a species. Yoga addresses our fundamental flaws in a way that politics and common religions cannot. Without learning to eliminate greed and lust for what we cannot or should not have, anger and hatred, ignorance and deluded thinking, our technological prowess will be our undoing.
I agree
You know, it gives me pause, and maybe some optimism when an article with "naked" in the title gets only 85 comments, while "Baucus, Conrad Cave To Joe Wilson On Health Care..." gets nearly 14,000. Are we growing up?
If the title of this post came out in India guess what?. Many will take it literally. Naked Ascetics do exist in India since more than two thousand years ago. No joke. There are still around but confined to certain places.
On a more serious note don't be attached to your experience MsTara, this type of experience tend to make people more spiritual. Get on with your life, by your age now you would have experienced many thorn amnd roses in your life perhaps these experiences are more important for you to reflect and learn form. In the end peace of heart and peace of mind is better than anything. As for fleeting happiness enjoy it like a good glass of wind while in your hand. Let go of it when the glass is empty.
The first way to look better naked, is changing your interpretation of the word "good". What is good, what is beautiful, what is sensual. If we can look at ourselves with more love, yes, at ourselves with more love, then we can appreciate us for who we are as individuals, as unique creations, and appreciate the beauty which we have been given. As we appreciate ourselves more, we have more harmony with who we are and are willing to sharpen the edges. There is too much ugly in the world for us to beat ourselves up......
We really need a science and technology section on the Huffington post.
I second this suggestion.
Agreed.
HP Science & Technology section - that get's my vote too.
good suggestion.
Great idea.
This obsession with "looking good naked" is dangerous. For the vast majority of Americans, yoga is not to be undertaken lightly, and perhaps not at all. Back in my 30's I lost consciousness during a stretch and wound up with five stitches in my chin -- and that was after weeks of training at one of the top schools in NYC. The stories of stroke victims and orthopedic cases are legion -- an ER nurse with about 30 years experience once told me that "headstand strokes" had become a legend of pathology in NYC ER's.
You don't need a gorgeous looking body. You need a good-feeling body, and the looks will take care of themselves. Seek health first, and image will follow. Put the obsession with how you look naked first, and you are playing with fire in a kerosene factory.
If you do choose hathayoga, be very careful about the culture you find yourself in. There are dangers inherent in the structure of the practice. Instructors are often very advanced, and often very young; a dangerous combination, since they forget that they're dealing with office-worker women obsessed with their appearances and football-watching men obsessed with the women who typically predominate in the classes. And if someone tries to get you started on manipulating your kundalini currents, turn around and run. And remember always, your body wants exercise, not punishment. Listen very, very carefully to it, and it will tell you the difference.
May all be true, BUT the long slow deep breathing will do wonders for your circulation - no weird poses required.
I like the idea of yoga, but I know two yoga instructors with long-term (permanent?) injuries that they attribute to, "Doing an unconscious pose."
By unconscious, of course, they mean without 100% attention to the limitations of their body in that moment in time.
Who has that kind of attention after a long, stressful work day?
We're not yogis, we're Americans trying to "have it all" and it seems that these "unconscious" injuries are more common in yoga studios than yoga aficionados like to admit. I will be taking yoga in future but it will always be a "yoga for bad backs" or "yoga for older folks" taught by instructors in their 50's or 60's, never the "beginning yoga" classes taught by a 23-year-old Gumby.
My last instructor in SoCal was a former champion surfer gal in her late 20's and she just about killed me. Never again.
Whatever. If you think doing Yoga is a greater risk than being the typical obese American than you are deluded.
How...charming.
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