Yoga! Day 10,11, & 12!

There is a vast inner terrain that we can only truly be accessed when
we quiet the external world and strive to look inward. This is
especially true in NYC where we are constantly bombarded by external
stimuli 99.9% of the time. We took a spontaneous trip to the Catskills
for some non-asanaic yoga-ing this weekend. So far, This program has
done a great job of teaching me how to relinquish all expectations,
which is basically what we had to do on the trip. It was really a blind
act of trust. We stayed at a beautiful house up in the mountains,
surrounded by nature, a complete contrast to the NYC that is home to so
many of us and to our beautiful Yoga to the People abode. On Friday, we
settled in and gotacquainted with our surroundings and the wilderness
that would serve as the backdrop for Saturday's solitude. Saturday, we
went into silence.

silence really is a beautiful thing when
you pursue it with the right intentions. Greg reminded us that there is
a difference between being silence and being in silence. There is a
difference between not talking and not allowing our minds to chatter
away. Being silence is a pursuit of the latter. Being silent, I
discovered, came naturally to me. I live a pretty meditative lifestyle
during the school (on the train, at my internship , in yoga) so I'm used
to solitude. But "being silence" is something that I struggled with. My
mind is constantly chattering away, worrying about people or things in
my life, constantly making plans. My mind is constantly on the go.
Being silence means letting go of all this constantly chatter, ofsurrendering it all in exchange for that beautiful realm of inner quiet that is so beautiful once you realize it is there.

Undoubtedly,
the most profound parts of the weekend for me were our nature walks. On
the first one, Greg had us line up with our eyes closed, hold on to the
person in front of us, and allow them to guide us up the path. When we
got to the top, we opened our eyes and discovered an incredible view of
the town (or city? I don't know how much land is spanned) below. There
were acres andacres of farmland and roads and little cars that looked
like they were the size of ants crawling along. When you looked to
either side, you could tell that it went on infinitely. It was just one
little, tiny piece of land in the vast expanse. One little, tiny
glimpse of the universe,and everything about it was so miraculously
beautiful.

This journey up the hill with our eyes closed that
ended at this beautiful mountain ledge was symbolic of our journey into
silence. Our 24-hour journey into silence was just one tiny, little
glimpse of the vast inner terrain that lies beneath and beyond the
external reality that we so often spend our days wading in. We can only
really know ourselves when we seek to look inward and expect the
unexpected. Then we can soar to great heightsnd see glimpses of the eternal, of reality as it exists within rather than without.

Our silent journey taught me a thing or two about the Koshas
that Michel introduced us to. These are the 5 layers of our being that
are thought to cover our true self (Atman in Sanskrit); physical,pranamaya
(breath...life force), mental, wisdom, and then bliss. In yoga, and in
silence, we strive to surrender our physical wants and desires and
listen to our breath in hopes that we can silence our minds and truly
know so that we might experience the bliss of accessing this true self
that lies beneath these sheaths. Being silent was a step towards
accessing this true self. Just being, and just being in nature was
glorious. Someone wrote of the spontaneous empathy thatresulted from
being thrust into a situation where we couldn't express ourselves with
words. This was the most beautiful part of the process; all these
different people coming together from all walks of life in an exercise
in survival and togetherness.

In love,
Leila