My Ayurvedic yoga course is coming to its end soon.
I love this class, because thanks to the continuous feedback, this has been a really intense learning process for me. The enthusiasm and openness of the participants gave me a powerful source of motivation week after week. It is wonderful to see how my students started to understand and master the workings of their body and mind and how they learned to notice the interconnectedness of the two.
Throughout the course, very provocatively, my aim is to show people how the different exercises affect them. Here I mean not only the actual impact of the asana, but also that special atmosphere, the quality and nature of the instruction given that so significantly shape the feel of the class. In elementary school, all of us has experienced already that some teacher, some teaching style proved to be more suitable or understandable for us personally, while others could never get close to our heart (or not even our ears). Ayurveda helped me to understand why it is like that. Everything can be understood through the five elements and the qualities they represent. Therefore I made these five major qualities the main method of measurement in my life, they are my guidelines, and that is how I observe and analyze my inner occurrences and their physical manifestation. If there is any imbalance, I am again using the five elements to restore harmony.
Ayurveda is a lifestyle and health prevention system for the common man. You don’t need to be an ascetic, not even a yogi to implement its recommendations in your daily life. This is not the goal. Ayurveda is the “Science of Life”, and as such it is mainly the method of disease prevention and healing. It puts more emphasis on “this life” and the worldly illnesses as problems of body and mind, our physical reality. Of course, on its highest level, Ayurveda also leads to the elevation of the soul and our union with our true Divine Self, but on its primary levels it is more “down to earth” than yoga. Yoga is fundamentally a spiritual journey, a Sadhana that from the first steps till the last aims at going beyond the body and mind so that the practitioner can get into the realm of the soul. All physical exercises, breathing exercises and kriyas (purifications) are designed to lead the yogi physically and mentally to a state where undisturbed meditation can occur. The main focus is meditation and through that to gain indirect knowledge about the great truth of the Universe. Ayurveda on the other hand is more concerned with “treatment”, and this is also reflected in its Sanskrit name, Chikitsa meaning treatment. It pays more attention by definition to the ailments of the physical body. Probably, that is why yoga from an ayurvedic perspective (ayurvedic yoga) is more suitable for the modern man, because it helps to better understand what is done and why exactly? It helps to ease pain and treats common illnesses without asking the practitioner to engage himself in higher spiritual practices which require a different attitude, determination, renunciation, self-discipline and motivation.
And Ayurvedic yoga works, not just well…pretty well. For me it was amazing to listen to the stories of my students week after week. For example, after the Kapha balancing class, my otherwise very motivated PItta students got completely disturbed (of course, since this was absolutely not suited to their needs), but they loved the Pitta pacifying sequence. One of the Kapha type girls, who by nature did not like stronger backbends and faster paced yoga styles, finally loved the Kapha class and got energized and inspired. But probably my greatest joy is that a girl suffering from a serious Vata imbalance and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), got calmer and stronger, her bloated belly started to disappear and her digestive functions seem to have improved significantly by the end of the course. Honestly, at the beginning, she was exactly the one who “freaked me out” as she told me upfront after the first class that she came to me because she wanted to be healed. But see the miracle: she is getting there thanks to Ayurveda (and maybe a little me:).
All this is such a great pleasure for me. Ayurveda is truly a science that works and its healing power is considerable.
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