AERIANE COHEN

Letting go is the hardest asana. 

This post I am dedicating to yoga, but yoga of the mind. Why «but» and not just «and»? 

In all these years of growing and growing and even more growing popularity of Yoga, there is one
big misconception about this field, and I am not speaking just about this city/country or that, I am
speaking about general yoga community worldwide. People find it easier to do physical asanas and miss other parts of the deal. It is like this «all-over-internet» - My diet is vegetable juice for breakfast, salad for lunch, light dinner and box of Oreo's in the night. We tend to start from so far away without fully understanding the root of the teaching of yoga and missing the most important part, the root of all problems, which as far as I am concerned is our Mind. I was «yoging» my body for about 15 years and was jumping all around the core, flirting with truth and with myself. I can compare that to trying open the door using not the handle, but the door's hinges. Basically, you do can make it happen but how much more energy and time it will take. And yet that's in my opinion we all are doing on all sorts of physical yoga lessons and retreats. We are like boiling pots of all sorts of emotions. We are carrying it with us and trying to calm it down, spill it, burn ourselves and others and willingly and diligently keep doing it on and on again and again. After all these years of feeding my «yoga teacher» ego with the ability of complete the most complex and advanced asanas and show it off to the world, I have noticed that some blind spots all over my body were staying numb and unstretched no matter what. Plus my migraines increased their presence in my life to the level that I could not function properly anymore. All of that literally just had pushed me to the corner and did not leave me any chance but decide to devote 10 days of life to Meditation Retreat. And at that moment I could hardly imagine myself sitting in meditation without the ability to speak, to write, to draw. But I decided to give it a try. I have found Vipassana meditation centre near New York and full of doubts went there having it in my mind as last chance to figure out health issues. Here you can read about my first Vipassana 10-day course by Goenka experience.

On a year number «2» of my mornings and evenings Vipassana meditation experience, I am upgrading the previous article. I cannot say it was easy to maintain the practice, and I cannot say I became a perfect meditator, I cannot say meditation always brings you happiness and liberation, in fact, they are pretty rare guests of mine. I gained the moment where my migraines disappeared and my productivity got to the desired level and….. Well, I, Myself and My Big Ego decided that there is no necessity in meditation anymore. And wow-such-a-surprise, in less than a month migraines came back to reign. It was hard to get back on track and year later after my first Vipassana I went for the second round. The experience as I understand changes significantly with each time, as everything in our world has a tendency to change. And so my concept of the whole system got into some changes.

First, I now see myself as sort of instrument. Let's say Piano, as I was playing the piano back in childhood. Before making any sound, it has to get tuned. Otherwise, even if the player is good and play got learned properly, without tuning the sound will appear cranky and unpleasant for a listener and for the player himself. So for me, meditation now is a way to balance the sound of my soul and mind to hear it and produce it in a better and more understandable way.
Second, on the whole earth, only Human being from all animals is able to feel, think, have emotions and sensations, be in the epicentre of the living experience and at the same moment be a watcher, be an observer of that experience. That is the most valuable thing we have as species. And meditation helps to build strong foundation and core for stable observation skills, as from time to time we all have negative emotions, gross sensations and etc and it is definitely not easy to keep being an observer. For some people probably it can be very easy to do, not for me though. A long time ago I was reading and rereading all over again the book Transerfing of Reality by V.Zeland. The reason why I kept rereading is I simply could not get into handy one of the essential term, required for practising Zeland's theory of how to manifest your desires and create the reality you wish to live in. And it was how to be unattached to the desirable results and not to cling and crave for it. It is still kind of an oxymoron for me but feels like I am much closer to the point.
Third, meditation gives Unambiguous Sight. There is no need in magic or psychic abilities to see things and people truthfully. All you need is clear heart and mind, and calm emotional background. And the truth comes to the surface without any special efforts.







Much Love,
Aeri

XoXo