Alertness

I used to have class on every Thursday at Kuchai Lama. I have teaching here for almost 3 years now. Time flies. This class is the largest crowd and there are some of those who are the regular students. I am sharing this out as the incident that happened 3 weeks ago has inspired me about being alert = ALERTNESS.

This student particularly, we called her CJ. She has been learning yoga here for almost half a year. From a stiffed body, a little concern of the postures that she did, she learns to observe, she learns to understand her body more, she  learns to get to know the natural reaction of her body, she learns to accept the condition of the body whether is bad or good and she learns to LET GO. I can said she is a quick learner and she learns very fast in term of understanding more about her body, the natural reaction of the body and she also has smile on her face no matter what postures she did. We can see her effort through the postures that she did and she progressed quite well.

When she gained her confident towards what her body can and cannot do, she learns to LET GO those unnecessary worries she has towards the postures, she learns to go beyond the identification that she has towards the limitation of what her body can or cannot do.

When we started to do the second asana (posture) which is Shoulderstand (Sarvangasan), just before that we will do the preparatory exercise by rocking to the front and back to relax the nerve and muscle of the back and especially the shoulder and neck. We have been doing it almost every week and it was not her first time of doing the rocking, but without know why and how, she hurts her neck. She was totally letting go all the worries and fears, but due to lack of alertness of what she was doing, she has indirectly challenged the physical body and she was panicking when she realized that she overdoing the rocking, she contracted her nerve which is nothing wrong with that as this is the natural reaction of the nerve when it tries to protect itself.

Sometimes, we will notice that while we are doing something, the mind is somewhere else, perhaps it happens most of the time. While we are walking, suddenly we forget where are we heading to. While we are eating, we talk and think something else without focusing what are we eating, feel every sensation of chewing, every sensation of swallowing and appreciation towards the food that we eat. As we not ALERT of what we are doing.

We letting go but not blindly doing it. We stay alert of all the sensation of the body without attaching towards it. We stay alert of all the feeling we have while doing the asana/posture without identifying towards it. We aware all the twists, stretches and some discomfort, but we are not identifying with it. As it is all impermanent. As what you felt earlier, you will not feeling it now, it is impermanent. Give no response and don't have to be effected by it as well, this is detachment. Mind needs to be trained in such a way as we are  used to identifying with all the sensation, the pain, discomfort, happiness, unhappiness, frustration, anger, disappointment etc etc. Train the mind and it will become a habit where effortlessly we will be letting go a lot of things that happened in our life easier. After all, it is impermanent.