Marya Mann : Blog : An Aspiration To Love | Deepening Your Yoga Practice

An Aspiration to Love | Deepening Your Yoga Practice

If you have a deep aspiration, a goal for your life, then loving others, loving yourself and loving the planet enough to follow your heart is a big part of that aspiration. That’s what following your heart is: loving. Loving is not what comes from following your heart; loving IS following your heart. It’s not a distraction. It’s the source essence of life that refreshes and renews us with every breath.

I’ve had the amazing privilege of working with hundreds of yoga students and teachers over the years, inspirational yogis from all walks of life, each bringing their own unique constitution to the mat and meditation cushion. I find that the aspiration to love that begins every yoga session very quickly becomes a deeper part of our lives. When love becomes apparent in the deepest tissues and most radiant energies of our bodies, spiritual evolution happens.

Whether that practice is yoga, meditation, kindness, music, art, psychotherapy or political action, the aspiration to love what is and the commitment to stay alert to new possibilities gives us the inner guidance we need for stability, ease and healthy relationships.

Once you actually feel your heart – not something you’ve read about hearts or someone has told you about hearts, but your own heart — the contours of your inner light brighten up. Feeling in the body, the shape of your hipbones, the undulation of soft toes, the streams of blood through artery, vein and capillary, the curves of your spine and the subtle pulsation between your eyebrows, helps you know yourself and sense spontaneous joy arising from the core of the body like nothing and no one else can. Yet many of us have barely gone beyond the surface to the core consciousness of the body and think we can (literally) think our way to Samadhi, nirvana and happiness.

We have a tendency in our quest for wisdom to deny the most intimate and actual in favor of the most exotic and invisible. What good is the aspiration to love if it’s only one or the other, the body or spirit. In the quantum world, we are both particle and wave, both DNA and the dance. This dance of body and spirit is what we came here to do!

To live and practice from a place of embodied wisdom, we learn to love even the highway traffic, the spilled tea, the cutworms, the chaos, the light, the dark and the deep mysteries. The love is what brings light to dispel hidden shadows. Before long, you’ll be truly loving…BEing the Loving, the Lover and the Beloved.

This trinity enables your body to work efficiently and heal itself; and you feel good again.

ONGOING: Join the steady flow of healing and creativity…

GENTLE YOGA for EveryBody – MONDAYS, 5 – 6:30 pm, By Donation (Class Break March 21 – 24)
Total Body Stretch – Easy Pace – Yin Yoga – Cleansing – Meditative
Come alive in places you didn’t know you had! In Yoga Asana practice, soothing movements improve circulation, melt away stress and pain and spark a renewed unity of body and soul.

YOGA FLOW CLASS ON THURSDAYS, 5 – 6:30 PM, $10 (Class Break March 21 – 24)
Flows that Feed the Soul
Yoga is the only exercise that stimulates every single cell in the body from the top of the head to the tip of the toes. Tone the body while stimulating health and regeneration at the cellular level.

When: Mondays and Thursdays, 5 – 6:30 pm (Class Break March 21 – 24)
Where: Heritage Hall at Kealakekua Ranch 82-6066 Mamalahoa Hwy. • Captain Cook, Hawaii
Classes close at 6:30 with heavenly sunset meditation.
For Details, please call (808) 345-0050