Yogic “Gardening” Culturing Your Emotions with the Guru Within

By Susan Ni Rahilly

Wisdom IS . . . it has often been called “thusness” or “suchness” . . . it is energy and it is energy within us.

You are already a very wise person on the inside. Allow the seeds of wisdom within you to blossom, grow and strengthen in your Yoga practice. You can experience more of your own wisdom as you experience proving your own knowledge to yourself in your life – and also expanding and growing in your development with Yoga.

As you uncover more and more of your own Wisdom Energy, the Guru Within awakens and your inner confidence in your own innate abilities for inner guidance develops.

The term “Guru Within” comes from the quality of Ajna Chakra or the “Guru” Chakra, the forehead or eyebrow center, one of our psychic gateways to consciousness. We embody Guru quality, or Wisdom within.

In Yoga we have this beautiful concept for growth: and it’s that of cultivating ourselves like a garden; Yogic Gardening or cultivating our senses, qualities and emotions. So we tend and care for the ground of ourselves, as we ourselves in mind-body emotions and spirit are delicate and as full of potential as seeds . . . and as we blossom and grow in our lives and our practice, co-emergent energies need diligent tending – we make sure to pull out the messiness of the weeds so that the beauty, the light of our flowers can bloom strongly in fullness.

There are 3 practices in Yoga for cultivating our emotions, growing emotionally and uncovering wisdom – connecting with the Guru Within.

Yogic Gardening

What a delightful way of describing the practice in Yogasana, whereby we guide the mind into the body and focus on points of tension, the neuromuscular knots that come up into awareness, breathing into them and releasing them with the breath and the mind. In this practice we become more aware of the body’s wisdom and intelligence. With practice we can ask the questions: “Why was I holding that there . . . ?” and “How come I reacted that way to that . . . ?” and very commonly “How long has that been there . . . ?”

Passive Supportive Practice

Being supported by soft props and supports so that we can relax into deep postures is very powerful and releasing. Don’t forget that even the good things in life can cause us conflict, moving on in life often means leaving things behind which does cause us stress and loss.

Examples of this practice would be: Supported Forward Bend, sitting in an easy cross leg position, with a pillow across the knees to relax into in the Forward Bend; and Breathing with a Bolster, where we lie down over the bolster, supporting the spine, and just breathe while taking the mind down to the heart space, lower back, abdomen and hips. In this practice we simply allow the body to surrender and let layers of tension be peeled away.

Breath and surrender take us to new places of awareness in our mindbody and emotions. We give ourselves the time and space to peel away layers of accumulated tension with the deep breathing in the practice taking us to the bridge between the unconscious, conscious mind (mundane mind) and consciousness. Teaching us patience, detachment and discernment.

Contemplation, Visualisation and Meditation

Contemplation is a powerful step on the Yoga Path to self-understanding. Taking time for yourself on a regular basis will so enrich your journey towards knowledge of self.

Assume a posture you can relax into: Corpse, easy cross leg, Reclining Buddha; pay attention to your breathing, focus on your grounding and centering with the breath . . . . sit quietly . . . allow yourself to be still.

Reviewing your life on, say, a weekly basis will help you tune into your strengths and weaknesses – obviously with the intention of letting the weaknesses just wither away like weeds.

Visualisation, say for example using colour to identify strengths and weknesses, helps you grow in self-confidence. You’ll connect with the visual qualities of your mindbody system and give yourself an incredibly powerful tool for growth.

You could visualise a colour for each of your energies . . . . mental, emotional, physical, spiritual – and strengthen the colours when you encounter feelings and senses of weakness. So, for example: what makes you feel bigger and what makes you feel smaller? An example of wisdom energy would be: having a profound sense of spaciousness; and the opposite weakness would be: getting very absorbed in a small world. Another wisdom would be: seeing the big picture and having a largeview; and the corresponding weakness would be: being rigid and tight and dogmatic.

Meditation. Yoga takes you on such an amazing journey with Meditation – a journey to self-acceptance and peace with self. This is a journey which is always leading us away from shadows towards the light. Discovery that your own inner wisdom energies have just been waiting to emerge all the while is nothing short of amazing. Discovering opposite poles of light and shadow help you grow and build your inner confidence in the wise person you really are on the inside: the Guru Within.

Your Guru or inner Wisdom energies are waiting to emerge. And you will gain inner strength and confidence from knowing that you can be in control as you move along the path of your expansion and growth in your spiritual life . . . all we need to do on a regular basis is grow the strengths and let the weaknesses wither away and die.

You are a very wise person within . . . Wisdom IS.

We have a Guru Within Meditation download on the www.suzenyoga.com website.

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Susan Ni Rahilly is Founder and Teacher at suzenyoga.com: Spirituality, Understanding, Zen, Energy and Nutrition through dedication to Yoga Practice.