Coming Down the Mountain 21

Last weekend I began Teacher Training Level Two; Vitality and Stress in my ongoing Kundalini Yoga and Meditation studies.  Classes began on Saturday and Sunday at 7am, ended in the evening, and were filled with mind numbing  kriya (a yoga set) after kriya of asanas (postures) and meditations, some of which were somewhat excruciating. Why do we do yoga?  It isn’t always easy, and certainly not often comfortable. What is easy is how we feel when we are finished, when we are complete.  The sense of vitality and the reduction of stress only begins to describe where a wonderful yoga set can take us.  It truly can bring us closer to Spirit.  I was certainly tired leaving those workshops, but not spent; rather, I was filled to the brim, in fact, spilling out.  The hardest kriya for me was the Pittra Kriya, which has me seated, holding my arms straight out in front of me and crisscrossing them in the air for 11 minutes while chanting.  I have not been able to yet get through the 11 minutes without short breaks, but as we say, we are not trying to prove anything, we are trying to improve everything.  I have taken this particular kriya into my daily morning practice; because it is the most difficult, it is the most rewarding in reducing the stress that I am confronted with throughout the day.  I have been walking on clouds all week.  It is truly remarkable.  I take on spiritual disciplines because they bring me closer to God, and because they make me feel soooo good.

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