Coming back to the Centre with Authentic Yoga

The last quarter of the year is beginning soon. Time to sit and be quiet and do some “stock-taking”., to check what is needed and what needs to be thrown out.
In the “old, traditional” yoga you go through the seasons with festivals as well as with introsprctive practices. The festival of Navaratri is celebrated in India in spring and in autumn. This year starting on the 6th of October and finishing on the 14th of October. I thought this time is a good time to connect back with our own inner centre and ask ourselves questions like “what sustains me?”, “what does it mean to be human, and what qualities do I expect of a human? “, “ what hidden qualities would I like to express more?”
Quite often it is more important to start asking questions than to have a quick answer. We are so used to “google” any question that comes up, that we it seems we have lost the ability to just ask and sit and be with the question.
Authentic Yoga, which is based in the ancient scripts (the Sutras) and looks at the whole person, means walking the path to the core of things - mainly to the core of our being and our existence.
Bringing harmony between body and mind incorporates practices like introspectively finding out about our strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and needs, (the SWAN- practice) as well as practicing asanas (yoga postures and moves). Sitting down with a notebook and exploring our “SWAN” leaves us with peace and clarity as much as doing asanas, if not done as an acrobatic or competitive practice, bring us strength and balance into our body and emotions.
For both practices the key ingredient is a level of awareness.
Let me reach out and invite you to do some of these specail practices with me in the Centre of Australia from the 8th to the 10th of October. Contact me if you are interested or also if you want to know how you can do your own “stocktake” at home if you are not ready to come to Alice Springs.

Here is a poem from Rainer Maria Rilke, I like though I am not soooo happy with the translation, but I wouldn’t know how to do it better either.

A WALK SPAZIERGANG

My eyes already touch the synny hill, Schon ist mein Blick am Huegel, dem besonnten,
going far ahead of the road I have begun. dem Wege, den ich kaum begann, voran.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; So fasst uns das, was wir nicht fassen konnten,
it has inner light, even from a distance - voller Ersscheinung, aus der Ferne an -

and changes us, even if we do not reach it, und wandelt uns, auch wenn wir’s nicht erreichen,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, in jenes, das wir, kaum ahnend, sind;
we already are; a gesture waves us on ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen…
answering our own wave….. Wir aber spueren nur den Gegenwind.
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly) RAINER MARIA RILKE