Leena Patel: Articles on Health, Yoga, Spirituality and Healing

As a teacher I am faced with continuous choices that affect how my students establish these qualities for themselves. Do I speak, do I not speak? Do I touch, do I not touch? Do I step back or do I challenge them to go deeper? How do I create an environment which enables each individual to bring forth these qualities in their practice? I want to empower them with confidence in their own abilities and the choices that they make. I want to encourage them to not submit to the critical inner dialogue that goes on in their head that tells them they should do more, push more, achieve more and instead move and feel and act with kindness and compassion towards themselves.

At the same time, I let them know that being steady and comfortable does not always mean playing it safe. Neither does it mean not making an effort or retreating when the going gets tough. Ease sometimes means stepping into a difficult place, or one that is unknown- but at the heart of each step is the awareness and acknowledgement that we are actively making that choice because we are choosing to live deeply within ourselves. We are learning and re-learning continuously how we can find steadiness whilst embracing all that we are offered- whether in a yoga class when facing a challenging posture, whether we are sitting in our meditation seat and samskaras* are coming up, or whether we are facing the swings and roundabouts of events in our sometimes tumultuous daily lives. We are choosing to discover more about who we are, even in our sadness, our fear, our frustration and our boredom -because in doing so we are discovering for ourselves what it means to be more comfortable in our own self. At every moment we are given the opportunity to live as a spiritual warrior, soft and relaxed on the outside, strong, resilient and supple on the inside. Then, when we honor the flow of divine grace that supports us on this inner journey we recognise that even though life can and often is hard, we are truly being supported. This can give us the confidence to ease up on the tendency towards self-judgement, paradoxically achieving more than we thought possible and more importantly, loving the ride that we are on.

* past impressions that arise to be expelled

Allowing Grace to Flow

Many traditions talk about grace. As a child in school, I sang the Christian hymn 'Amazing Grace' never fully grasping its meaning until I was much older. A Buddhist friend quotes Ramakrishna saying, 'The winds of grace are always blowing. But you have to raise the sail.' In the Anusara Yoga tradition, John Friend says that the highest intention of our practice is to align ourselves with the flow of grace.

Grace then is the underlying sense of a loving, supportive and life enhancing power that resides deep within us and at the same time pervades our entire universe. Without the awareness of grace, we can become cynical, fearful, or angry and this can cloud our thinking and judgment. We blame others or God or even life itself when our circumstances don't meet our approval or unfold the way they 'should'.

We can get in touch with grace by first acknowledging that it exists. If you have doubt, think back to some moment in your life when you felt you received a powerful impulse to take a certain action.

And when you took it, how did you feel?

Wonderful? Cleansed? At peace? As if you had absolutely no doubt that you did the right thing?

That is aligning yourself with grace. Hearing the inner guidance, going with your deepest impulses, trusting that in taking the right action or speaking your truth, you are being supported no matter what.

You can get in touch with grace by invoking it in a simple prayer at the beginning of your practice. As you let grace flow through you, you begin to feel more acceptance, more ease. If the posture or the circumstance is challenging, you no longer try to go against the current, you flow with it. You stay centered in your own peace.

Each time we practice this, we raise our awareness and our sails. We feel more alive, more open, more radiant and we can really let every pose become an offering that expresses our innate beauty and goodness.

As I tell the world class dancers of 'A New Day...' that take class with me prior to going on stage each day: 'Grace is present everywhere. It is in your body as you do that dazzling turn with ease and lightness, it was present when you were offered this job and it is present in your life now. Whether you are in [yoga] class with me or on stage at The Colosseum, let the flow of grace within reflect itself in everything you do.'

Dare to Dream

Sometimes we lose touch with our innate greatness, our divinity. Someone looks at us disapprovingly or says something to diminish our self esteem... and quite often we need no-one other than that reflection in the mirror to talk ourselves out of being the best that we can possible be. We doubt, we retreat and then we put aside our deepest desires and dreams because we are afraid to fail.

What if we connected with the deepest part of our being, our inner God, our highest Self? What if we dared to dream, dared to do what our heart prompts us to do? Would we fall? Possibly. Would we succeed? Maybe. Would we increase our chances for success in the future? If we applied ourselves to learning from the choices that we have made -then yes we would. Would we be healthier and happier...? Most definitely.

How can we not feel better about ourselves when we are aligning ourselves with the promptings of our heart. Joy and abundance come when we connect with our God-ness. When we believe we are great, we act as if we are great. We do great things and we treat others accordingly.

So I say to each and every one of you- Find your Calling. Listen to the inner promptings of the Heart. Fulfill your highest potential. It is then that we create the space to attract 'good fortune' and 'luck' in our lives and positively affect the lives of all others around us.

More Inspiration

Guru-ji (my grandfather), aged 92 bringing yoga into daily life.

Mowing the lawn and a garden variety headstand!

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