How to ‘Un-Stuck’ One’s Life – Gagori’s Feedback

For me, the most fascinating aspect of Buddhist yoga is neither in its history, nor in its still thriving age-old practices and lineages, nor even in the awesome feats and realizations of Tibetan yogis, past and present… now featured on DVD – but in its perennial workability.

Buddhist yoga works now as good as ever.  It can work for everyone.  It helps the untrained beginner as much as the advanced practitioner.  Everyone can apply it in order to explore how sensations, feelings, thoughts, emotions, mind, and body interact to co-create different moment-to-moment ‘realities’; and how these ‘realities’ constantly shift and change.  It is totally process-oriented, free of any pet theory set in stone regarding a ‘self’ or a ‘soul’, or any once and forever fixed ‘ideal state of being’ or ‘consciousness’ that we would need to achieve in order to become the ‘perfect human’. 

Rather we are the ‘perfect human’, even now, begging to be discovered. 

As Dogen Zenji, one of the great Japanese Zen masters once remarked, “If you want to study Buddhism, study the [coming and going of the myriad things in] the universe; in order to study the universe, examine this lump of flesh.”  It is all here, but not in the concepts and theories we entertain about it.  In order for genuine understanding to dawn, this ‘lump of flesh’ has to become alive and aware, so to speak, in the course of an open-ended exploration.

Then, when we closely attend to the interplay of the factors and aspects that create us in a moment-to-moment fashion, feeling it unfold through our ever- changing embodiment, again and again and over a long time, we begin to get a sense of how ‘fluid’, how ‘un-stuck’ we can be.  And that is the whole point: to be un-stuck.  What is left of the so-called ‘real reality’ when everything, including our ‘self’, constantly changes? 

There IS.  But IS will have to remain undefined.  Concepts cannot nail ‘it’ down.  Buddhist yoga leads into this open space that cannot be nailed down – that is embodied liberation, not just ‘health’, not just ‘feeling good’ but ‘embodied liberation’; in another word: ‘bliss’ not tied to subject or object; in short: blissfully vast!

However, the path leading there is a personal journey, and one has to walk the path in order to get to this particular ‘nowhere’ that is everywhere and everything, without ever being one and the same.  Walking this path – sitting, breathing, moving, and then acting in a more compassionate, feeling, respectful manner toward ‘self’ and ‘others’ – all of this turns into a wonderful adventure, too, because it reconnects us with our deepest humanity.

It all starts in the beginning.  It all starts with you and I and our so-called ‘most mundane’ concerns.  It is good to hear the story be retold from many different voices.

In the following Gagori Mitra-Gupta will share some of her experiences from the recent NadiPrana Buddhist Yoga retreat that was conducted in the south of Goa, late August this year.  She has been a student of Buddhist yoga since 2002, now going a lot deeper than she ever did.  Gagori holds a Masters Degree in Human Resource management, but already many years ago opted for leaving the corporate world.  Instead she teaches modalities of bodymind therapy, including Ayurvedic massage.   You can learn more about her and her work at www.aitheinhealing.com

“For me, the NadiPrana retreat this August past was one of the best in all these years…I say best because the energy of the small group was one, a lot of support came from each participant.  We all shared this space together, this precious time.”

“When I arrived, I was actually suffering from severe anxiety attacks.  I had even left Pune a few days early, in order to be with someone I trusted totally, as I said, these attacks were severe.  I felt as if I was going to die.  The negative thoughts were so strong that they appeared absolutely real, or almost.  Every second thought that I had was about death, my own impending death, so to speak.  I could not sleep in the night, as my heart would race into palpitations.  It really felt as if my chest was about to burst.  This happened during the retreat, too, and I faced it, went through with the exercises my mind in turbulence, sat through the palpitations while meditating.”

“However, on the fourth day I realized that all of this had been and still was my mind’s creation.  This realization was rock solid.  It did not come as a superficial ‘intellectual insight’, like an ‘idea’ that had struck my fancy.  It felt more like the ‘whole body knowing’ what the mind was doing, far more stable and embodied than any concept, free of doubt.”

“I am not a newcomer to Buddhist yoga.  This last one must have been my fifth or sixth retreat.  So I had experienced in the past how the body actually stores memories in each and every cell, not just in the ‘brain’, or ‘mind’ – and how the simple NadiPrana postures set these memories free, to be felt again as a presence and released.  Or how action and reaction patterns keep repeating in one’s life, like making the same mistake or sacrifice again and again.  This time, for example, it became so clear to me how I often give in to suggestions and that I do not really wish to follow, but I do it anyway just in order to please everyone, to be ‘nice’…  Like, my heart wants to stay home and rest, but I push myself to go out and party and meet people.  And then I curse myself for doing so, and feel angry and shitty inside.”

“Another new thing was the mediations after the exercises.  In NadiPrana we always sit for 5, 10, sometimes 15 minutes after an exercise, in order to give the bodymind sufficient time and space to integrate the energies, feelings and sensations set free by the practice.  In the past, I had always tended to get lost in thoughts when sitting.  But this time I could focus.  I could feel what was flowing and moving through me instead of thinking about other things.”

“Overall, there was more sense of purpose, more dedication, or devotion pouring out of me.  I particularly noticed this shift during the so-called vajra posture.  The first day, I did it mechanically, but the second day, I was so focused, and concentrated, and not at all fighting with myself.  No pain would have made me move.  I sat down fully energized.  What a great way to be.”

“And one more thing.  I want to learn more, not ‘techniques’ but essence. And I want to be ready to teach from that.”