Steady Foundation and Core

Do you feel like you have enough? Do you feel safe?

Chances are, if you are an American, it is difficult to answer a wholehearted and simple YES right now.

And yet, most of us are safer and more prosperous than about 90 percent of the world's people.

It's all relative. If we gauge our security and material status by comparing ourselves to neighbors or television images, we can wind up feeling pretty deficient and anxious.

If, on the other hand, we get our own space in order, making sure that we have nutritious food to eat and a comfortable place to rest, then we can extend ourselves to the more important business of loving and liking and serving others around us. Instead of comparing ourselves to them.

How do we stay happy with the basics, avoiding the temptation to want all the new things available as they dance on screens and jump at us from pages? The yogis said it again and again: turn inward to notice what is most important. Pay attention to what is happening inside, and then when you extend your awareness to others, you get a clearer picture and can think, speak, and act more effectively.

The grasping, coveting, insecurity, anxiety, whatever you call it, will be lessened when you notice the riches that lie within. Even a little bit at a time!

In your yoga practice this week, develop your internal awareness to establish sense of what is already there--it is so much!--inside of you. Some practices that can help:

--Start with trataka, candle gazing. Light a small candle and place it in front of you, preferably just below eye level and without a draft to make it flicker. Sit. Rest your eyes on the flame. Avoid blinking. When the eyes jerk away from the flame, gently bring them back. When you must blink, do so slowly and consciously, and rest the eyes on the dot of light behind the eyelids. Do this for 5-10 minutes before your pranayama (conscious breathing) and asana (posture) practice. Repeat before savasana (final resting posture).

--During asana, do many standing postures and focus on your foundation. Establish a firm footing at the beginning of each standing posture, rooting down through each "corner" of your foot. (Think of each foot as having four corners: inner and outer heel, inner and outer ball. The toes are then free to relax or lift up; no need to grip.) Engage your leg muscles, consciously firing up the areas you use the least.

--Lift your pelvic floor continuously throughout your yoga practice. Make this a focus at the beginning of each breath: Inhale, lift PF. Exhale, lift PF. Inhale, lift...you get the idea. If you don't know what your PF is, try squeezing all the sphincters you would squeeze if you needed a rest stop and you just saw a sign that said None for 40 Miles. Just make sure you are not squeezing the buttocks or inner thighs--just the space between your tailbone (in the back) and your pubic bone (in the front).

That's still a little too much surface area, really, but it's a good start. Over time you can work on relaxing the urinary and anal sphincters and just lifting the space between. Now do this with every breath you take in your yoga practice except savasana (and other reclining restoratives). Plus while you're stuck at red lights. And standing in lines. And whenever else you remember.

Not so tight that you are making a face or turning coal to diamond. Just enough to support your internal organs. These are sometimes known as Kegel exercises, but in yoga we are going for a more subtle action. It is always the start of any safe core work, so that the PF muscles are toned instead of weakened when the abdominals are engaged.

This is the start of mula bandha, the root lock, a physical practice that is intertwined with our sense of safety and security and material prosperity, the issues seated at what the yogis called muladhara chakra, the area at the base of the spine. (One recurring experience that convinces me of this: every time I go shopping for clothes or home goods, I suddenly have to go to the bathroom, regardless of time of day. Even internet shopping! Muladhara chakra activated. Sorry if that's TMI, but it is convincing correlation for me.)

Let me know how it goes!