I N T E N T I O N

I N T E N T I O N

My intention over the next seven days is to consciously develop my natural intuitive wisdom through devoting time to Study Sessions, Reading and Writing, Visioning, Engaging the Imagination, and Expanding Consciousness

P R A C T I C E

Practice daily. Use your daily practice this week to create sacred seeing and a soft, gentle drishti towards yourself and others. Enjoy the Sacred Preparation SIGHT playlists on Spotify. We are working with the sixth chakra Ajna. The practice theme for this month is Envision.

M E D I T A T I O N

Practice Alternate Nostril Breathing daily for 3-11 minutes. Use your meditation this week to see from a different perspective to elevate your thinking.

C O U R S E W O R K

one Set a timer for 25 minutes to plan your studies.
two Set a timer for 25 minutes and plan your reading + writing.
three Set a timer for 25 minutes and draw.
four In Angelus, identify imbalances (pg. 120)

+ Teach classes.

r E A D I N G

Read through your writing. Catch up on articles and books. *If you haven’t already begin to consider your book reports.

J O U R N A L

one What are you interested in? What challenge are you facing in your practice? Where would you like to find ease or mastery? Where could you immerse yourself in the culture of your passions and interests? Where might you get new inspiration - an art museum, a new restaurant, hiking to a water’s edge? How will you take time for inspiration? List out videos, audio books, or podcasts for when you are walking the dog or doing the laundry.
two How do I want to experience myself in 1 year? What if anything was possible? What makes me come alive? How will I live the life of my dreams? What attitudes get in the way of me seeing this dream through? How can I align my internal vision for the future with how I am planning and structuring my external life?
*Reminder: Journal writing is meant to be intuitive not intellectual .. ask the question and write down what messages you receive.

O N G E N E V A

Please share your thoughts.

SIGHT - Week SEVEN: Session 1: Study sessions

Discussion
Regular study sessions are an important part of inspiring your on-going learning and preparation to serve your students. Yoga is a vast subject and one could devote, as many do, a lifetime to study. In addition to studying yoga there are many other areas that support yoga practice and mindful living. Setting up time in your schedule to settle in to receive through books, articles, courses, and continuing education pays. In my experience, when motivation starts to wane, I know this is my cue to study.

Take your time and learn to apply what you learned. There is such a thing as consuming or what is called, spiritual materialism - where one uses studying yoga as a way to escape or create a reality of their own making. Consuming knowledge is not the same as gaining wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience and engaging fully. So it is not enough to simply read and learn. We all must vet our learning through application and critical thinking. 

What do you think?

This question allows our studies to move from collection to curation to cultivation. There is only so much time. May you see to it that your studies have purpose and bring inspiration that you can share. Once you have processed information, it then becomes yours - this is the difference between wisdom and knowledge. 

Consider study sessions as a way to soak and saturate yourself in understanding and in what you are passionate about. Do this by reading, researching, looking and collecting everything related to what you are inspired by currently in your practice. 

What are you interested in? What are you intimidated by? What challenge are you facing in your practice?  In your life? What pose would you like to work towards finding ease or mastery? Which chakra needs the most attention to eliminate blocks to freedom? What challenges do you students face? What is affecting the world? Where could you immerse yourself in the culture of your passions and interests? And where might you get new inspiration - an art museum, a concert, a new restaurant, hiking to a nearby water’s edge?

Answering these questions will inform the direction of your studies and will change overtime and will help you to observe and engage. 

Go back to your daily routine (Manual, pg. 12) 

Are you spending enough time saturating? If not, is it time for a change, an update or recalibration? How will you make sure you take time for inspiration? What is one daily activity you could replace with an hour to study? In your pages, be specific about what that one hour looks like.

If you are learning:
Is there a video you could plan on watching or an audio book you could plan on listening to while walking the dog or doing the laundry? List them out.

If you are after inspiration:
Is there a hashtag you could research? ex: #yogatransitions #sixthcharkra #ajnachakrayoga

One hour is 7 hours a week, 24 hours a month - saturated in what you love, what an inspired way to live!

SIGHT - Week SEVEN: Session 2: Reading and Writing

Discussion 
Studying would be a way to saturate yourself, whereas writing is a way to open up creative vision. We are asking the Higher Inspiration to come down and engage with us. As mentioned in last month’s Manual pages, we are learning to dictate the inspiration we receive. Writing enables you to think through what you want to share and how you want to share it. Read through your notes, journal pages, and all that you have written since September. 

Like the phases of the moon, Erica Jago outlines 8 phases of the Creative Process. I would like to apply the following process to your writing, creating and revising methodology for bringing your classes to life. 

First Insight: What is the direction of your class/offering?
Saturation: With what will you fill your inspiration cup?
Incubation: Sketch out your ideas with actual drawings or your own short-hand writing. How can you commit to a time without distractions? What subconscious blocks are keeping you from fully engaging?
Illumination: What are the a-ha elements of your class/offering? How can you inform your vision to bring your ideas forward into the tangible and practical?
Design: What solution to what problem will you solve through your class/offering? What elements are needed - props, mindset, extra details like essential oils or hands-on touch will you infuse into the experience? Begin to polish the details. What can you take away? Return to what is essential. 
Revisions: Practice, present your completed class/offering to a few that represent who will receive your work and ask for feedback. What might need refining? What errors could be corrected?
Production: Book it! Align your class/offering with your calendar. Begin to create value. How will you promote your class/offering? Via social media, a newsletter, a podcast, a blog post. What images, photos, visuals or phrases will you begin to pull together so that your message is clear and attractive to those who are looking for your specific class/offering?
Delivery: Launch. Share. Confidently get the word out and teach. How is the community responding?

 SIGHT - Week SEVEN: Session 3: Visioning

Compliment your writing with visuals - draw. It is ok to draw “badly,” The point is to access information from your intuition. What would it all look like? Use the questions from Session 2 to inspire your drawing. 

Then dream BIG - bring your dreamy attention inward and ask yourself:
How do I want to experience myself in 5 - 10 years? What if anything was possible?

What would be a heroic responsibility, bring me great pleasure, or be a courageous collaboration for me?

What makes me come alive?

How am I going to live the life of my dreams?

What moods or attitudes get in the way of me seeing this dream through? What judgements are blocking me from positively  envisioning myself and my life?

How can I align my internal vision for the future with how I am planning and structuring my external life? What is one positive action I could do each day this week to remind myself of what I want? What do I have to gain from this choice?

SIGHT - Week SEVEN: Session 4: Engaging the imagination 

Discussion
The mind is incredibly powerful. Your perception shapes your reality. You can harness and direct the power of the mind by engaging the imagination. Like imagination, intuition works with the unseen, what is just beyond the five senses. Intuition shows us what is beneath or beyond the surface. This is often private and sensitive information that can alchemize to bring creativity and ideas but may not be well-suited for water-cooler conversation. Insight is a gift given to use when we are paying attention. 

Understanding of the sixth-chakra, the third-eye center suggests that we are part of something greater than ourselves, that we are never alone and always guided; that everything we need is already within us. We are able to receive information from the world around us and from our bodies and brains. We can use the power of imagination and intuition, our sixth sense, to fine tune our awareness. 

Let’s take a moment to delineate imagination from intuition. Imagination is the mind’s ability to be creative or resourceful. Whereas, intuition is a thing that one knows from feeling rather than conscious reasoning. It is the sense that you “ just know” and further, you know that you know it. You are aware. It is here that we develop the kind of intelligence that is beyond schooling and logic as sort of Soul Intelligence. Said another way, it is wisdom. 

Though this can sound magical, the third-eye center which is physically aligned with the pineal gland and linked with higher wisdom, is an intuitive process that is housed in our physical brain. 

Therefore, it is important to relax our physical brain through meditation practices and let go of stagnant emotions and thoughts. When we use our intuition, we are also less tired and able to sleep and make clear and quick decisions. We are in touch with a deeper part of ourselves.

We all have a sixth sense, but we are not often encouraged, culturally or otherwise, to develop our intuitive and imaginative capacities. How would a capitalist, materialistic economy survive if everyone thought - with clarity and altruism, for themselves and relied on their own intuition above all else? Imagine what your life would be like if your mind wasn’t filled with thought or distraction?

Intuition speaks in a balanced centered tone. You can develop awareness of the intuitive voice through meditative practices. 

Extra

• Practice the Pranayama breath series (outlined on pg.172 in Angelus in the Glossary (#24):

• Begin with the Adi Mantra - chanted 3 times

• Phase 1:  Left-nostril breathing using the right hand for 3 minutes - end: Inhale hold 10-30 seconds, exhale release

• Phase 2:  Right-nostril breathing using the left hand for 3 minutes - end: Inhale hold 10-30 seconds, exhale release

• Phase 3: Alternate-nostril breathing using the right hand for 3 minutes  - end: Inhale hold 10-30 seconds, exhale release

• Phase 4: Alternate-nostril breathing using the left hand for 3 minutes - end: Inhale hold 10-30 seconds, exhale release

• Phase 5: Breath of Fire for 7 minutes - end: Inhale hold 10-30 seconds, exhale release

• followed by 3-15 minutes of meditation - with the option to chant Sat Nam. 

• End with Sat Nam - chanted 1 time

SIGHT February Week SEVEN
Study Sessions, Reading and Writing, Visioning, Engaging the Imagination
Friday 11:30am - 1:00pm
Date: 2.14.24

Prep
What do you want to talk about?
Forum: The floor is yours .. (some ideas .. share a check-in - it doesn’t have to be 2 minutes, as long as you need. What came up for you while you were teaching? What topics do you want to revisit or learn more about?)

Call Flow
11:30-11:45 am (15min) Openings: Y Vision and Mission with Brandy
11:45-12:15 pm (30 min) Talk Topics: Yoga, Using Props as Scaffolding
12:15-12:45 pm (30min) Forum: What do you want to talk about? The floor is yours.
12:45-1pm (15min) Questions and Closings: a Prayer Honoring Voice: Confidence by Pixie Lighthorse

(Openings: Y Vision and Mission with Brandy)

Yoga Sutras and the Practice of Subtilization
The Yoga Sutras are a roadmap to Samadhi. They speak about how to release all extraneous thoughts and they teach how to focus on exactly what you want to do - and doing it, thereby eliminating doubt. 

Yoga is a practice of subtilization. It’s a return to origin, a way to make things subtle. Subtle means it’s so delicate or precise that you don’t even see it. It is the experience we have when all the movement arising in our consciousness stills. 

Yoga is complete mastery over the roaming tendencies of the mind (Sutra 1.2). In practice we are creating a body and mind that experiences real luminosity - a shining luminous quality to what we see and experience - what Elena Brower calls “Holy Joy” 

Yoga is a practice of eliminating excess. It is a way of reorganizing priorities. Focusing back into what is important and what is primary by moving attention inside. We refine our relationship with managing energy. We become literate and agile in relationship to our own energy and the management of our life force, our prana. 

We can do this by shifting from deep breathing to subtle, (demonstrate) from external to internal. We develop a very gentle recognition of Self by establishing a peaceful flow of mind.

Shall I repeat that?

3 Signs your practice is working:
-more joy
-less fear
-shortened time between having an intention and having that intention come to fruition (because … there is no doubt in the way). 

Side note on cueing: remember this -  placement, foundation, length of spine/space, breath - magic :-)

Using Props as Scaffolding

“Props are for propping you up. For putting you on a throne to support your big vision and your big imagination. To hold you so you don’t have to hold it together.” - Selena G

The Scaffolding 

Think of props as scaffolding. Props set up boundaries that frame the body, allowing organs to reorganize, release, and find ease. To illustrate this, think about your lungs. 

We use props to support and give boundaries to form. You are building a structure with your body, and scaffolding supports the building of a strong foundation, a functional form that supports the demands of modern-day living.

Think of props as scaffolding on a building. You put scaffolding on a building to help support its structure. And then, the scaffolding is removed and the building stands.

Substantiation.

Using props facilitates good technique. 

Blankets - a throne to sit on so that you can change the angle of your pelvis, so you can sit up higher, so that you can change the way that you sit and have the experience of being substantial in your pelvis, open and spacious in your torso, and of being visionary. 

Blocks are like bone. They support structure. You can use them by putting them under your legs, putting them between your legs, under your hand. Blocks are surfaces of good measure. You can use them to measure a right angle.  Blocks make your practice more informed. 

Straps are like ligaments that go through a joint. Also, you can hold people with a strap so that you don't have to use your hands. There are lots of ways to use straps to facilitate folds as they provide leverage. 

Unless you have a background in dance or gymnastics, or athletics the postures may seem very foreign in the body - it’s a new language. 

Another sort of prop is the breath. The breath soothes the nervous system so the body relaxes. How can we keep the breath moving fluidly in each position? Unless you are doing a specific pranayama practice or breath practice where you hold the breath, there’s no break between the inhale and exhale, and the in breath and the out breath are even. However, we often hold our breath or breath shallow - which is what the body will do naturally under stress. 

Muscles change shape as they unwind. Life then, becomes more effortless as the memory - the unconscious habits, begins to break down, and the effort of muscles is no longer relied on. You’re not “muscling thru” your practice - or life.

That applies to tightness and tension - which is what a lot of people bring to class. But you can also be “too flexible” or “hyper mobile.

If you are too flexible, use props so you don’t go as deep as you want. When there is too much range, too much openness in the body, it can cause stagnation because the form is flat. Props can make your poses and your experience in them, more voluminous. 

There is no “right or wrong” way to do poses, but there are archetypes, so there is an optimal way to do each pose - for you. There is an ideal pose shape for you - that has the potential to change overtime.  

Currents move through waves. The aim of archetype, or the formal form is to find length, height, reshape and articulate the body’s curves so the current can move. Too strong or “tight” muscles lead to blockages of the current of energy. If you know you are tight, find ways to begin with more ease in the pose: use higher blocks (or add sandbags) to change the course of muscles if they are gripping. With time and breath, the body will create more space and you will move into deeper aspects of your being. 

“With time, these poses will reshape your curves, rewire your circuitry, and place the body’s bones back into their natural resting position.” (Katonah)

Never look at a body and assume the body's state of health. For example, when I was my “thinnest”  my most culturally pleasing, I was very stressed/ill. I think it’s important to remove morality from the conversation about healthy bodies and the wide variety of shapes human bodies take. I could really get going when it comes to disability and inclusion.

Are you all clear on requirements for your Practicum? 

• (share) Graduation Requirements doc

• I will also be looking for your authentic self ... authentic is you on the best day, unburdened by thought loops, suffering, or low energy ... well nourished, well rested, on purpose you!

The floor is yours … What do you want to talk about?
Some ideas:
Check in - It doesn't have to be 2 minutes, as long as you need - I would like to here from every
What came up for you while you were teaching?
What topics do you want to revisit or learn more about?)

Questions and Closings: a Prayer Honoring Voice: Confidence by Pixie Lighthorse

Thank you for this day of completely believing in myself.

When I feel unsafe and insecure, I am lining in chaos and out of love. When I am confident, I am who you have made me to be. Help me to see support for life all around me. Help me heal my existence injuries, lodged in little capsules of trauma throughout my being. Help me dissolve then with the breath you have given me.

Leg me call up the deepest and most electric seed of me, so that I may shine with no puffing or posturing, no faking it till I make it, no exaggerating or inflating the truth of my accomplishments and abilities.

I am enough.

I might need reminders form you, Divine Source of Connection, to know and accept it. Thank you for pointing me to the beauty and strength inside of me.

Remind me that I can do what I set out to with everything I have in this moment. Raise my hand into the air when my gifts are needed. Fill me with faith that I will find my way, and that I will have plenty of help. Remind me to seek more education when it’s truly required, but do not allow me to trick myself into believing I’m just not quite there yet. When adventuresome service calls, let me pick up.

Help me to put my gifts into words so that I can represent them fairly and fully. When I am unsure of myself, strengthen my spine. Send awareness of how my specialties can be put to use rippling through each vertebra.

Help me to prepare for challenges in advance, knowing that the effort and energy I bring sets me up for success. Help me to be unapologetic about what is born from my heart and co-created with you from love. Help me to be thoughtful and anticipate the consequences, adjust where needed, and stand my ground.

Remind me that insecurity is simply a belief that I am unprotected. Let my love of what we do together lift me up. When I think I’m unable - that I’m not made for this, they’d be better off without me, I don’t fit here, I’m unwanted, I’m unnecessary - set me straight. We both know that these those are not of you or me, but rather a powerful force that seeks to hold me back.

Help me to create a world where people are safe, secure, and can enjoy a sense of belonging.

Exercise: Use a timer and give each section 5-10 min

AIM: you’ll want to create an aim - what is the purpose and goal of your class?

SANKALPA: this is how you set the mood, it’s your theme, it’s 2-5 sentences so your students can move more attuned - it’s a way of saying what you are doing in class. It’s affirmational. It’s what you may want to study before class but then speak from the heart in the moment to set the tone authentically. So practice saying your sankalpa so that you, yourself hold the theme and intention.

ANATOMICAL FOCUS: these are cues repeated in the postures throughout your class ex: “lengthen thru the front of your spine and find a backbend” which can be cued in standing poses or in forward folds … or “collar bones broad” can be cued in updog and twists. These cues direct and deepen the focus of the class.

3 WAVE GRID: for a 45 min class, each wave is 15min Wave 1 warms up your class, Wave 2 has the peak, Wave 3 brings your class down.

PEAK: is the highest level of activity

TALKING POINTS: these are developed overtime and feel good, they “help to drive the sankalpa deeper” according to EJ, these are what will stay with the class after the class is over.