Carole Lee performed an excellent demonstration of yoga asanas on Guru Puja Day. Jenny was recording the session and has typed up the introduction that Carole gave before the demonstration. The yoga demonstration was performed with the Gayatri Mantra playing softly in the background. Carole explained the meaning of the Mantra and went on to say that:
“The asanas are not just physical exercises, although they may appear to be, and it’s easy to see why people who come to a church hall or wherever to attend a yoga class might think that is what they are. However they are actually a form of meditation because as you are doing the postures you are concentrating, and that is one of the steps towards meditation. Not only are you concentrating but you are offering as well as you do it. As you offer the fruits of this action that you are performing, so it becomes a form of worship.
As you do it, the challenge really is to put yourself in the right sattvic frame of mind because you do not want to be too lazy, too easy with yourself, too tamasic let us say. Neither do you want to be the other way: too rajasic, too much straining that ‘I must get there’ and forcing the body into postures that it really should not be doing.
Because as we know, it is not what it looks like on the outside – again that is a trap – it is what is happening on the inside which really counts when you are doing your yoga postures. You can be forward bending so that you just make the slightest movement forward and yet your mind is perfectly collected, perfectly centred and perfectly ready to make that offering and to do that meditation. Okay, maybe your hamstrings aren’t, but your mind is and that is what is important. So let us all bear that in mind when we do our yoga postures because everybody is able to perfectly do every posture. It is not really about what it looks like on the outside.”
Carole then performed a beautiful, flowing sequence of asanas, the prana flowed freely and it was a joy to watch and appreciated by all. Jenny
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