Happy autumn!

Today, I am sharing some of the intersections of yogic practices and modern practices and insights. All practice opportunites are listed below also!

The baseline of the modern yoga worldview that I teach is to cultivate awareness and to experience a wider or deeper breadth of humanness.

Often it starts with the body, or the movements of the mind or both.

One thing is true - one can’t change a thought if one is not aware of it!

One of my teachers, Eric Franklin of the Franklin Method has done a lot of research on how our thoughts influence movement. He has created a trademark for his use of the mind to improve movement called Dynamic Neurocognitive Imagery (DNI ™).

I love how these modern practices and research point us in a similar direction as what we could call Bhavana in yogic practice.

Bhavana could be defined as creative contemplation, feeling-ing, visualizing something that you may not experience yet. Another teacher of mine, Jacob Kyle, speaks of Bhavana to create the imaginal or yogic body as “performative metaphysics”. We use the instrument of the mind to create a neurological pathway to have a psycho-somatic experience. An example of this is visualizing a chakra or a whole system of chakras.

My passions are to support people to move well in their bodies, so I use DNI a lot! I also work with the Bhavana in how I speak to myself, (the Yoga sutra of Patanjalis verse Sutra 2.33: Vitarka-badhane pratipaksha-bhavanam "When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of. This is Pratipaksha Bhavana." (Swami Satchidananda translation) AND in visualizing in and outside of the body in many various techniques.

Even though I have long been working with each of these huge concepts, I am just amazed at how similar they are and wanted to share with you. I hope that you have had and continued “improvement” or depth in your body, mind and more subtle being through any of these methods.

If you are curious about DNI, and Bhavana they are always in my classes. I hope to see you in person or in zoom.

Links to events are below!

Blessings,

Neesha