Soma Yoga

Hi Shayla ~
This Soma Yoga Retreat sounds wonderful.  Can you tell me please, how and where is the yoga?  Is it just in Nelson on Saturday morning, and then we travel to the pools, or is there a place at Ainsworth where more yoga is done? Thanks!  Trish

Hi Trish
Good to hear from you. Id’ love to have you come to the retreat.

The yoga morning at Shanti is optional, because most of the yoga happens at Ainsworth. We arrive at 2pm, and have an afternoon of yoga, finishing up a long session in the baths. Then dinner, followed by deep relaxation, contemplation and meditation.

The next morning we start yoga at 8, and do a morning session of at least 2 hours, followed by brunch..Then we’re done, just before noon.

The emphasis, for the yoga part of it, is very much on the restorative, renewing aspect of the practice-working with our life force, so that we can connect with our own capacity to regenerate, ground, and deeply rest.

The focus is in this direction, because that’s what the women who come are asking for. And because this is a resting time of year..There’s a deep stillness in the earth right now, and we can learn to open the body and the energy field so that we receive this stillness, become deeply receptive to it’s healing and renewing power.
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“Wherever you are is the entry point” (Kabir)
Shayla Wright
BAREFOOT JOURNEYS
Coaching, facilitation, courses and workshops
250.352.7908
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http://www.barefootjourneys.net

I had this beautiful experience the other night. We were practicing together, and it had been a really long day for me. My brain was not working that well, although I was happy to be there, feeling full and present.

At one point, I did an asana backwards, and we had to start again. They all laughed, and the laughter was very warm. I realized that most of the class has been practicing together for a while now, and there is a lot of ease and openness in the group energy field.

Then I forgot the name of one part of the body and they laughed even more, not ‘at’ me but really ‘with’ me. It felt so good, as if we were really playing together in that field that Rumi describes:

“Out beyond wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field,
I’ll meet you there.”

I realized that practicing in that field is so much more important than anything we think we are doing. I’ve always known that, but that night we were all right there, resting and playing in that space of innocence and no-striving.

I just wanted to keep playing and laughing with them. I started thinking, “Maybe I could become a yoga clown. That could be the next evolution of Soma Yoga.”

The whole pleasure/pain response, that instinctual mechanism, is embedded in the body. We resist pain, and we hold onto what feels good. What could be more natural? And yet what could be more mechanical, conditioned and reactive? We cannot ask the deep survival patterns of our body/mind to disappear. They are very powerful, and quite essential on a certain level of our being. But if we allow this kind of conditioning to dominate us, then we cannot discover our deeper nature, which is presence-- completely open to everything as it is.

We can work with our conditioning in a much gentler way when we are already resting in presence, in an open space of non-judging awareness. This awareness is our foundation. It is simple, open, unstructured, innocent, natural, and right here.  With this kind of awareness we can begin to become intimate with our own experience, with the totality of our experience. Not separating parts out and saying, “This is me, and this is not,” but opening our arms and accepting it all.

Accepting my body just as it is in this moment, listening, breathing, moving, and letting go. When I allow my breath to mirror the openness of my awareness, then the nature of my experience begins to change. I can approach the feeling of discomfort without pulling away or resisting. I can allow myself to open to this feeling, listen to it, respect it, work with it. Not looking to a book or a CD or a teacher, but opening to the wisdom that comes through the body, from moment to moment, that emerges and then disappears. Heart beating by itself, lungs moving by themselves, resting in the simple feeling of being alive.

Some kinds of yoga emphasize the willful, effort-full aspect of the practice, as if, by trying harder, we are going to gain some control over our body. I want to look a little deeper here, because this lies at the heart of everything we are doing. 

In Soma Yoga we begin in a place of deep receptivity, with a willingness to listen to the intelligence that lives in every cell of our body, to listen and respond. Sometimes we are strengthening our core muscles, sometimes we are working with our flexibility, sometimes we are grounding our energy, sometimes we are working with the energy meridians, sometimes we are working with our brain patterns.  But we are not trying to control the life force in the body. We are opening, creating a much wider container so that the life force can flow freely, spontaneously.

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