Connecting to the Stillness through Esoteric Yoga

I first tried Esoteric Yoga several years ago. Initially, I was unsure that I was really ‘getting it’ and during those early years, I struggled with the practice. My mind just would not stay present in the body. It wanted to busy itself pre-planning what I would do later in the day or tomorrow or next week. Better yet, my mind loved hashing over things that had happened the day before, thinking of all the clever things I ‘should have’ said. ​

But, with practice, I began to experience the union of my mind with my body, and had my first real experience of conscious presence. Over the years, I had heard a lot of different references to conscious presence but never knew exactly what it meant until I experienced it in Esoteric Yoga. When the mind is focused on or aligned to what the body is experiencing, this is conscious presence.

From the stillness that I connected to while lying perfectly still in Esoteric Yoga, I began to feel stillness as a quality – a feeling of space in my body.

I started to practice bringing this stillness, and also my awareness of conscious presence, out of the yoga sessions and into my daily activities. At first it was simple exercises, like seeing if I could maintain conscious presence while I walked up a flight of stairs – not letting my mind wander from the bottom step to the top. Eventually, I was able to do this. I kept experimenting with simple tasks, like staying fully present in my body while hanging up the laundry or cutting up an onion.

After a few months of practising this, my mind no longer wandered around in the future or the past and I began to consider how it felt to be in my body. With my awareness aligned to my body, I soon realised that my body was always communicating with me. My body knew if I was too cold, too hot, or just right. My body knew if my hair was tickling my face or my bra was digging into my spine, my body knew if I was standing with all my weight on one leg. 

I realised that these messages were always being sent to me but I often wasn’t listening because my mind was busy somewhere else. But with my mind in union with my body, there was all this space. There was plenty of room to receive the messages of my body, make the required adjustments and still have time and space to spare!

By the time I was able to hold my presence during daily activities (I would go in and out to some extent, of course), I was absolutely enraptured by the practice of Esoteric Yoga and so when the opportunity came to take the practitioner training, I jumped in wholeheartedly.

In the beginning, it was just to deepen my own practice without any real thought of becoming a practitioner. Evidently the bigger plan was for me to become an accredited Esoteric Yoga Practitioner because completing the requirements all came quite effortlessly. Much to my surprise, there was a bonus. With every practice hour I spent with a client, I felt my own expansion as a result of the session. 
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Being present in my body became the norm to such an extent that I would notice when I was not in conscious presence. This was a complete turn-around from my previous position of constantly having to make an effort to be in conscious presence. 

My experience is that conscious presence is the doorway to stillness. This union of the mind and the body creates a deep and spacious connection within – where there is a profound stillness. Without a direct relationship to our body it is difficult, if not impossible, to connect to the stillness within. 

Stillness is a delicate and gentle state of being, but what I love most about it, is that it is spacious. In stillness, awareness expands and time has less of a hold on us. We live in a very busy, fast paced society, and being in and moving from stillness is not something we are taught as children, or young adults. However, we can walk the return path and re-connect to our innate stillness, bringing it into our every day, no matter our age.

Esoteric Yoga is a direct route to experiencing stillness, conscious presence, spaciousness and the glory of ‘being’ – as you can read in these testimonials. 

If you would like to learn more about Esoteric Yoga, check out the following websites:
​Unimed Living Yoga Sphere
Esoteric Yoga
 

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