The importance of getting started in yoga with great practitioners
Conscious TV
September 28, 2020
There are several ways in which you can approach yoga. The moment of initiation to yoga is fundamental to see how you are going to relate to this discipline.
The usual reason why many people come to it is because they start reading a book recommended by someone else because they are in a difficult moment in their life, for example, a moment of a lot of stress, and in this way an incredible attraction to this world begins to emanate in us, which reveals its marvellous path. Little by little, moved by the way of seeing things, by all the benefits that the asanas bring or by the approach to oneself, they start to attend classes and there begins their new path.
Another way, which is nowadays within everyone's reach, are the online classes where there are a multitude of proposals, different styles of yoga with very varied teachers where you have a wide range of classes to suit your needs.
As everything cannot be generalised and we are not always in possession of the truth, it is very important that you attend face-to-face classes also to have a contact with your teacher, so that you can have a supervision of your work and avoid possible injuries.
Although online classes are getting better and better, no one can check that your practice is correctly executed as there is no one who can correct it. Make sure that you follow the right teacher and that you can have contact with them and ask them your questions. Combining face-to-face lessons with online lessons is a good way of disciplining yourself and then practising in person.
Most people in the West start practising yoga for health reasons, maybe they see it in magazines, on the Internet or just someone told them about it. The need to have a moment to yourself, to disconnect from the chores, to relax, are the main reasons why people start taking classes and to have a continuous work routine.
Yoga is becoming more and more widespread and asana classes are available in gyms, yoga centres, herbalists and even workplaces. It is clearly established in our society to perform asanas but, as I have commented previously in other articles, the spiritual aspect is less and less contemplated.
When I started practising yoga it was because of the arrival of a book about diet that recommended yoga to complete ¨The diet¨. It was, the author said, a way to get closer to yourself, to feel what was beyond what you could touch and understand from the head. It was a way of life that completes you, that makes you go deeper, that heals you. A moment to find yourself. A very difficult path but really revealing for the senses, to know yourself and feel your soul.
Well, I had a great need for all this and more things that I didn't know how to name yet but I really felt that I had to start getting in touch with them. A world opened up inside me when I started to practice and when I combined it with the study of philosophy I started to "understand something else".
My initiation began in a formal way when I trained as a yoga teacher. A very beautiful ritual, with mantras, meditation... I had the presence of a teacher who gave me my spiritual name: Narayani. It is a really incredible moment, indescribable, there are no words. A moment when the energy is clear, a wonderful moment. Generally this type of yoga initiation is the least common in the West.
On the other hand, there are people who have been practising for a long time and have never had anyone to guide them or teach them in a serious way. No one to take them beyond the purely physical. It may not be their time or they simply don't need it.
Also, in many cases, when you have been practising for a long time, someone appears who, in spite of having carried out your asana and pranayama practice in a disciplined way and having taken an interest in the Sacred Texts, puts you back almost where you started from a long time ago. From the way you lived yoga, the way you felt and observed, even the way you thought. Suddenly something stirs within you and what you thought you would never feel again is reborn in you.
Nowadays things are sometimes polluted, things become tainted, you lose the sense and the sensitivity with which you do it; you basically forget the essence, you get comfortable and get carried away by the rush. And it seems that none of the magic that you felt before is there, it's gone.
That is why it is very important that you let yourself be, that you trust and, above all, that you are open to what may come because it may clearly be the moment of your initiation, for the second time.
The path of yoga is a path that requires seriousness and commitment. I think it is essential to be able to have someone who inspires you and who, above all, is endowed with humanity.
Listen to your heart, to what you need to enter the path, even if you make mistakes. Your sensations are the ones that will tell you the direction, but for that you have to be attentive to everything that may arise, be aware of the moment you are in and enjoy what is to come.
OmNamahShivaya
Access our online yoga courses where you can receive classes from Silvia Jaén:
