The word Yoga comes from the sanskrit “yug” that means to unite, union. But what is to be united? That which is not recognised as an unicum but that in reality it is; that which during the earthly incarnation experience broke down in pieces, scattered far from each other, disintegrating from the ancestral unity.
Yoga as it’s commonly known in the vast majority of cases here in the West is just a little portion of what the Eastern continent generated during millennia, and as it happens in every teaching we can spot two main layers: the essoteric one and the esoteric one. The esoteric layer is that set of teachings that is reserved to the initiated disciples and remains without public disclosure. The essoteric sphere instead is the simplified, reduced and incomplete guise that is delivered to the normal, common society.
Moreover, considering the history, the culture and the life modalities of the continent and the people where it was born, every collection of techniques and precepts called “yoga” has to be contextualised in the space-time in which it germinated; therefore it’s well appropriate that the implicit aspects given for granted there are explained in our continent and adapted to our structure, our time and to the targets we set ourselves.
If you are present and you really expand yourself consciously in your body, in every organ, in every cell up to sensing them one by one, and deeper in the atoms and their sub particles… if you’re present to your thoughts, your emotions, your soul’s state.. if you diffuse your essence, presence and consciousness in your body, then you finally become full of Your Self facilitating the opening of many inner doors (and outer doors also progressively), throwing off the yoke from the senses, freeing them from burdens allowing them to amplify and expand. In this way the perception of the world changes substantially, for real, and so does your way to approach and act in the world.
There would be so many things to say about all the different yogic practices, but we would be wondering from the central theme from where we started.
Here I want to bring up a version of this concept as much accurate as possible of the original meaning of the word yoga.
I will call hereby this path “Yoga of the Origins”.
Here a first of the Yoga of the Origins, presented through a list of its salient points.
- Man is the meeting point of Earthly Nature and Divine Nature, where both support each other. The Earthly Nature welcomes and hosts the Divine Nature, that in turn inspires, supports and animate the other. They are two different natures but they’re not separated.
- In the Yoga of the Origins you look for the union of these two but not with the ultimate aim to melt in the Great All forsaking your own individual consciousness (this is a mistake of interpretation originated from specific contexts that we will get into later), but rather you look to regain contact with yourself, with your soul, through that wonderful tool free from any constriction and lie: the human body, your own body.
- You’re not solely your body, but you’re also and profoundly your body.
- Why regaining contact with ourselves? To lead, steer and direct ourselves to accomplish our own particular opera that as a star it will contribute to the light of all the constellations of the firmament, general opera.
- Ask yourself then what is the purpose you want to give to your existence! To suffer, to put up with life or to be joyful and happy?
- How can you do it? Reaching your personal, natural, uncontaminated place. That place that has not been touched by the wounds inflicted, received humiliations and absorbed limiting conditioned believes. This is the place of your naturalness, and not of your normality. It is the light of your inner child before the world could get in.
- Everyone has the human-divine right to create himself a happy life, that fulfills him/her in a way that when you look at it, a spring of beauty arises from your heart .. “Ah, that’s so beautiful!”.
- The purpose of the Yoga of the Origins is not to train to detach from remorses and regrets to be able to die lightly and reach the Nirvana gracefully and forgetful of our own past. The purpose of the Yoga of the Origin is to help you creating a life that does not produce any kind of remorses and regrets at all! The better you live, the better you can pass away when the moment comes.
- Everything that happened has a meaning. Discover the sense as far as painful and hard it could have been, and now direct really yourself towards where you desire and long for.
- Creation is in continuos creative movement. What is good and right now could not be good and right afterwards. What fits here may not be fitting there.
- Everyone is a subject that lives his life according to subjective and personal experiences. Individual listening is of primary importance to create a social, collective community that is healthy and thriving.
- Give your yogic practices a scope that nourishes you, that elevates and frees you from social or archetypical conditioning believes that prevents you from blossom and experience a genuine, deep state of Well-Being.
- Honour your name, and honour who you are. Your I is a compass, a guide, your ship’s wheel that lets you not to dissolve in the infinite winds of the spirit and oceans of the soul. In the same way it tells you not to go into the fire, because it burns and you would get burnt, it is the guardian and tutor of your soul, but not to block it or suffocate it, but rather to support it, to accompany it in the journey of its full realisation.
- Every human creature can be considered as an individuality compound of: Spirit, Soul, Physical Body, Subtle Bodies and I. (The personality instead is that group of structures that the individual uses initially to protect himself but eventually ends up identifying himself with them, and this breaks his smooth proceeding)
- Whether you’re doing still asanas or fluid sequences, enter deeply in every posture and feel, feel, feel, perceive.. listen… as your body changes and what it transfers to you.
- Breathing: start breathing as you like but be completely present and aware. Try many different breathings. Is there some you don’t like? Some other you like it very much instinctively? Feel free you experiment yourself. Observe as a different respiration leads you to different states.
- The key is in your inner disposition and balance. Of course what you do counts, but above all it counts how you do it, the modality.
- Every type of breathing produces determinate effects. You will find practices with specific coordinated Pranayama. Choose what serves you and practice it with love and a feeling of discovery, observation and adventure towards the spectacle that is your body.
- The Yoga of the Origin leads you to become the conscious creator of your life. Every change of consciousness is real and effective only when also physical conditions of existence change! Otherwise it would only remain a mental speculation, sterile and empty.
- The driving force of the Yoga of the Origins is the fire of the Tummo (gtum mo in tibetan), the psychic fire that burns between our inner Father and Mother together united in ecstasy, it’s the love that unites the lovers, the heat of creation and therefore creativity.
*Father and Mother are meant as the masculine principle and the femminine principle united inside each of us.
Maddalena Premuti Bonetta 