Free Your Mind

(wave crashes) Namaste, family. Welcome back. This practice today, we're really gonna focus on freeing our minds. Often times it's said that all asana practice or all practice is meant to create, lay the seat, and pave the path for meditation, for seated meditation practice. Because the yogis realized it was so challenging.

So all these different points of focus and concentration so that the mind could focus, dharana is this concentration which leads to dhyana, this state of meditation, and then the absorption happens, which is samadhi, this complete yoking of consciousness to the infinite, but that focus, of course, is so important, so that the mind can begin to move from all of its chatter and to begin to be guided in one point, one pointed. So we're going to do some mantra, we're going to do a little bit of asana, and then really to begin to create the space to stand on our heads, the crown chakra is called the sahasrara, which means thousandfold, infinite, the Buddha's sometimes seen with this thousand-petaled cap on the top of his head, as a symbol of the awakening. He too tried everything, right, all the different paths of extremism and finally, maybe because he was just tired but he sat down (laughs) and he realized that it was right here, and in his middle path, and you know, what we think is what we become. But standing on the crown of the head, and to begin to open it up, really does shift this great perspective, and stimulates the crown, stimulates this opening that we have to be connected to the infinite, and the possibility of enlightenment, to become awake. So we're gonna start with the dhyani mudra, so that's the mudra of meditation, where you place your right hand down, and then your left hand on top of it, and then you press the fingertips together.

This really stimulates the brain and the endocrine system for sure, and the mind, but mostly, it's meant to be this empty bowl. Alright, the empty bowl. There's a point in Samadhi. It's called Nirbija, that's without seeds, that's without continually creating new patterns where the mind is completely free and that this rebirth happens in our mind, alright, in our minds. So we get to be empty.

To be able to place the mind on something is really important, so on the chapter on Samadhi, the first chapter in the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali gives so many different recommendations. Meditate on this and meditate on that and try this and try that. Actually, if nothing works, come up with something yourself, but find something (laughs). A mantra is usually great, so if you have one, you can begin to use one. Until one really makes sense to you, you can choose any word that's uplifting.

Thank you, I love you, the intention's really, really important. There's a wonderful mantra that I love and it's simply So-Hum. It's called that ajapa mantra so that's, ajapa is this continual repetition that can be on a word, but the ajapa is already happening within you. It's meant to be the sound of the breath. It's meant to be So on the inhale and Hum on the exhale and it simply means I am that, that I am.

I am that, that I am. It doesn't say what (laughs). It doesn't say what and that's the point. The yogis realized we have a body, we do have this body, but that's not all of who we are. We have a mind.

That's not all who we are. We have a past and thank god that's not who we are. We have all sorts of ups and downs, challenges, great joys, but they are not who we are. Who are we? We get to discover that.

Fully, this infinite self that exists within everything. And as you sit up tall, you can repeat after me. You can listen. It's kind of silly and it's supposed to. I practiced this one with my great friend and teacher Dana Flynn.

Sometimes we just had to laugh at ourselves. But we're gonna sing So-Hum. It's kind of like the blues, bluesy kind of tone to it. Then, you can begin to add whatever it is that you want on top of it. â?« So-Hum So-Hum Your turn.

â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum You can sing with me. â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum Here we go. You can add what you want. â?« I am not my body â?« My body is not me â?« I am not my body â?« My body is not me â?« I am not my cell phone â?« My cell phone is not me â?« I am not my Instagram images â?« My Instagram images are not me (laughs) â?« I am not my outfit (laughs) It's a cool outfit though, right? â?« My outfit is not me â?« I am not my outfit â?« My outfit is not me You can add on your hairdo.

You can add on whatever you want to continue to remind yourself, slowly peeling away the layers of all you're not. So you can get to who you are. â?« I am love itself â?« I am love itself â?« I am love itself â?« I am love itself â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum â?« So-Hum So-Hum Take you to that space of silence. Where we hear back who we are as the true self has been longing for you as you've been longing for it. Take one more breath in.

You're empty bowl, empty mind. Open up your eyes. Let's move around a little bit together. So come on over onto your hands and your knees. You can slide your padding out to the side.

We're gonna prepare to stand on our heads, crown chakra. You can start in a child's pose. You can let your head really rock again. It's such a wonderful place to start your practice, emptying. Dropping into your breath, that sound.

You can make it a little more audible and ujjayi, that whisper, So-Hum. I am that, that I am. Everything else around us changes, this Prakriti, but there's the eternal, the Purusha. And breathe in. And right from here, begin to rise on up onto your shins.

Then you can lift your arms up and into the sky. At the top of your inhale, you can even grab a hold of your elbows and then dive back and in. I like to call these the Tibetan prayer flags, right? Like those wind horse flying in the Himalayas, carrying their great messages. Tibetan breathing and inhale up.

The exhale anytime can become a little bit more powerful so it is this kapalabhati kriya or cleansing and freeing of the mind. It can get as dynamic as you want or slow. (inhales) (exhales) And one more time. (inhales) (exhales) And then rise up nice and tall and free. Then, this time as you exhale, you're gonna have a seat over onto the right side and onto your hips.

Then, just twist and sitting up tall and revolving, twisting from the spine and the spiritual spine, the Sushumna, clearing out those blockages. And inhale your arms back up and take it over to the other side, wringing it out, the microcirculation around the spine. Then circle the right hand to join the left that you can tent the fingertips for a moment to look up and then interlace your hands behind your back and you're gonna roll onto the crown of your head, float your hips off of your heels, and that's just this little rocking. Not too much pressure. Then right from there, rise on up.

You're gonna step your left foot forward for this first one. The hands can interlace behind your head, you can imagine that great thousand-petaled mind, infinite, the Sahastra. And then press your palms up to the sky and then swivel onto the back shin so that your right shin's gonna come parallel with the top of your mat and then have a seat on your heel just for a breath. Hands can come into a prayer as you twist and expand upward, paving this great seat for stillness, silence. Then from there, you're gonna burst to the back of your mind and expand into your infinite self.

Your left arm can come up and over your head. You can just take a great arch back. Circle your left hand down. You are gonna come into a little bit of a floating pigeon and then a nice soft one, so you don't have to drop all the way down, but just come onto the fingertips, allow the hips to sink down so it's creating the nice seat for our meditation. Then, it's called raja, this great royal, like you have this great crown on your head, the great crown of the meditative mind.

As you step back, it's downward-facing dog. Roll forward into a plank pose. Come back into your child's pose. And a few more of these as you rise up and exhale, clear it out. Rise up, exhale.

One more time to rise up, breathe out. Rise up and then have a seat, twisting over your left shoulder this time. Inhale up, exhale over the right side. Interlace your hands behind you, take a big breath in, lift your chest. Exhale, roll onto the crown of your head.

Float your hips up, rock a little bit back and forth. Then swing on up and you're in anjaney. Interlace the hands behind your head, bloom out through the back of the skull. So your lifting up through the occipital ridge, breathing wide. Press your palms up and then swivel onto the left shin so that you're having a seat and then open up the inside of that right knee.

Side plank, stretch. We get to stretch our thinking and perception. Spin it back to the front of your mat, float a little bit. I know this is kind of strange, but it feels kind of nice in the hips, before you place it down. Towards parallel with the top of your mat, sink down in your royal-ness, your highness, the highest point right there.

And then step into your downward-facing dog. You can move it through a vinyasa, it can be Chaturanga, an upward dog, or it can be knees, chest, and chin. And cobra. We'll all meet back in downward-facing dog. Inhale your right leg up and into the sky.

Then begin to slide your right shin forward again and you're gonna be in your pigeon. So keep the back toes tucked under. We're just sinking here just for a moment and then launch off those back toes. If you can step the right foot between your hands, seal the back heel to the ground. You're gonna come right into a devotional warrior.

So the feeling in this one is again to drop the head as far down to the ground as you can possibly go. Then from there, press into the right foot so that you can rise up into vir one. Then you'll parallel the toes, still keeping this great channel open. Before you begin to take the crown of your head towards the ground, you can stand back a little bit. If your head doesn't easily come to the ground, a block is nice to place there, but to have contact here with the ground so your head can gently come to the earth as you begin to rock it forward and backwards a little bit.

Then your hands can come to the ground so it's just this play lifting up your heels and taking them down, rocking forward and back, stimulating and awakening the center of rebirth. Then from here, walk on out just to the inside of the right foot so that you can come into a lizard. Big breath in. You can soften the forearms to the ground and then it's a little bit of a transition, it is, back into this lizard plank, a lizard plank. Then interlace your fingers as you begin to send your hips back.

So this is a dolphin and a wonderful prep for Sirsasana A. You can put a little bend through your knees, allow your hips to sink down, and then release your knees to the ground, climb back onto your hands, downward-facing dog. You can move through a vinyasa. Exhale into downward dog and then breathe your left leg up to the sky. Again, float forward before placing your shin down.

Walk your hands back, a big breath in. Devotional, press the ground away, seal the right heel, and then interlace your hands behind you allowing your head to come towards the ground. Your outer right heel might lift up or the back edge. Press into the left foot so you can rise up and then parallel the toes. Pause just for a moment and then dive it forward and down.

Come onto your head, rock a little bit, and then this time my hands, do you see them? The backs of my hands are coming to the ground. So I'm pressing into the tops of the hands and then playing with this lifting of the heels. Walk your hands back. Do the inside of the left hip.

Take your left forearm down, your right forearm down, swing your legs back, send your hips high, walk your feet forward, interlace the fingers, dolphin, and then you can just play a little bit. It absolutely does begin to strengthen the arms a little bit. I saw dolphins swimming up and out of the ocean. You want to take it forward and back a couple times and then send your knees to the ground. Come into a child's pose and then rise on up to sit and slide your mats over to the wall so we can have, even if you have an ongoing headstand practice just so that you can feel the support of the wall and not too much stress in the neck and the shoulders.

We're gonna do a couple playful variations with them too. So take it a little bit closer. You can take a mat there. I'm not the biggest fan of a blanket just 'cause sometimes it's a little bit too squishy, but if the crown of your head isn't all calloused like mine is, you may need some extra padding. Actually, if you wanted a little extra padding, I'd be more of a fan of folding over your sticky mat so that you're really stuck in place, but absolutely choose what would be best for you so that you can enjoy your headstand practice.

First one. So we're gonna come up through Sirsasana A. The whole goal, of course, is to not hop and to really begin to unfurl up like everything from this great rooted space can begin to blossom, what we nurture and what we begin to tend to. So with the crown of your head to the ground so it's kind of the balance between just the head and that forearm exploration we were doing, but it's taking this crown and that same type of dhyana mudra so that the thumbs are lengthening the back of your skull and the pinkies are sort of inside each other. Then you can take that empty cup of your skull.

One of my first yoga teachers would say, "Now free the brain from it's casing," and I didn't know what that meant, but it always sounded so good. So that the mind can be this nice empty cup and then tuck your toes under. Begin to lift your feet up and then as you begin to walk in a little bit, the practice is that you press down and your hips want to come as far forward as they possibly can. Maybe the toes can begin to lift off the ground a little bit as you press down. The play can be to lift one foot in and then the other one.

If this is really new for you, then absolutely find the wall, but just practice not the kicking. So everything in it's own time, alright. So one way or another, you'll come up, maybe it's two legs at once. Then rise up. So maybe first the heels are on the ground so that you can find some nice long length through the back of the body.

So it's like Tadasana where you're standing on the earth. Then press down into your forearms so that you can lift your head up. I call this the headless headstand, but you'll see how much strength is in the forearms and then place your head down with not all the pressure on there. Then you can explore taking your feet off the wall. Then from here you can still begin to gather everything in towards center.

Then the play is gonna be to do a couple of different arm variations so your heels can be on the wall or you can play with boom, taking your right arm away (laughs) and then boom, so your feet can catch the wall if they're there. It's a nice little play. Ah. Then you can crawl back. This way.

Then, this one, I have to take my heels to the wall. There, you can let go. (laughs) Then take your hands back down. They can climb back up and around your head. From here, a nice thing to do which might feel great in the chest is to actually come up into forearm stand.

So unfurl the hands, lift your head up, and float for just a moment. Then begin to make your way down. (inhales) Let's take a few moments in child's pose. Let the head rock a little bit from side to side. Then come up to sit so that you can experience that empty mind, free of all those identities we put on ourselves.

We want to slowly disengage who we are, from our thoughts, from all the different roles, from our past. It's so entangled up in there. Anything that we can begin to place our mind on that removes it, the past, the future. Find these points of focus. Ride into the breath.

You can find your mudra one more time. Empty mind. Then from here we're gonna take a few moments in a restorative inversion which'll free the neck up, but it's kind of a restorative shoulder stance. Some padding is really nice underneath the sacrum, so it still has that parasympathetic response in the heart being over the head, but without any effort. Come a little bit to the side.

Let your sacrum come to the blanket and then free your legs up the wall. You can press into your head so that you can slide the shoulder blades a little bit closer together and then place them down allowing the legs to reach up to the sky. It's this great river that pours over. This is even meant to be this sacred mudra where the nectar or the amrita is released and usually it goes right into the digestive fire, the agni, but in this one, it's meant to be caught, this nectar of immortality. That secretes from the pineal gland right there at the crown of the head.

Your immortal self. As the great yogic anthem sayings lead me from the untruth, this ignorance, or avidya, to the truth, from darkness, or tamas, to light, from fear of death to the knowledge of my immortal self. Slowly begin to bend your knees back in towards your chest. Roll off your padding and onto your right side. Come forward onto your hands and your knees.

Then come back up to sit so that we can practice a little meditation. We're gonna finish off today's practice with a few rounds of nadi shodhana breathing, so that's alternate nostril breathing where we are balancing the hemispheres of the brain so that it can begin to open up at the central column. So it's clearing nadi are these streams and then shodhana is the purification. So it's unblocking and unlocking these channels so that we're this infinite river, ocean, energy, cosmic consciousness. That sounds cool.

So another mudra for meditation: join the thumb and index finger together of your left hand in jnana mudra. I love mudras because they put so much intention into my practice and into my life and bring it down to the fingertips. This one symbol, it is like a ring, like a marriage or this union with the true self, alright, with the inner self, but within the gunas, right. So those are the forces of nature. That's what's always changing.

Our physical bodies, this world is changing. The only constant is this change and within all of that, it's this yoking to, it's called purusha, or our truest and infinite deathless self. So you can place that onto your left hand and then I like to do the rotation of the nostrils taking my peace fingers old-school, peace mudra, and place that towards the third eye so your third eye is gonna open, but then do drop your head in so that you want to keep the prana in and the bandhas engaged a little bit, especially jalandhara. So it kind of lifts up, but then you're dropping down and then you're gonna alternate your nostril between your thumb, your right thumb, and your right ring finger. You can gently place them on top of your thumb on your right nostril and then your ring finger on your left nostril and then we're gonna alternate nostrils.

Kind of like playing, a musician, a great master. So you'll breathe in through both nostrils even right up into the crown of the head. There's prana vayu. Pause for a moment, the top of your inhale into this infinite space and then exhale everything back out and down. Inhale one more time.

Then block off your left nostril and exhale through the right. Inhale right (inhales). Gently block off the right and exhale through the left. Inhale left (inhales). Pause and exhale right.

Inhale right (inhales). Pause and exhale left. Inhale left (inhales). Exhale right. Inhale right (inhales).

Pause and exhale left. Inhale left (inhales). Exhale right. Last one to breathe in right. (inhales) And exhale left.

Release your hand, your right hand. Sit up tall and then even just flip your hands down onto your thighs. You can slide the hands back just a little bit which'll draw the shoulders back. Allow your heart to open. But then do soften the front of the ribs and the belly back a little bit so that you can feel the strength of the back body while it's soft and vulnerable in the front.

So your face is soft, your belly and your heart, but you have this great support of the back body and the earth. So we sit up tall and regal in ourself. Raja. It's a beautiful word for our practice, the royal path. Keep your lips soft and your face gentle and a lot of the time meditation happens with the eyes closed, but in this one, your eyes are just a tiny bit open.

Sometimes it's called Shiva's drunken gaze, right. This intoxicated state of oneness. Shiva and Shakti begin to merge. So your gaze is just gently at the earth, commitment to stay awake, conscious, but within the world. Then simply place your mind on your breath as it is, no need to affect it in any way.

You can let go of the ujjayi. It's as it is, as you are, as this world is. Within it. The last instruction is that you place your mind, like I said, on the breath, but when you notice you're thinking, there's no judging, but it is a labeling thinking for what it is. Then come back to your breath on the exhale.

This way, you are this engaging and untangling your identity from your thoughts, continually coming back into your breath. We're gonna sit here together for a few moments. Those simple instructions: sitting up tall, mind on the breath, labeling thinking. We label ourselves with so many things, but we can just label our thoughts as they are, not good or bad. Could be a thought with its whole storyline attached, but it's a thought.

It's not who you are. Then you're welcome to sit here and meditate for as long as you like. You can set a timer. If you're ready to get back to your beautiful life, then go ahead and sit up tall. Take your hands to your heart in prayer.

And breathe on in with the sound of om. â?« Om Namaste. Namaste. Thank you for joining me again and I will see you next time.