Radiance Lessons

For the last few months I used short readings from "The Radiance Sutras" by Lorin Roche (buy the book here) as inspiration for my yoga classes.  "The Radiance Sutras" are interpretations of verses from an ancient text more formally called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, an articulation of 112 methods of meditative experience.  Many of my students were very touched by these verses, so I'm recording them here, along with a rather free-form sketch of my teaching focuses for each verse.

"In any quiet moment when you are breathing, the breath may flow out and pause of itself, or flow in and pause of itself."

Class Focus - Attending to the pulsation of the breath as a guide.  Refining the breath, trusting it, and learning from it.  Waiting.  Listening to where the breath comes from.  Movement informed by breath.  Ease of breathing the most important thing.  Every breath in is a rebirth, every breath out is a connection to the source.

"Worship means offering your heart to the vast mystery of the universe.  It means being so devoted that you are willing to dissolve and be recreated in every moment."

Class Focus - Asana as an ephemeral, temporary art form, always coming into being, and then dissolving forever.  Seeing the preciousness of our imperfection and heartfelt efforts; offering that to the highest evolution.  What are you so devoted to that you would allow yourself to dissolve into it? 

"Experience the substance of the body and the World as made up of vibratory particles, and these particles made up of even finer energies.  Noticing this, breathe easily with infinity dancing everywhere."

Class Focus - Pulsation.  Attend to the inner pulse continuously.  Sensing into the subtleties of the micro-circuitry of the body.  Nothing is ever locked, solid, or hopeless.  Everything is shifting, changing, and rearranging itself.  No pose is ever repeated exactly the same; creativity is boundless.

"Attend to the skin as a subtle boundary, containing vastness.  Enter that shimmering, pulsing vastness."

Class Focus - Inner Body Bright.  Letting the skin breathe and expand out, like a knitted garment that opens flexibly.  The skin barely contains the sparkling, light-filled, creativity-infused power of aliveness that is wanting to express itself.  The outer body is in love with the inner body.

"The spine has secret passageways to the subtle dimensions of life.  Attend to the spine, gushing with radiant spaciousness."

Class Focus - Allowing the spine to be the central awareness in every pose.  Feeling the thickness of the spine in the body, its substantial support, and also sensing into the spine as a conduit of light, a tall pillar of golden light up the center of the body.  The midline as a sense of space filled with sparkles.

"The soul reveals itself to itself through gesture of hand, foot, spine, face and body.  The invisible loves the visible."

Class Focus - The body itself as a vessel of divinity, every movement infused with artful grace and potent vision.  The body as a way the Divine gets to dance, sing, and move in the world.  Asana as an expression of ultimate freedom.  The bound nature of being human as an opportunity to experience liberation.

"The mind stops its building of thoughts and rests on its own foundation, which is immensity.  The light that you see by is the light that comes from inside."

Class Focus - Foundation of any pose is what touches the earth.  Foundation as a meditative object, so mind settles even in the midst of a challenging asana.  First Principle of Anusara Yoga - Set the Foundation/Open to Grace or perhaps Set the Foundation in order to Open to Grace?  Anchoring the mind to the foundation creates the conditions for an expanded experience of the pose/life/being.