So, to review, archetypes are types of arcs to a wave pattern of energy. We encounter as many as there are forms in creation. There are major ones, minor ones, personal ones (like victim, hero etc.) and impersonal ones (like winter, spring, summer and fall). As we develop witness consciousness, we hold our awareness in the center and experience the wave moving through us without getting swept away.
The ground of a good yoga practice is to yoke or join together the various archetypes of consciousness as the periphery in equal proportion to the center which is known variously as the nondual, Brahmin, universal, God-awareness.
The path of a good yoga practice is to learn how to set up your pose to create a standing wave of energy to move through you. We do this to get insights about the archetypes we harbor in our unconscious, archetypes that shape our drives and make us crazy. At any moment, you are either identifying and resonating with your ego or identifying and resonating with the Divine. Ego identification, in the words of Buddha, brings suffering. Divine identification brings freedom, joy and bliss. It is crazy to continue choosing suffering over freedom. So, the yoga practice shows you where the most dense, habitual part of you (your body) continues to unconsciously create the conditions for the archetypes that bring suffering to move through you.
Practitioners who know how to work with the archetypes of solar and lunar waves know that the transition points (between the seasons and at the new and full moon) are especially potent. At these times, the heavens are setting up standing waves that can be catalysts for our transformation.
Standing waves occur when 2 waves of identical frequency move through a defined medium in opposite directions. When they meet, the old pattern gets disrupted causing a new wave pattern ( the standing wave) to appear. If the boundaries of the form are weak, the increased force of the meeting vortexes just dissipates. This is why we see many stormy days before spring has sprung.
There are several ways we manipulate form and flow to create standing waves in a yoga pose. When building the form, think of your pose as a mandala. Then it will have geometric integrity that carries its own archetypal charge. The ancients did not use mandalas and geometric forms are mere decoration. They knew the deep symbolism inherent in them. Geometry is the universal language. Geometric forms have information encoded in them. They are the matrixes underlying forms in nature, consciousness and thought. The circle is unity; its center is the central generative point. An axis is the meeting of opposites. The vertical axis is the river where personal and transpersonal energy meet. The cross is the intersection where God and man meet. The square is a stable form capable of creating order out of chaos.
The fruit of a good yoga practice comes when you know how to hold the center and charge the form. Then the conversation begins. It is a conversation between your human self and your divine self. This is really the ultimate mindfulness practice because you fix your attention, body and breath on the NOW. Can you be equanimous? Where ever you say NO is where life is stopping you in this moment of NOW. Stay rooted, refine your form, build your charge through your breath. Everytime you want to muscle through, stop and surrender to form and flow so you don't push the wave. You let it roll through. When you feel the forces against you, find your directions and open up. The spaceous center will set you free.
Dear Elizabeth, There is so much within your writing and teaching that flows through my mind and body throughout the day. I muse on many things I wish to share about, and it is a challenge to choose one thing to develop within the context of this medium, but I feel so grateful for the abundance of information you present that offers me open exploration and fascination, and love that I don't have any problem sharing something, more choosing what I wish to share about. Thank you. These teachings on waves and types of arcs have expanded my sense of energy flow dramatically. I know well not to flatten or straighten any parts of my body despite that I do need to clock or line up within the planes and use geometry, so I explore arcing and spiraling in many ways. One day in class (I believe it was the day before my forty fourth birthday, this being significant as 44 is an 8), you guided me into making a figure 8 between my pubis and my coccyx. As opposed to getting them to clock straight front or straight back with a flat pull which I am sometimes prone to do, the swirling curve of the the counter-clockwise approaching tip of the endless, eternal, symbol-of-infinity figure eight looped my pubis and centered it in a very giving way because within the loop of the other end of the eight, my tail gently tethered it. It felt like an equestrian who guides his horse with the gentle tethering of the perfectly conditioned leather reins. A seasoned life-purpose-fulfilling equestrian would be looped to his as-familiar-to-him-as-himself horse in this way. I felt I could rein in my pubis through looping it within that endlessly arcing energy of the figure eight to my tail bone. It also has the capacity to change the way I can sense my perineum as either a saddle or if I am riding bareback, the glorious arcing curve of the horses back, which arches in turn back into the haunch and forward into the neck. Reining in (reigning in) my pubis has the majesty of what a true equestrian must feel, and perhaps is the reason why riding often accompanies royalty - the ones who reign hold the reins. The throne I am becoming accustomed to inhabiting and utilizing can be very softly and expansively engaged by these looping, arcing energies. I watched a movie with a woman riding a horse along a beach and perceived not just the arcs of her spine and the arcs of the horse, but the wave of energy that they encompassed between them. This must be archetypal within the arcs and waves, but also within the way the horse and rider become one within these energies. I wish to engender this within my poses, and see if it gives me a sense of being able to allow the wave to flow through me. You asked in the teaching "Can you be equanimous?" Maybe becoming equestrian or equus will assit me in that exploration. Maybe the archetype of the king reining in his horse which becomes him will be how I become the wave.
Posted by: Tim Driscoll | March 12, 2008 at 08:19 PM