“In each moment, I choose how I see and interact with the Universe.”
Natural Intelligence can never be exhausted or die. It is permeated with vital life energy that is both our birthright and our most natural way of being. Yet it can go “into hiding” when rigid or repetitive patterns of movement, breathing and belief systems override and suffocate its natural flow. These repetitive patterns are called “inertial schemes” meaning that they do not innovate, instead they just keep following the same old route, carving a rut in one’s system, physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically. But as we know from nature, where there is a rut, there must be an organic healthy ground material into which that “groove” was originally “carved.” Imagine that original material as your vibrant, healthy tissue. What is healthy always underlies even the symptoms that may seem unhealthy. As we move into our Yoga practices as a way of healing, we are more interested in the body-mind’s potential as a systemic whole, rather than specific symptoms. Our practices widen perception so that we might sense what DOES feel pleasurable and healthy first and expand that healthy sensation into “stuck” areas.
While you may come to a yoga practice to alleviate symptoms of pain, anxiety or disease, it is important to rest your intention on what is already healthy inside your living body. This is not a denial of symptoms, but a widening out to contribute your perceptive and mental energy beyond the narrow yet insistent symptoms. Include the message of the symptom in the much wider vista of what is healthy. In most cases, there is much more that IS healthy that not. Painful symptoms have a habit of “stealing the show” and we can send much of our energy focusing on how to eliminate them. As we allow our Yoga practice to improve our health, we acknowledge symptoms as indicators of unbalance that holdhealing solutions inherently within them.
The first guideline of focusing on the healthy is to be very aware of the inner habit of complaint and developing present moment awareness of what is happening now, acknowledging the emotions and feelings around that . . . yet letting things remain mutable and changeable rather than solidifying or justifying them through complaint.
Complaint consumes more vital life force energy than other action. Complaining takes you away from WHAT IS. Of course, we can state the way something is, and it may not be what we envisioned to be our ideal situation, but when we state the situation we must do so without giving it too much energy or creating an identity or life-story about it. It is simply the way things are at the moment and there is certainty of change. Complaint gives so much energy to what we are complaining about, that we create energy gobbling monsters out of what we wish to eliminate. Generally people complain because they feel victim to a certain situation and have the idea that they have no other choice.
So, instead of complaining, we invoke the positive. This is much more than just positive thinking. This is focusing on what already exists as healthy and expanding its vibrant charged power. By first shifting our focus to what is pleasurable, healthy and whole, we intentionally call upon the powerful vibration of healthy cells and tissue to help balance those that may at the moment be weak. It has been said that inherent in every “problem” is a solution. I have experimented enough with intention and invocation to know that this is undoubtedly true. We have to open and shift our perception to the WIDE instead of the narrow.
Intention is a way of creating movement by focusing mind and heart energy on what is already healthy. The Hawaiian shamans in the tradition of Huna teach a principle that says, “energy flows where attention goes.” This is intention and attention. Imagination is born out of this intention and is a vivid sensing and imaging in a full sensorial experience of what that healthy energy looks and feel like in our bodies now. Imagine what you would feel like, with all of your senses, if your body was pulsing with health and balanced energy. This is somatic imag-in-ation. When we couple intention with imagination, we create an invocation, a powerful calling in of the qualities of mental and sensorial energy that grows the intended/imagined experience into reality.
This vivid intentioning is sending messages to all the systems of your body, through the messenger of the nervous system to begin to create balance. The intention creates momentum and wide reaching direction. The sensorial imagination initiates various chemical and hormonal responses in throughout your system. A process of change is begun that is rooted in healthy, regenerative response rather than defense or attack.
It may take some time to create new mental, emotional and physical pathways towards health, but by remaining with your focus on what is already healthy, you will find threads of pleasure that expand toward what you feel as contracted or depleted, and these feelings of pleasure are nutrients for the system. This yoga practice is designed for exactly this. To focus on what is already healthy, to amplify that positive charge, to create an adaptable readiness of the body tissue for your healthy body-mind to support necessary changes towards a regenerative state of being. Healthy tissue, given the proper environment and encouragement grows faster and with more efficiency than disease.
Albert Einstein was known to say that we each have a choice to make: You can choose to live in either a friendly universe or a hostile universe. But you cannot live in both.
For me, this has been wisdom to live by. Try choosing to live intentionally in a friendly universe and see what happens. The friendly universe is where ALL that occurs is undeniably to your advantage and a vital part of the great turnings of the universe
Focusing on what is healthy is the first step to living in a friendly universe. It sets the tone for our practice and our lives. This shift of perception works very rapidly . . . so be prepared to feel your life change towards the positive and flow with the changes that that will bring.
This article is an excerpt from Ateeka's 2012 book: LOVE IS UNDER MY SKIN.
