Why is yoga powerful, why do we practice, what should we teach?

As I prepare to teach the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind teacher training in Venice, Ca. and 5-day retreat to Esalen with my favorite friend and colleague Hala Khouri, I find myself asking the above questions.

The standard answer usually starts with – “Well, Patanjali says….” But I am not so sure Patanjali’s Sutras speak directly to the experience of modern American yogis. I mean, how many yogis do you know who are engaging in long hours of concentration meditation, seeking to dis-identify with the world, their bodies and minds and make contact with a transcendent God that exists outside of Nature?

So I want to share my 5 top reasons to practice and teach the powerful transformational discipline of yoga:

1) Yoga can be a beautiful way of getting comfortable in your own skin, coming home to your body, becoming more alive and aware, energized and open to life and love. Rather than seeking to go beyond the body, yoga is for most of us a way to reclaim an awareness of the body itself as sacred.

2) Yoga makes sex better! Yeah, you heard me – I said it… Yoga systematically makes us more aware of our sensations and trains us in the art of using breath to open into our experience rather contract away from it or attempt to clamp down and control it. This makes us more available to the dance of intimacy, plethora of sensations and waves of pleasure that can turn sex into a mind-blowing form of embodied spirituality – or just make it more satisfying and rich, which as far as I can tell is really the same thing..

3) Yoga gives us time and space to connect to our inner lives. Sensations, emotions, the accrued layers of stress and anxiety, questions we carry about our choices, actions, intentions, desires – all can be meditated upon as we use the ritual of breath and movement to focus the mind, connect to the heart, listen to the body and reflect upon how we really want to live our lives.

4) Yoga can be fantastic physical therapy. In both a healing and preventative way, yoga can be used to promote healthy flexibility, strength, and range of motion. Practiced with intelligence and taught with anatomical knowledge, yoga just works!

5) Yoga can be an integrative vehicle for self-healing. More and more information from science and psychology demonstrates the healing benefits of yoga and meditation. Somatic psychology research and new data from neuroscience show the importance of mindful present attention and body awareness in rebalancing the nervous system, processing through unresolved emotions in the brain and healing from trauma stored on the body. This is real transformation.

In addition to the deep human need to come together with community and engage in meaningful activity around a shared intention, to connect and experience together in safe spaces that allow us to open up and grow and heal and see ourselves reflected in our tribe, the above five reasons to practice and teach are central to what I feel makes yoga powerful – what do you think?

Oh wait, what’s that? You are wondering why the emphasis on sex in the title of this piece… Perhaps it is merely sensationalist?

Well,  if you think about it: healing traumas, keeping your body healthy, strong and flexible, being in touch with your inner life, and being comfortable in your own skin all make you more able to be present in your own body and connect with empathy, intuition, passion and playfulness with your partner’s body. Seeing as how our sexual nature is a core (and I would suggest innately spiritual) intimate aspect of who and what we are, all of this indeed makes sex better. In turn better sex is an expression of healthier relationships in a more integrated, open, authentic and ecstatic human life!

We also haven’t even touched upon the exquisite transformational possibilities of learning to work with what are traditionally thought of as Kundalini kriyas in the kinds of prolonged full-bodied sexual, emotional and deep physical release that make even a non-theist Buddhist cry out “Oh God!”

I’ll save that for my next article…

{A quick note for those thinking of taking the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind training: don’t worry, Patanjali will get his due, but alongside the beautiful tantric Radiance Sutras, training in Buddhist  meditation and tools from somatic psychology and brain research…}