Resolutions have been made. Many may have been broken, dismissed or forgotten by now. But what leaves me most curious isn't the nature of what those resolutions were and how they may have fallen. Rather it's a fascination with and appreciation for the nature of, and the complexity surrounding, discipline.

There's the discipline that we impose on ourselves from the mind, usually in reaction to an underlying dissatisfaction or self-recrimination. This discipline often involves the pursuit of a future satisfaction and may require a high degree of "control" over an aspect of our life that has been causing suffering.

When I've imposed this kind of discipline on myself, from my mind or from recrimination, it creates an underlying feeling of separateness - within me. My mind has been assigned the job of disciplining an aspect of my life - whether that's behavior, body, heart, or habits. Usually I end up revolting - for underlying this "discipline" is a more compelling and earnest lifelong desire to be at ease, whole and vital. And I can sense the infinite drain that "separateness" causes to my entire system, just as I sense the impact that our collective sense of separateness (asmita*) from each other has on our capacities for compassion, forgiveness, community, and harmony.

There is another kind of discipline that yoga and ayurveda point us to: alignment with deep wisdom (satchitananda*) and the rhythms of nature (doshas and gunas*). This includes aligning our thoughts, behaviors, and actions with consciousness, with radiance, with nature; and requires deliberate self-study (svadhyaya) and self-honesty (satya).

Coming to discipline out of a deep recognition of the preciousness of life, the immensity of love, or the reality of our interconnectedness with all that is creates a very different vibration than the discipline that arises from dissatisfaction with, and criticism of, ourselves. When we realize there are behaviors or thoughts that block us from being in the steady stream of consciousness and love, and we decide to be pro-active about change, we commit ourselves to a process of using love as our beacon. When we wander off into criticism, grasping, averting, or agitation, we are wandering into the land of samskaras - those mentally grooved pathways that trap us in avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha, and abhinivesa*.

Samskaras have both a mental and physiological impact on us, so we can catch ourselves in the grip of a samskara whether we're feeling mentally agitated or physically fatigued.

Consider this...you wake up in the morning feeling groggy, foggy, uninspired, obligated. You would prefer to wake up feeling vital, connected, motivated, expansive. Perhaps there are things that give you a bit of a boost - the morning news, caffeine, an e-mail blast, burning muscles at the gym. And you do get a charge and are able to head to your daily responsibilities with more energy.

But have you inquired into what creates the morning fog? Have you examined the groggy state to see if it's physical, mental, psychological? Is it just the result of last night's restless sleep or deeper questions of scheduling, diet, exercise, exposure to specific kinds of stimulation that nourish, deplete, or overwhelm you? Have you tried addressing the fog with remedies that are directed at your life vitality, such as morning pranayama, dry brush massage, hot and cold shower, brisk movement, meditation?

The discipline required for these kinds of "research projects" is the same discipline required to dissolve a mental samskara. It requires diligence, patience, and surrendering our need for quick results. It is best supported by having love, vitality, and radiance as your beacons (as opposed to fitting into a pair of jeans or losing a certain number of pounds). Sometimes the shifts are incremental, but every ounce on a see-saw makes a difference!

Understanding the gunas and the doshas will give us tremendous insight into our own habits and our path through the landscape of discipline and change. Transformation is not just short-term relief; it is a radical commitment to the intelligence of life. Join us on Tuesday, January 26th for a Dharma Study Group focused on the nature of discipline.

• asmita: ego, separateness
• avidya: ignorance
• raga: desire
• dvesha: aversion
• abhinivesa: fear
• satchitananda: truth, wisdom, bliss
• gunas: energy patterns in nature
• dosha: constitution, composed of elements of nature (we have personal doshas and there are daily and seasonal rhythms for doshas)
  

For my personal reflections about discipline, I'm reading A New Earth by Eckart Tolle, The Inner Tradition by Michael Stone, The Heart of Yoga by Desikachar, The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello, and Love is God by Eknath Easwaran.

This month's muscle focus has been the hip flexors and their relationship to the posterior pelvic muscles. Specifically, if we want to create more openness in the hip flexors, we have to simultaneously create more strength in the gluteus maximus and hamstrings. We've been researching two hip flexors - rectus femoris and sartorius - and gradually addressing more of the strength issues for glutues and hamstrings. The muscle of note for the remainder of the month is your gluteus maximus (one of your main butt muscles!).

 
A useful book for your self-study on this would be The Concise Book of Muscles, available in the lobby.

based on the seasonal changes & our evolution as students

This month's focus - until I depart for Thailand - will be on poses that prevent kapha from getting stagnant. Stagnant kapha (composed of earth and water) resembles a stick in the mud - stuck, inert, dull, lethargic.

These are poses for opening digestion, opening the path of apana vayu, and practices that are heating enough to burn off the kapha stagnation symptoms without stirring agitation. This includes hip openers, standing poses such as side warrior and side angle, and poses that support digestion, such as reclined hero and head to knee pose, headstand and shoulderstand.
 

• Level 1: parsvakonasana

• Level 1-2: anjaneyasana & variations

• Level 2: eka pada setu bandhasana

• Level 3: eka pada setu bandhasana transition to halasana and sarvangasana