By Swami Nirmalananda
You already know that yoga helps you with your aches and pains, and can even cure many conditions that stymie medicine. I am delighted to hear of every “miracle cure” and receive several reports every week. This is the starting point for most yogis, the motivation to make some changes in your life. In Svaroopa® yoga classes, we work diligently to help you with your body while showing you yoga is about a deeper inner experience. Once you have had a taste of your own Divine Essence, you know the real reason you are doing yoga. One student told me recently, “Holy cow! This is about something more!”
Perhaps you got the first taste of the vastness and depth of your own being in a well-propped Guided Awareness in Shavasana, as you surfaced from a deeply restful state. You may have even thought you took a short nap, yet you were not groggy from it at all. You were profoundly energized and deeply peaceful all at the same time.
Or perhaps you first realized that there was something going on when your teacher set you up in a seated pose, with blankets and props strategically placed to support the tensions in your body. That support made you able to settle into a profound stillness and ease, which was both physical and more than physical. This is especially wonderful after doing Seated Side Stretch.
You may have had the experience of lying in an easy pose, angled and propped for deep spinal release, and had an inner heat spread through your body. The deep spinal opening ignites an inner fire that expands from your core. It’s really amazing! It’s called the fire of yoga. It is the purpose of the spinal decompression — dissolving the inner blocks and awakening the fire of yoga.
This fire, like all fire, has the properties of both heat and light. The heat of the inner fire is your own inner radiance, and yoga makes you capable of experiencing it shining at full strength. The inner fire is the light of consciousness — which has become you and is being you right now. It is your own power of insight, the flash of creativity, the burst of joy that fuels your laughter or tears. This inner fire is the source of love; it is your own deepest knowing; it is an expansive fullness of inner beingness. This is Kundalini, a specialty of Svaroopa® yoga.
The tensions in your spine block your radiance from shining through your heart and mind. When a pose gives you a spinal release, the fire of yoga may flare up — it is not a hot flash! It may be brief or it may continue for a few minutes, feeling like your own portable sauna Svaroopa® yoga releases the core tensions so that you can experience yourself and your life in a new way. While the dissolving of these blocks is good for your body, much more opens up within you. The fire of yoga is melting the inner blocks even more profoundly than you can do with yoga poses alone.
How can you come to know this inner reality? Do more yoga! Do more Svaroopa® yoga!