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Mats
Germany
43 Posts |
 Posted - Oct 28 2023 : 8:50:56 PM
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Hi all,
do you take some form of practice into your daily activity? In the Secrets of Wilder, people use the I AM mantra in daily activity as well, not only during practice. Can the mantra be used to calm down, center yourself, find peace during the day? Is it advisable? |
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dcame
Canada
11 Posts |
Posted - Oct 29 2023 : 02:36:52 AM
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| ?Yes ? but keep in mind that meditation is not a Band-Aid designed to deal with only the crisis at hand. It is a long-term practice? (Lesson 25). |
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Christi
United Kingdom
4380 Posts |
Posted - Oct 29 2023 : 05:54:11 AM
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Hi Mats and dcame,
It is best to only use the AYAM mantra during your meditation practice on the mat. If you use it outside of meditation practice, then this could cause too much purification to happen. If we have free time, for example during the weekend, and have no responsibilities, then we can increase our practice sessions each day to three, or even four practice sessions. So, that would be a way of increasing our practice safely. But in general, stick to using the AYAM mantra only during practices.
Remember that the Secrets of Wilder book is a novel (fiction). AYP practices should be learned from the main lessons and lesson additions, and the Enlightenment series books.
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mountainrange
Sweden
12 Posts |
Posted - Oct 29 2023 : 2:27:04 PM
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This is just a feeling (and I'm not using the AYP technique), but I feel that the mantra can get a bit "worn out" if used outside of practice also. That's partly why I don't use mantra outside of practice, just like Christi writes.
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Dogboy
USA
2202 Posts |
Posted - Oct 29 2023 : 10:42:29 PM
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| Every day I bring some sort of yoga practice into my activities, mostly in the use of pranayama or intentional pose, especially in grounding outdoor activities like walking, gardening, shoveling snow and raking leaves. Waiting in lines or pumping gas, I practice balancing on one foot. Driving is a good time to shut off the radio and bring forth silence. In the dentist chair, one can practice SBP to calm the body. Sometimes under these circumstances (undergoing a procedure, or massage) I have fallen into inner arousal, and may use AYAM mantra to endure it, otherwise I keep the mantra to my sitting practice. |
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Blanche
USA
859 Posts |
Posted - Oct 30 2023 : 1:42:33 PM
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Hi Mats,
Only your imagination sets the limits of the possibilities to bring spiritual practices into your life. Look at the eight limbs of yoga and consider how they are part of your daily life. For example, ahimsa (non-violence) means not physically hurting other people and also not hurting animals, plants, and the planet. Then we realize that non-violence extends to our words and thoughts, to our decisions and intentions. Non-violence is directed not only to others, but equally to us. And so on. Use your imagination. And with practice, our level of understanding deepens, and the possibilities increase. Here is the magic of yoga: the practice is alive: we grow with it, and it grows with us. Dogboy gives you some other tips in the same direction.
We all met people who are in a place where everything seems to be met with resistance: they explain to you why no suggestion could possibly work for them. Instead of this attitude, we could choose to be open to possibilities, to whatever comes our way. Then everything becomes a teacher, and every moment a practice and an opportunity to learn. The entire life becomes a spiritual practice. Sometimes I imagine that everything and everybody is enlightened, and I am the last one here to find my way back home, with everything working to support this journey. 
[Edited to delete the question marks posted almost randomly in my response. I wonder if the support team could do anything about this new feature.]
Moderator note: The discussion on how to fix question marks appearing in text has been split to here. |
Edited by - Blanche on Oct 30 2023 1:48:07 PM |
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Mats
Germany
43 Posts |
Posted - Oct 30 2023 : 3:00:34 PM
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| Your answers are beautiful, thank you! I guess I had in mind some means to help calming down in the day when things get shaken up or the mind becomes agitated. Obvioulsy, the I AM mantra is not the thing to choose. Perhaps some breathing or awareness could do. |
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Blanche
USA
859 Posts |
Posted - Oct 31 2023 : 11:57:39 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Mats
I guess I had in mind some means to help calming down in the day when things get shaken up or the mind becomes agitated. Obviously, the I AM mantra is not the thing to choose. Perhaps some breathing or awareness could do.
You are right - both breathing and awareness would help maintain a calm or at least a calmer mind. Breathing exercises may be the easier and faster way to proceed. Any disturbance in the mind is accompanied by changes in breathing. Daily practice of at least 10 full yogic breath and 5 minutes of equal length inhalation and exhalation (e.g. count to 5 as you breathe in, and again to 5 as you breathe out - or whatever number is comfortable for you) will allow to develop the ability to calm the breathing and implicitly the mind. Do these pranayama exercises daily, and then start to use them when you notice that the mind and the breath become agitated. |
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Mithuna
France
7 Posts |
Posted - Dec 21 2023 : 2:49:47 PM
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Hi Mats,
In answer to your question, it seems to me that Yogani gives precise answers to the use of the mantra in everyday life in Lesson 59 - Some Mantra Particulars.
As far as I am concerned, I try to stay focused on my daily activities, which is Dharana concentration, and I have found that in the present moments in the middle of these periods of concentration, "the space between two thoughts?" the fact of letting the inner silence rise up in me as a beneficent source (it is indeed let it happen and not do it does not represent a break in the conduct and efficiency of my daily activity, but established a continuity with the state of consciousness experienced during my twice-daily episodes of deep meditation whose fruit, inner silence, endures like a beneficent spring that recenters me from the depths. This ascent concerns my consciousness but also my body because it is a rise of energy from the lower part of my body or a descent of my cerebral consciousness down my body, absorbing any disturbance and regenerating me.
In difficult moments, I have experienced to what extent letting the inner silence rise in an attitude of abandonment (pranidhanad) has allowed me to recharge my batteries and overcome them, often opening up perspectives foreign to my personal logic.
So to answer Mats' question, I don't use the mantra in everyday life, for me the mantra whose use is well described by yogani is an instrument intended to absorb mental fluctuations, like a metronome whose regularity disciplines mental wandering by practically performing the "chittas vrittis nirodas" (the suspension of mental fluctuations) which is the definition of Yoga according to Patanjali. However, I understand that for some, it can be a powerful lever to prolong this state in everyday life by mobilizing the potential of inner silence. This is the beauty of Yoga, as Yogani has integrated it, to give a set of coherent tools whose effectiveness is no longer to be proven. It is up to each of us to implement our own approach ? our Sadhana - according to our personality to move forward on the path towards wholeness.
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From practice to daily activity
