03 Dec The Five Levels of Experience
With the loving intention to flourish in this most continuous of long-term relationships—with ourselves—we can view the self as coexisting on five levels of experience: physical, energetic, emotional, mental, and interpersonal. Although these realms are innately interdependent—meaning they develop simultaneously—we will begin with what is most concrete, working towards the ever more refined.
AY STREAMS IN RELATION TO THE FIVE LEVELS OF EXPERIENCE:
“Build Up” – Structural Core Stability
FOUNDATIONS: Structural core stability is fundamental to overall body function. Our limbs can operate effectively only when our core is stable. True core stability is achieved when we can get our joints in neutral position and coordinate optimal breathing with the activation of our core’s deep muscles, and then sustain this approach throughout our daily activities. In this stream, we learn and develop an optimal core stabilization strategy so that we can improve our posture and move with greater ease and efficiency, while also lessening the likelihood of developing compensatory strategies that lead to tightness, dysfunction, and eventually, pain.
“Grow Up” – Energetic Core Stability
STABILITY: In this stream, we focus more on developing and maintaining strength, stamina, resiliency and adaptability in our muscles and joints to increase vitality and functionality in our physical system. Through repetition and conscious movement on the SUP and stability board, we significantly affect our musculoskeletal and neuromuscular system. This transforms the way we use our body in normal daily activity and prepares us for holding postures for extended periods of time. We also encourage an increased psychological capacity to rest in awareness in the face of often challenging sensations. This helps us identify not only our habitual movement patterns but also our psychological ones so that we can develop new ones that are adapted to the structural and functional needs of our body and mind. The inner methods provided with the poses allow us to become familiar, through the body-based practices, with ways to engage with the internal levels of our nature.
“Clean Up” – Emotional Core Stability
MOBILITY: Our focus in this stream is to cultivate pliancy in our muscles and joints, reducing muscle tightness, pain and the risk of injury, while enhancing flexibility and mobility. Our physicality is explored further, taking into account the health of our inner organs, and how they support our musculoskeletal system in movement and core stabilization. But that’s not all – we also delve into our emotional body, the dynamic vitality that animates our physical form and responds to changes in our moods and mind states. This inner energetic kaleidoscope reflects our physical health or sickness, our ease and upset. By recognizing our organs as the origin of our emotions, we learn to develop a felt sense of this invisible inner map, adjusting and upgrading this verdant terrain as well as our body-mind health on a day-to-day basis. Through balancing our belly, heart, and head centers, the seats of intuitive knowing, compassionate expression, and cognizant insight, we can achieve overall wellness. Our practice also addresses emotional and personality aspects of ourselves. We cultivate an openly curious attitude toward healing the wounds of our psyches, while enlivening our personal integration as we relate to all facets of our feelings and thoughts, including those we consider disturbing or distorted. By holding fragile emotions in a safe, attentive space, we learn more about the workings of our emotional expressions. Additionally, we find the deeper, quiet ground of presence underneath our swirling mindscape, dialoguing with different aspects of ourselves.
“Wake Up” – Mental Core Stability
MEDITATION: This stream relates to our mind states. Using mental observation and mind training from a Buddhist perspective, we learn to relax and appreciate our busy thinking mind, while also developing access to our intrinsic, naturally occurring awareness, which is spacious and effortlessly quiet. Once we have explored how to grow and develop more intuitive physical, energetic, and emotional perspectives from the previous streams, we are ready to turn back to the mental body we so often rely on exclusively, often to the detriment of developing these other integrated parts of ourselves. Here, we look at engaging with the ideas of suffering, personal responsibility, compassion, and training the mind.
“Show Up” – Spiritual Core Stability
LIVE YOUR YOGA: In this stream, we integrate developing healthy relationships. While the first four streams consider our personal and transpersonal experience, our invitation here is to apply them in your interpersonal encounters. With the continual healing of our inner system, we attempt to welcome the unpredictable domain of social contact and communication as not only a mirror of our inner life but also a most meaningful arena for expanding and expressing love. When we free ourselves from the fear and pessimism of chronic distrust in others, we can begin or continue to allow ourselves the natural vulnerability of wholesome intimacy and interconnectedness in all our interactions.
My hope is that even in the midst of life’s inevitable uncertainties and at times harrowing challenge, Aquanimous Yoga can offer a means to keep coming back to yourself. Even when we feel lost, we need not despair, as there is a reliable way to find ourselves again. Through connecting inwardly on multiple levels regularly (from the physical to the subtle), an integral path of awareness works to include all aspects of our humanness, both our light and our shadow. This internally engaged living allows us to uncover intrinsic meaning in ordinary moments by means of cultivating receptivity as well as growing a natural capacity to experience profound connections as we become more open-minded.
With regular practice, the changing nature of our fleeting lives can become a conscious journey of ever-growing maturity. As we awaken into each new day, pausing to realign ourselves with the mysterious forces of the universe dwelling within us, we will more regularly experience the joys of being a unique and benevolent bridge for creativity, love, and understanding.
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