the importance of consistency with our practices

                           

sometimes it takes a while to find what suits us

Personally, I absolutely believe in trial and error in working out what works best for us. Then, and I feel that this is important, when we find out what suits us best, for our personality, our body, our time, our life, sticking with it, as much as possible, until it is time to change things. This is one of the easiest ways to have a yoga practice, and makes it easy for us to maintain it.

I know that we see very beautiful and charismatic photos and videos of amazing yoga practitioners doing incredible poses. In all of my years of practicing yoga, there were some postures that I just could not do. Ever. But my focus was on something else with yoga: deep spirituality. 

And when we are after the experience of the inner realms, we need something else other than physical agility: we need structure, and consistency.

our body steps up for routine

It has been found that if we do deep breathing at a particular time each day, our body starts responding to this regularity about thirty minutes prior, by increasing our breathing capacity. So we get a head start. I cannot remember when or where I read this, it was quite a few years ago. Based on just the breathing aspect, we could safely assume that our body also starts "acting as though" we are doing some asanas, prior to us actually starting, and that our brain responds also with getting into a relaxed yet energised state, in preparation for meditation. In this way, we are getting double effects.

When our body and mind complex starts to get regularity in our life, our hormonal structure comes into a rhythm. This is one of the reasons why yoga people look so youthful. Our glands are working well, and therefore our body is also working well, for the glands are involved with many of our body functions. 

The glands also have an intimate relationship with the chakras. So there is chakra stimulation involved too. Surya Namaskara, sun salute, is the easiest way for overall glandular and chakra stimulation. And most of us can do a variation of surya namaskara, whether easy or hard. Pick a number of sun salutes that you can do and maintain. Then stick with this, whether it's three rounds, or ten. Add a twist, even as a dynamic warm up, and an inversion such as bridge pose, or half shoulderstand...which can be done against the wall, if needed. This gives us a doable, easy to maintain posture session. And another thing: our bodies, including our brain impulses, they will come to expect this, and will be ready. Responding 'as if', prior.

our bodies need and work with, consistency

We will also be creating "tracks" in our brains and nervous systems. Pathways and brain wave patterns. We have lots of tracks, already, from our thinking and feeling patterns. This is one of the ways that our nervous system operates. What happens with a consistent, doable, yoga practice, is we start to build new tracks, and have a more relaxed, and therefore happier, brain wave pattern. 

The thing is with creating new tracks, it needs regularity for this to happen. So we have a happy sensation, and it will create a weak pathway though the brain. If we continue to have this sensation, in this case it's a happy experience with something, the pathway will start to strengthen, until it becomes stronger than another, less happy, pathway/track. This is a general rule, and is one of the reasons why consistent meditators are calmer and happier: they have effortlessly and created calmness and happiness in their minds and brains, and they have become established as a personality feature. Just from consistency.

regular bhastrika is highly beneficial for kundalini

In my previous post, when I wrote about bhastrika for kundalini. Consistency here is paramount if we are to traverse the internal realms on a very deep level. Bhastrika stimulating the navel, builds up our internal pranic body, and is one of the practices to awaken it. This pranayama also builds up to the awakening of Mother Kundalini. It is incomparable for this. But consistency is necessary. 

If you build a fire in your fireplace at home, and wanted it to keep going, you wouldn't just build a fire, then not add any more firewood. No, you would be adding a wee bit of wood here and there, to keep it going, and maybe tossing on a log for overnight. During the night, the fire would then die down, but at some point it would catch on the big log, flare up, and keep going. In a similar way, this is what we are doing with our daily bhastrika, when we are doing it for spiritual purposes. We are lighting a fire, keeping it stoked with our daily kindling, then at some point it will flare up on a pranic level, we will have an experience during meditation, yoga nidra, or sleep, and we will have a spiritual "leap" up to another level. Consistency is essential for this to happen.