Woke up this Morning

I'll try and summarize what John's been talking about the last 2 days.

Day 1+2
John talked a lot about the Heart Sutra his analogy being that of the wave identifying with itself (fear of birth and death coming) as opposed to identifying with the water and stillness from which it comes from and will ultimately return to. The wave is pure potential, empty of form.

Heart Sutra: Form is Emptiness, emptiness is form (coming in and out of form)

A lot of us do not have awareness

"Grasping". We like to have and collect objects, polish them, keep them, cherish. This includes our asana practice.

Energy can't be created or destroyed so it's all about "transformation"

If our prana energy is down, we are hardly breathing, the food we ingest is poor quality, kundalini sleeping THEN we are barely living. No wonder life is such a rough ride!

Within each of us is a garden which we need to tend for the flowers (lotus) to grow

John expanded on the Tibetan Heart yoga that he'd started with when I was with him down in Prussia Cove. There's 5 different levels (from the outside - in):
- the body machine
- fuel layer
- pranic layer
- thought layer
- the seeds (of your garden)

and the idea that movement between layers effects us at the body layer (bad seeds coming to the surface) and emotionally (events at the body layer planting seeds further down). The question is how each layer moves the one above/below.

Imagine: Disturbed thoughts leads to disturbed mind leads to disturbed (shaking) body.

Addiction: Every action self feeds back in. John's analogy here was shouting at his family, instigated by himself by saying to them all the time "I'll be there in a minute". Easiest way to get a child to want to get attention.

3 Parts to the spine : head, heart, pelvis. Get each into alignment with east/west banks so we're not spilling our 'vital fluids'. Seek equilibrium

According to vedas, samadhi is only 30 minutes away. After 2.4 minutes of practice we should be in a moving meditation (he gave a mathematical explanation for this). If you're not then ask yourself why? It only takes 6 seconds before the mind will wander

"Your God can't eat your lunch for you"

Break addictive patterns by "exhale 1, inhale 1, exhale 2, inhale 2... "

John went over the practice or "homework postures" that he came up from watching his kids grow, his dog sit outside the practice room, and many years of observing Guruji and being inquisitive to ask why he was doing certain things

"Just because you are moving doesn't mean you're not in stillness"

Ashtanga's very much about adjusting but there is an intelligence to it. John talked a lot about the benefit of the count in a led class.

We all make the choice to behave this way or that, what is good, what is bad, where the mind goes [the energy] follows.

Ujjayi - victorious breath, but victorious over what????

Pain is change, depending on how quickly you are changing will determine how much pain you get. Stick with the program and let it run again, again, again.

Ground through your hands.

The practice sessions were short, quick, and very structured, though he did give everyone a long meditation after the morning practice where he went over mostly the things he'd talked about the evening before. He split the room into 2 with one group observing the 'sea and wave tips' of the other group as they practiced sun salutes - John invited us to count along with him if we knew the count. He also led us through part of the practice in the afternoon where we had our eyes closed as we practiced. He also said that it's often those that are newest to the practice that are closest to its essence.

I am paraphrasing a lot of this (I took a dozen pages of notes) so all the mistakes in the above are mine.