Satchitananda - Unconditional Love

There are many different types of love, but the only one that really matters is the unconditional kind.

When Ram Dass met his guru, he was aware that guruji could see everything hidden within him - the good and the bad, the shame and the guilt, the deepest, darkest hidden secret things - his guru saw all of this. What was equally evident to Ram Dass was that guruji loved him anyway, wholly, completely and without needing the slightest thing in return.

This is the real meaning of true love: a love that knows you are lovable, right here, right now, exactly as you are in this moment. We are all full of doubt and mistakes, but we are all made of love and deserving of it.

This love is satchitananda (sat=truth/chit=consciousness/ananda=bliss) and as Georg Feuerstein writes:

… this bliss is not a state of mind, but the condition that remains when all psycho-mental phenomena have been transcended.

Satchitananda lies behind everything, always.
There is nothing we can do to earn or find this love.
Our work is only to remove all the barriers that we have placed between ourselves and it.

Oh, those barriers are sticky! The quest to be worthy of love, the nagging self-doubt and rehashing of past mistakes. We think we are unworthy; we are wrong. The work of yoga is to connect with unconditional love and once connected to let it run through our veins. It is not enough to receive it, we must be able to give it too. And we can’t have one without the other. If you think you can easily love everyone, but you don’t love yourself just the same, then you have a little more work to do.

By its very definition, unconditional love cannot belong to some and not to others; it can’t be possible for them, but not for you.

This is how Larry Brilliant describes the wonder of Neem Karoli Baba's love:

what ... staggered me (was) not that he loved everybody, but that when I was sitting in front of him, I loved everybody.

For all cynics who think that all of this sounds a little bit narcissistic, I ask you: if everyone loved unconditionally and felt themselves worthy of love would they be grabbing on to power and prestige to prove themselves? Would they be talking badly of others and being unkind? Could they hurt anyone or anything?

No, people who understand this wisdom and embrace it, live in kindness, live in peace.

Sarah x

Finding Space for Yoga

Finding a space in which to practice yoga at home can be difficult.

Space in which to roll out your mat, space in time when you can practice and space in your life when you can allow yourself to be free of other distractions and the endless list of things you need to do.

We don't just bring expectation of what a 'proper' yoga sequence looks like to our efforts at home practice, we also bring our expectation of what a yoga practice feels like: we hope for a clear and quiet space in which to practice; having granted ourselves the time in our day to practice, we hope that children and partners will leave us alone for the duration; we'd like to light some incense and take some time around our practice. And if we can't get all that together, then the yoga just doesn't happen.

Sometimes I practice in a quiet house, where I have no interruptions, where peace reigns, where I have no deadlines looming and no urgent things to do with my time. The house is warm, the candles lit, the dog snoozes at the end of my mat. Wonderful.

But I have also practised in the living room while the kids sat on the sofa watching tv (it was a cold day and that was the warmest room in the house); I have let my children roll their mats out alongside me and practise with me (these are the chatty, giggly practices); I have practised in tiny hotel rooms and outside on balconies and verandas, in other people's gardens and on the beach. I have practised at festivals while bemused strangers looked on while they cooked their breakfasts on camping stoves. And it was all good. All of it.

In terms of physical space, all you need is the room to roll out your mat and the height to reach up - but you could practice kneeling and seated postures in an even smaller space than this.

In terms of space in time, well I can't put it better than Sue Monk Kidd:

“The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters”

We know it's good for us, we know it helps us live well, but we still find it hard to make the time to actually do it. Don't worry. Make your practice small; make it simple; make it happen in a little way, rather than deferring until a time when you have more time (which might never come).

In terms of space in your life, there are going to be interruptions. We don’t live in ashrams. Two examples of how interruptions manifest:

• The phone beeps/rings as you practice and you stop practising to answer it. As if your caller won't leave you a message; as if you cannot wait for ten minutes to hear that message and call them back. This interruption is within yourself and only you can persuade yourself to wait and finish up your yoga before you take the call.

• Your beloveds come and interrupt you while you practice. Look, it takes a long time for everyone else in your life to understand that you need/love/deserve your quiet time on your mat (how long did it take you to know this?) - it takes almost as long as it will take you to gently insist on having that time for yourself.

You will be as distracted as you allow yourself to be. Why do we find it so hard to prioritise ourselves and to do for ourselves the things that make us better (and nicer to live with, I might add). I don't know, but I do know that I practise around my children and my dog and my life and my friends and my work every day and that nobody has yet died of neglect, thirst or malnutrition as a result.

In the end, after all of your procrastination, you just have to do it. In fact, the only thing that yoga requires of you is that you do it. Move, breathe, be at one with yourself and the world, feel your feet on the ground, spend some time in quiet solitude. Enjoy it. Don't make it into another thing to beat yourself up with or bring high ideals and expectation to it.

It is as uncomplicated as rolling out your mat and placing your feet purposefully on it.
It is as easy as kneeling on your mat and moving mindfully between cat and cow pose.
It is as straightforward as you allow it to be.
Simple is best.

Sarah x

How to Listen to your Soul

Go somewhere you find beautiful: the beach, an art gallery, the woods, your favourite part of your favourite city. It helps to be alone.

Walk and walk and look about you; stand for as long as you want to and stare at whatever catches your attention: a crack in the pavement, an image or piece of art that moves you, the sky, other people. It is important that you do not rush. And nobody should be expecting you. You must not put a deadline on your wanderings, nor should you have someone waiting for you at the other end of your journey - hearing your soul speak takes time and patience, so give yourself just that.

Walk. Sit. Look. Eat. Drink. Write if you want to, but do not read; books are just inanimate versions of other people's voices and you will not hear your own voice if you continually overlay it with other people's words, thoughts and feelings.

Don't actively seek your soul's voice; it cannot be hunted down and found. Your soul's voice emerges when you are doing something else, when you are looking at the sky, or walking across the sand with the wind blowing in your face. Just put yourself in the right place with a certain level of quiet and wait. Make of yourself a blank canvas upon which your soul's voice will draw the colour and image.

If there is fear, let there be fear - you are safe in your favourite place, let it be. There might be joy, or excitement, sadness or pain, just let it be. Your soul's voice cannot be heard above mental struggle, or above your efforts not to feel what you feel. Just walk, stop, look around, absorb what is.

Do it once.
Do it again.
Turn your ear inward as often as you can. Turn every dog walk into an opportunity to listen, every train journey, every delay. Learn how to live alongside your own true voice. It won't ever pretend you are what you are not; it won't ever be unkind to you. Which is not to say that your soul's voice will always be an easy listen - the truth you already know is not always comfortable to hear.

The answers to our own questions are always waiting within and you can trust that quiet voice.

If you stop trampling all over your own soul with your intellect, your struggling, your self-judgment, then you will find it there waiting for you, wondering ‘My dear love, what took you so long?’

Sarah x