The fabulous Emil

The fabulous Emil

Emil has come to offer us a pathway to spiritual enlightenment. In addition to yoga philosophy sessions, he leads nightly pranayama. I have never done regular pranayama, feeling that the meditation time I get at the close of my asana practice was plenty. Besides, who can sit cross-legged for a half hour?

While I’m still not that good at the sitting part, I have found moments of total stillness in these sessions. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. A total grounding of every cell in my body, where I felt immobilized yet lighter than air when I snapped out of it long enough to take note of how I was feeling. Ironically, that taking note of how I’m feeling in practice has been a bit of an undoing, because I have gone into subsequent sessions waiting for that feeling to arrive. Hence the continued fidgeting. Then last night I had a mini breakthrough with it; this, then, is the reason to practice every day.

He also said there are no rules in yoga, in other words, go ahead and enjoy your earthly pleasures (my words) as long as you like. You will find the need for them slips away without effort. I hope this proves true for me and eating meat. At this point I have the same kind of fear around giving it up that I had about quitting smoking. Yet that finally slipped away.

There was a book on our reading list that I am now reading that goes to the heart of this, it’s called The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. I highly recommend it.