What type of yoga do you teach?

It’s a question that I’m often asked, and have long contemplated. 🤔

There are numerous answers to the question, most of them are somewhat correct, but often the answers can be as confusing as the question itself.

As far as teaching generally yoga classes goes, personally I teach hatha yoga, some vinyasa, and yogic meditation, (which in itself contains a multitude of practices). At Bamboo Yoga we teach a full gamut of ‘yoga types’ Vinyasa, Hatha, Yin & Restorative, along with the aforesaid meditation techniques.

Many of our teachers have had specialist training in certain lineages, teaching Ashtanga Yoga, Sivananda Yoga, Satyananda Yoga, Forrest Yoga, Power Yoga, Iyengar Yoga - and most of our teaches have a leaning towards a classical yoga influence, such as Raj Yoga, Gyan Yoga or Bhakti Yoga.

What unites all of these teachers and their teachings, is awareness. To put it simply, what each and all of our teachers offer at Bamboo Yoga & the Yogic Meditation Institute - is the Yoga of Awareness.

So what is the Yoga of Awareness, and how do you learn it?

The great news is that there are many ways to practice the Yoga of Awareness, and you are probably doing a few already. The Yoga of Awareness isn’t so much focussed upon a singular technique, it is more about an attitude that we bring to practice, about what we are looking to achieve whilst we practice.

The Yoga of Awareness is a 24hr a day game that we can all play every day. And I literally mean 24hrs, we can practice whilst we sleep as well, awareness within the dream state is completely possible for advanced yogis, many call this lucid dreaming.

The Yoga of Awareness means what it says, we are seeking to practice Yoga / Union through becoming more aware. Awareness is a skill, it’s something that we can become better at, and there are some well tested ways to improve our capacity. Here’s a few below,

Some Practices for refining awareness that we can do in a general hatha yoga class...

• Becoming aware of your natural breath.

• Cultivating an intentional breath technique, such as Ujjayi / Whispering Breath.

• Moving slowly, with full awareness, syncing movement to breath.

• Developing acute awareness of posture & alignment in asana practice, down to the fine use of specific muscles to support complex movements or balances. This is essential for advanced asana, and the main reason why advanced asana can be beneficial as a yoga practice. (See the next point…)

• Noticing WHY we are pushing ourselves to practice, WHY we want to extend our capacity, WHAT is motivating us? Is it to improve our capacity and empower our bodies? Because it feels good? Or are we trying to keep up with the young yoga bunny on the next mat? SPOILER ALERT: accomplishing an advanced asana will not make you more enlightened, if it is done safely, it should be good for your body, but the real benefit of any asana practice should be the strengthening of the nervous system and the Evolution of our Awareness.

• Introducing awareness of Bandhas, Chakras, Prana Vayus and Mantras into our practice. I call this Layers of Awareness, once we become steady in a physical posture or movement, we can add layers of awareness to the practice, firstly through breath, and then perhaps introducing mantras into each breath, and then becoming aware of internal movements of prana through the body through awareness of bandhas (energy locks) and chakras (energy vortices). There’s lots we can do here, essentially what we are doing is beginning to understand and control prana - fundamental to this process of controlling prana (which is in fact what Hatha Yoga is about) is being AWARE of prana. How can we control that which we do not understand? And prana is subtle, so to be aware of prana we must learn to refine our awareness.

Refining our awareness is a skill akin to honing the mind like a laser beam, to be able to focus clearly and intentionally on singular things, to be able to notice the subtle nature of things; the texture of our breath, the individual muscles within our body that collaborate within an asana, maintaining focus on a distinct sound, a single image or a mantra… In yoga we call this Dharana - the practice of Focussed Awareness. We can progress a long way within hatha yoga practices, however to understand the truly subtle qualities of things, we must engaged with a practice of seated meditation.

The Yoga of Awareness is a journey from the Gross to the Subtle ✨

Here is example of moving awareness from gross towards subtle using a common meditation technique of listening to sounds:

Listening to sounds, all sounds, as they exist around you > Listening to a specific sound > Listening for more subtle sounds > Listening specifically to the sound to the breath > Listening for the resonance of the So Ham mantra within the sound of the breath.

Listening to sounds is but one example, there are many, however the process remains the same - the Yoga of Awareness is a journey from the Gross to the Subtle - steadily moving our awareness from the explicit to the subtle experience.

Hari Aum Tat Sat - The Seen & the Unseen are Both True. 🕉

This venerable Vedic mantra tells an important story, we bow to the manifest and the un-manifest realities, the seen and the unseen are both real & true.

The practice or moving from the gross to the subtle is not the end game - we seek to become aware of the subtle experience, perhaps as subtle as the nature of consciousness, however we remain aware of the gross experience. I call this 'grounded ascension’ - becoming aware and embodied in the divine reality, whilst remaining aware & functional within this material reality.

Yogic Psychology - Understanding the Nature of our Minds and why we do things. 🤯

This is when the subtle gets practical. We can evolve our capacity for subtle awareness through various techniques of asana, pranayama and meditation, however the rubber hits the road when we apply this refined awareness to the nature of our own minds. Understanding the underlying impulses that motivate us - our subconscious mind containing latent desires and fears - the nature of our own trauma and how it effects our decision making. Understanding how our speech and actions have a ripple effect upon others. Being able to identify the nature of these modifications of our minds (in yoga we call them vritti) as they play out in real time is getting us to the beating heart of why we practice yoga.

This is essentially Karma Yoga - understanding the influence and impact of karma within our lives and seeking to improve karma for ourself and for others. The Yoga of Awareness shows to us the nature of our own karma, the colours of our mind and teaches us to witness and perhaps transcend these impulses as they arise. Two of the most important qualities that we seek to cultivate within these path are Vivek & Vairagya - to Discern & Detach - to see clearly the truth of things and to be able to transcend our inherent bias or opinions on how we think things could be.

The Yoga Of Awareness Starts with a Single Breath

Understanding and transcending the dimension of karma is the game of lifetimes, but it begins with practicing the Yoga of Awareness, and the Yoga of Awareness starts with slowing down 😌. It’s hard to be fully aware of the details in life when we are charging through it at a million miles per hour. Yoga practice should be designed to support us in slowing down - we can begin with a breath, deep inhales, slow exhales, moving into a para-sympathetic nervous experience will help us to slow down. Once we slow down it we should naturally begin to notice more texture within the world around us, and the world within us.

More from the Blog