Loving our bodies and who we are

Today, many of us share a common dilemma: not liking our bodies, or who we are!

This is like a hereditary disease, but instead of inheriting it from our parents, we inherit it from society's myopic and dysfunctional focus on external form alone.

'How do you measure up?', is a comment made by egos to other egos, creating a constant, pervading sense of restlessness and unease with oneself.

We feel judged, criticised and condemned... and we do the same to others!

Many people, men and women alike, don't like many things about themselves: their height, their weight, their nose, their belly, their hips or legs... the list is practically endless.

Whatever your perceived flaws, these strong dislikes of self are often brought about by through erroneous conditioning. The underlying premise is that the body 'shouldn't be' like it is... that life shouldn't be the way it is.

So, how can we move into loving our bodies, and who we are?

Firstly, whatever it is that you don't like about yourself, deeply realise that non-acceptance of yourself is what is causing suffering. By focusing on the external form alone, you cause yourself to separate from your Source, which is unconditional Love, and fall into a type of spiritual darkness.

When you move through life as a meditative experience, seeking to understand inner essence over the mere outer form, you naturally become aligned with your own Source, and harmony replaces dis-ease in body and mind.

Your own demons naturally begin to fade away in the brilliance of your own Light. They are merely dark shadows which have no real substance.

Some things can certainly be changed -- for example, if you are overweight, you can begin to exercise and eat more healthy foods, and cut out unhealthy foods. Yet, some things cannot be changed... and we should not try. For example, if you are a fully grown adult and are 5'9", you cannot make yourself taller, and be 6'0". Feeling bad, and then punishing yourself by beating yourself over the head with an imaginary stick because you are not 'tall enough', are pointless exercises that diminish your vitality, because you are fighting your own energy and expression.

A fish swims, a bird flies! A fish doesn't try to fly, and a bird doesn't try to swim, and they don't feel 'bad' because they aren't able to, or that their form is somehow unsuited to living life to its fullest. A small fish doesn't have a complex when it meets a bigger fish. No such comparison exists. These ideas and comparisons only exist in the human mind that has disconnected itself from a greater understanding of life.

The crucial point to understand is this: all external forms are transient. Only the Inner Self is stable and unchanging, as the witness to all we are experiencing.

If your body is presently young, strong and vibrant - by all means enjoy it. Yet, be strive to be constantly alert to the impermanent nature of life, for how will you react when you notice that your body is aging as more and more grey hairs start appearing? Will you have compassion for yourself, knowing this is a shared experience by all beings and, indeed, all forms of life? Or will you identify yourself as 'old, and become anxious or depressed, rushing to cover those signs of aging up at once?

Life simply 'is' - and life moves in greater and lesser cycles, which we are a part of, not apart from. Understanding your true essence, and letting go of the desire to constantly control the ever changing nature of forms, including your own, brings great freedom.

The key is to love and accept who you are right now, and your present form, whether you are strong or weak, big or small, short or tall, young or old - and to love your form as it changes throughout the days, weeks and years to come.

By dropping all negative comparison, and all negative sense of competition with others, which is a type of mental sickness, you will be free to harness your inner potential, and cultivate your gifts and abilities, enjoying who you are today, and who you will be in the future.

Only by loving yourself will your true power will shine forth, and all suffering end.

Jaime Tanna
Founder and Director

www.energytherapy.biz

The transformative power of yoga and sound

“Yoga is like music: the rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind, and the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life.” B.K.S. Iyengar

  Our human nature has a tendency to fixate on the stress and the difficulties in life, rather than the positive.  Yoga is about making you more aware of your own power to choose what you will focus on in your life, and thus create. So, Yoga is more than just exercise!

When yoga postures (called ‘asanas’) are combined with conscious awareness of the flow of breath in and out of the body, this naturally releases and opens areas of the body that feel tight and restricted.

The entire body is a finely tuned receiver and transmitter of energies (thought and emotion), recording and ‘remembering’ every experience we have.  

Experience is not just the outer event!  Fundamentally, experience is an internal event. How do we perceive what happens to us? What thoughts and emotions do we create around an event?

If we create resistance in our mind, this expresses through the body. With the passage of time, resistant thought becomes physicalized in the body. It can, and often does, lead to illness.

We most often think of ourselves as dense physical matter, but it is more appropriate to think of ourselves as light and information, expressing through a physical medium. WE are light ‘in formation’. Quantum science tells us we are 99.99% percent space, so it is pure illusion that we appear solid, and feel solid!

We are so much more than the image we see before us in the mirror!

Through asana practice, yoga becomes a moving meditation that helps us regain awareness of the subtle nature of our Being, and allows us to see where we are holding onto trapped energy and/or emotions.  It is not simply about the physical, although it begins from that starting point.

The breath is the bridge between mind and body, and allows us to tap into areas that have become ‘rigid’ or ‘stuck’. Though the breath we can begin to release discordant energy patterning and dis-ease from the whole body.

Thus yoga brings us our health – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Sound, which is tied to the conscious use of breath, is also an extremely powerful tool for releasing and transforming negative energy ‘stuck’ in the cellular matrix of the body’s tissues, organs and glands, and is often combined with yoga to bring about even deeper healing.

Most of us are aware of the benefits of music in helping the body and mind to relax and unwind. Taken to a deeper level, the vibration of self-created sound, through toning and chanting, can be directed to all the cells of the body, causing profound changes in our internal state of being. Through this altered state, every system of the body responds and begins to ‘fine tune’ itself back to a state of harmony and wholeness.

Yoga, combined with conscious breathing and sound (chanting mantras or vowel sounds), has a deeply transformative effect. By mentally and physically directing the sound to different parts of the body, we reconnect with those parts to heal and balance them.

Many yoga students end up having devotional practices, chanting mantras at the beginning and/or end of class.

Yoga is for everyone – young, old, fit or not. Do you have to be flexible or strong? Of course not!

If the requirement to start yoga was to put your legs behind your head, or to perform a complicated arm balance (like ‘flying pigeon’), many of us would have never become students or teachers, myself included.

Yoga and Sound are both journeys of awareness leading to the path of Self-transformation. They challenge us to go deeper.

Today, too many people lack vital awareness of the inner body, subtle bodies, and the mind… those which are unseen. The brain and intellect has become their primary focus, to the detriment of everything else, and society relies too heavily on drugs, surgery and a flawed medical model of the world which keeps much of humanity trapped in unhealthy patterns of thinking, doing and being. This is why we are seeing a grassroots movement towards natural healing, and a massive uptake in yoga and other spiritual disciplines.

In spiritual terms, an accident, injury or illness is a way of the body trying to get our attention. 

Due to the passage of time, the vast majority of people feel that events happen to them, rather than because of them. Yet, we are always at cause in what we draw to us. The Universe is utterly precise and unerring in its wisdom, and we are part of that unfolding wisdom, even if our human selves seem prone to error.

As we get older, and more disconnected from our bodies, it seems that we have no real role to play in healing them, but this simply isn’t true.

So many times I hear, ‘oh, my back went… I was tying my shoe laces and it happened… must be a sign of getting older!’

This false belief that we ‘get sick’ as we get older is rife amongst us.  It is hidden – subconsciously, we fear old age, and death. We have become so identified with the form of the body, that we think we are our bodies.

Yoga is an invitation to, once again, regain that joyful, light and playful feeling of being in the body.  It is also about conquering our fears about ageing and death.

The body is meant to be a cherished home for the Soul, and it deserves much care and attention.  If we will simply listen, it will tell us what we need to know.

If you contract your abdominals during class, then you will regain vital awareness of that area, and you will automatically do the same thing when tying your shoe laces, well into your later years.

If you use your fingers to grab and pull during class, you will develop an inner, textile strength to them, and they will serve you into your later years, rather than becoming weak.

If you do backbends, your upper back will not ‘round’ forward as much (how many of us suffer from ‘computer backs’?), and you will maintain a freer, open heart energy. 

Yoga classes bring vital awareness before we ‘need’ to experience an illness or accident, so we can heal the parts of ourselves that need attention.

Ultimately, Yoga is about loving the Self.

Jaime Tanna

Founder and Director

www.energytherapy.biz

Join myself and Jennifer for a fabulous sunset yoga class at the MBS Expo at the St. Raphael Resort in Limassol, Cyprus on Saturday, 14th March and experience the transformative power of yoga and sound! 5-7PM 

http://mbscyprus.com/

Other Energy Therapy Presentations at the MBS Event:

The Japanese Art of Reiki (Workshop): Saturday, 12-2pm

The Art of Indian Champissage (Workshop): Saturday, 2-3pm

The Law of Attraction: Letting Go of Clock Time

Those new to the path of healing through energy/vibration will often say, "I've been doing this 'x amount of time', and nothing much has changed."

Whether it's money, health, or relationships, it's a common mistake to put a timeline on things, and then experience disappointment.

The thoughts and feelings you have, on any subject, indicate your vibrational set points... whatever you've attracted, or are attracting, up until now reflect those frequencies.

If you want to change the results you're seeing in your life, then you have to change your innermost thoughts and feelings... your innermost frequencies.

Doing the inner work means you have to learn to stay rooted in the now, and CONSISTENTLY hold a new frequency for long enough to see a new result manifest, whether in terms of your health, a positive shift in a relationship, or greater financial and spiritual abundance...

Always remember, your life is playing out according to the dominant frequencies you hold within. To change the results you are experiencing, you have to be able to identify and change the frequencies you're holding.

Life is always changing but if you keep unconsciously choosing the same thoughts, then you might believe that life is relatively static. If you stagnate, then life stagnates. The river no longer flows, it becomes ice...

Learn to flow again by becoming aware of your inner frequencies, and consciously changing them as life takes you down different pathways... allow changes to happen through you, spontaneously and effortlessly.

It is your own resistance to change that keeps you stuck, nothing else.

When you step onto the healing path, remember this at all times: results do not manifest according to man-made 'clock time', they manifest in 'vibrational time', when all the vibrational aspects line up. Your job is keep focused and alert to your thoughts and feelings/emotions, the Universe will take care of the rest.

So, give your undivided attention to the now, and keep fine tuning the frequencies of your life!

That's the way to have the most fun, playing this Game we call Life.

Jaime Tanna
Founder and Director
www.energytherapy.biz

[Book a coaching session on the Law of Attraction with Jaime to clean up areas of your life that aren't working:http://www.energytherapy.biz/lawofattraction/]