Dharma shield - A mesh of virtuous cycles

One of the sources of respect for our parents is their ability to subsist in far greater frugality, being able to save more than we can despite earning much less. This is not achieved in a day; more likely, it is the outcome of a lifetime of learning from mistakes and small improvements. How can we make such virtuous cycles an integral part of our life?

The Dharmacakra, "Wheel of Dharma"

Continuous improvement can be achieved through the effortless mastery of virtuous cycles. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Start your journey to perfection by starting with small, nearly imperceptible virtuous cycles. Cycles within cycles build your daily practice into something more.

If you are mindful, you can forge together a mesh of virtuous cycles that span the eight limbs of Ashtanga that begins in your daily practice but reaches out to all aspects of life. Perfecting one aspect of your daily asana practice is such a virtuous cycle that can form a sequence of steps to start your journey to enlightenment. This notion is key to avoiding the honey trap of practicing yoga purely as an exercise and allowing it to become a transformative activity that reaches into all facets of life.

Virtuous cycles that span the eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga and perhaps beyond to other aspects of life can become a resilient mesh. Make this mesh, and it will become like a brilliant armor that will protect against adversity when your purpose or focus wavers.

, you may grow mindful that your life has grown somewhat over-cluttered with material possessions. You may then start with a virtuous cycle embodying the precept of Aparigraha, or temperance may guide you to part with some of your possessions. Effortless mastery is taking the step that is easiest to make into a habit. Later as you feel the benefits, you may find that a larger gesture has now become an effortless next step and proceed to recycle. Next, you might join a local group and donate your excess to others. Eventually, you may expand your perception and have the sensitivity to address the source and challenges further by practicing building impulse control by taking a short imperceptible time before you acquire or consume. This may grow into a time-out and even a test of abstinence. Eventually, you may increase both perception and control and enjoy some of the benefits of uncluttered living and perhaps even frugality? You may have also forged connections with others when you learned to share resources with others.

Meditation on a the wheel 

Keeping the wheels turning while returning to my Yoga practice

Wheel-Pose (credit)

Returning to my Yoga practice after a rather long hiatus is not just a challenge but an opportunity to do things differently and relearn how to do performing certain asanas. One aspect of the practice is that changing teachers introduced new sequencing and new pose variation. I found that some of the new teachers bring new risks and that I need to take more care than ever to avoid injury while my body get stronger and learns to adjust. Another aspect of this is that the sessions are quite exhausting - the body seems to have forgotten efficient execution of vinyasas. Due to loss of strength, decreased flexibility and overall being less fit and having gained some weight. So my new goal are: avoid getting injured and to practice the vinyasas without minimal exertion.

One of the most lamented abilities during the Covid 19 epidemic is the ability to do
Wheel Pose (Urdva Dhanurasana). It feels like there is a loss of leverage in the arm needed to complete the push. But I found that all back bends are more challenging and prone to leave unpleasant sensation in the back for a day or two.

But when I discussed this with my instructor he suggested laying back on the stability ball relaxing and rolling back and forth. I realised that I used to do this quite frequently and since I have a stability ball at home I started to make use of one to regain the lost ability and in the process I observed a few things:

I found  had a spot in my spine that was not very happy with bending back perhaps due to recent overexertion  when attempting the wheel in class work. So at first I mostly lay back without any motion. Slowly over the next day or two the spot started to go away. Next  I noticed that my neck was very tight when it came to following the curvature of the ball down. This is something that bothered me to no end in Purvottanasana the Upward plank pose. This tightness is a protective reflex but it can be over protective. Again rolling gently back and forth on the ball allows the neck to learn to relax in this pose. Doing it without the ball is not the same but at least you learn greater degrees of control on relaxing the reflexive tightness. Finally I rolled back and started to push back rolling back and forth. Again I found my arms tight and surprisingly weak. But the muscle memory came back fairly quickly. With more flexibility came more power and less effort to hold the wheel. Eventually I started to feel that I could try again without the stability ball.

However I used to do any number of drills on the ball. My guess is that some could help with other asanas which have also become more challenging during Covid shutdowns. Perhaps I'll follow up on these in the future.