Rigidity in Your Spiritual Practice

I'm a big proponent of a daily self care / healing practice. Some people refer to this as a "daily spiritual practice." I prefer to refer to it as self care and healing. A daily spiritual practice is rigid. It says, you're not enough. You have to do something every day in order to be more spiritual and disciplined.

Kundalini yogis are especially dogmatic about a daily spiritual practice. One of the first things you learn when you start practicing Kundalini yoga is to do your daily practice between 3:30 am and 6:00 am. Because Kundalini yoga is a science, we have precise times for our practices. We commit to doing a specific thing every single day for a specific period of time. There's 40 days, 90 days, and on. After 120 days what you're practicing becomes a part of you.

I started practicing Kundalini yoga every single day in March 2017. I saw a drastic change in my life. This stuff works, and if you commit to a daily practice of something, you can absolutely bet that you will become that thing.

Kundalini yoga has some movements that are pretty important to do every day. Keeping your spine flexible is important, for example. Getting your energy moving every day is important. We have to move our bodies. I choose Kundalini yoga practice for my daily healing and self care because it takes care of exercise for me at the same time. It's really an all-in-one package that really works. Kundalini yoga is also such a vast science that there's plenty of room for you to be flexible with your practice every day. There's room for a lifetime of experiment.

But I notice that many yogis are dogmatic, and I'll even say superstitious about their daily practices. It's the 40, 90, 120 day commitment where this comes in. It's tricky. You see, if you miss one day of your practice, you have to start all over again in counting your days. So if you're committing to 120 days of Kirtan Kriya and for whatever reason you miss day 71, you have to start all over the next day. This can become problematic. Everyone who has a daily spiritual practice can probably relate to this.

Our spiritual practices can become very bogged down. They can become incredibly flat and lifeless and fill us with a sense of dread.

It can become about proving ourselves worthy of being spiritual. It can become about discipline. And spirituality and self care have nothing to do with either one of those things.

We are spiritual beings, and in our self care practice is when we connect to that. There's nothing stagnant about that whatsoever.

The most spiritual thing we can do is listen and flow.

Many yogis have very, very long drawn out daily practices. I keep mine very minimal so that it can be fluid.

There is a place for commitment. It's a fine line between commitment and allowing flow. That's one of the things that makes yoga a science and an art. I have committed myself to a daily prosperity meditation which is only three minutes long. I'm over 120 days into practicing this meditation. For me it's important to absolutely commit myself to prosperity.

I allow the rest of my daily care to fluctuate daily. Last week I was sick. What felt like the most self care for me to do was to lie in bed and rest. But a three minute meditation is totally doable pretty much any time, and it was that reminder again to tap into prosperity.

Today listening to a guided meditation was part of my healing/self care practice. Writing this is part of my practice today.

I think I practice yoga differently than a lot of other Kundalini yogis do. I have some things in my tool belt that I know really work for me, and when I sit down on my yoga mat I go into an open, listening state. I let my body listen for what it wants to do next. Sometimes my body says, "I really want to do breath of fire next." or my chest tells me it really wants to open now. Sometimes I sit down and make one movement, and an old feeling comes up that really wants to be heard and and acknowledged and healed. So I may end up lying on my mat holding a crystal and being with a feeling. I think this is the most spiritual thing we can do. The most spiritual thing we can do is respect ourselves and listen for guidance and follow that guidance. I feel that a spiritual practice can become incredibly cruel and masochistic. We really must be kind to ourselves.

Self care is sitting on that mat and allowing what comes to come. Maybe you have a loose plan that may change or evolve. Maybe you have a sort of must, but the rest of your practice can come to you. Maybe you don't get on that mat today. Maybe today is a meditation in your bathtub or at your desk chair.

It's important to keep adding new energy into everything we do and keep it evolving. Even if you've commited to a 120 day practice, maybe on day 113 it's really time for you to move on to something else. Maybe on day 113 it's an act of violence against yourself to do that meditation.

It's important not to listen to a book or a teacher, but to feel in ourselves what is best for us. We are our best teachers. In Kundalini yoga we always chant inwardly sat nam. It's a reminder that we are our own guru. I think we forget this most important aspect of our practice in Kundalini yoga. We become sacrificial lambs who need to be disciplined. There is actually nothing spiritual about that at all.

I want to challenge you to do some kind of self care every single day. It's really important. There is so much out there that you can choose from. Whether you sit with your eyes closed and meditate, or you chant, or you do some Hatha yoga, or a guided meditation, or you do some energy work on yourself- really, do something. Let self care be the most important aspect of this. Do your practice to care for yourself, not to prove anything to yourself.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for discipline in our practices, but I think it's actually very low on the list of priorities for our self care. I think in Western culture we have been disciplined to death and what most of us need most is to learn to love ourselves and care for ourselves and learn how to listen to our guidance.

Flow is one of the biggest aspects of being an awakened "spiritual" person. Keep your practice flowing.

The more you practice yoga, the longer your list of daily musts becomes. First it's flexing your spine, and then before you know it there's a giant laundry list of daily dos, and you have to protect your magnetic field before you can walk out the door. I'm not at all saying this is a bad thing, but I think it's really, really important to remember that our daily healing practice is to support our lives. Don't hide under your spiritual practice, and don't let it take over or become your life.

If you liked this, you'll like my facebook page You Are Your Own Healer