Radiance Sutras weekend workshop with Lorin

Friday Night: The Yoga of Wild Serenity

Nature is wild and serene. The same is true of our inner nature. Yoga meditation is juicy when we work with nature, with our natural impulses – to explore, play, nurture, rest, nest, bond, mate, and be at home.

In this evening workshop, we explore three sacred mandalas that are at play in yoga – the instincts, the senses, and the rasas.

Meditation can be defined as paying attention to the current of life flowing through our bodies and riding it inward to essence. When we bring awareness to our passions, magic happens. When attention savors the energies of passion, rasa is created – the sublime experience of the soul cherishing its human experience.

We will consider seven startling truths about meditation:

• 1. Meditation is instinctive, a built-in ability of the human body.
• 2. The process is rhythmic, similar to listening to music.
• 3. Meditation is sensual, you are intimate with life.
• 4. Every meditation is an adventure, a journey, each moment is surprising. The same thing never happens twice.
• 5. Your meditation approach is unique to you. There are thousands of techniques. What works for you will be an individual variation of one or more.
• 6. One of the main obstacles to meditation is primarily tolerating the intense sensations and feelings of healing that arise when we are deeply relaxed.
• 7. People with dynamic outer lives can have powerful inner meditations. A passionate life is fuel for meditation.

This approach is based in the tradition of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, a classic yoga text that sets forth 112 yogas for touching the divine right here, in the midst of daily life.

Flowing Between Listening, Sharing, Moving, Mudra, Shavasana

In all of the Saturday and Sunday sessions
- we flow between standing, sitting, and lying down practices, often shifting every 10 minutes.
- we explore as many of the 112 yogas of the Vijnana Bhairava as time permits.
- when our bodies relate to one of the 112 sutras, we are moved. If we allow it, we move spontaneously – this is called mudra, gesture.

Saturday Morning: The Indriyas

In yoga the senses are called the Indriyas, a word that suggests something divine and powerful. The indriyas are the temples in which the divine in us is in contact with the divine around us.

Human beings are gifted with the ability to sense many energies around and within us. The short list of senses is a dozen. In addition to the standard five senses – vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, there are:

• Balance – the relationship of the body with gravity. We can sense the center of the Earth and how the body is oriented within the gravitational field.
• Joint position – the array of the limbs and angle of the joints (proprioception).
• Motion – the movement of the body; Muscle stretch.
• Oxgyen – the amount of oxygen in our blood.
• Light touch.
• Pressure.
• Temperature.

All these senses have their place in yoga and enrich our practice – the more the merrier. The more senses you use, the more interesting and engaging your practice and the more prana you can absorb. The more sensuous your meditation, the more energy and peace you will get from the practice, and the more you will want to meditate.

This is the Indriya Mandala, the circle of the senses.

We will be doing some asana with enhanced sensory awareness.

Saturday Afternoon: The Instincts as the Wise Motions of Life

The impulses of life are always flowing through our bodies and subtle bodies. The urge to explore, gather (shop), feed, nest, rest, bathe, dream, form communities, communicate, bond, mate, procreate – this is what bodies do. This is what cells do. These impulses are divine and are forms of prana as it flows and renews itself. In meditation, we can notice our experience fluctuating continually between these instinctual tones. When we approach meditation in this way, the feeling is not that the “mind wanders,” but rather that “life is renewing itself.” The Mandala of Instincts.

The emotions and passions arise from the interplay of instinctual energies. In yoga, we can witness the energy and motion of emotion as tattva, as elemental. This is the Mandala of Emotion

Sunday Morning: Rasa, The Juiciness of Practice

When we bring attention to the energy flows in the body and the passions, a juicy kind of awareness develops that can be called rasa. Rasa means juice, the best part or essence of anything. In yoga, rasa is when we are tasting the essence of our life energies as they flow through us.

There are nine classic rasas in navarasa theory, but in reality, there are many more rasas and more are evolving.

This is the Rasa Mandala.

Sunday Afternoon: Developing an Individual Daily Practice

Consolidating what you learned from your body in the weekend and bringing it home – carrying the techniques you have learned into your daily yoga practice.

Bio

Lorin Roche, Ph.D. began practicing meditation and yoga in 1968 as part of physiological research at the University of California. It was there he discovered the 112 yoga techniques of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. He was trained as a meditation teacher in 1970, and the last 42 years have been a sustained love affair with these teachings. His Ph.D. research focused on the language meditators develop to navigate their inner worlds. Dr. Roche is the author of The Radiance Sutras, Meditation Made Easy, Breath Taking, and Whole Body Meditations. With his wife, Camille Maurine, he is the author of Meditation Secrets for Women and Meditation 24/7. Dr. Roche coaches individuals wishing to evolve their daily meditation practice, and trains Yoga teachers in how to teach meditation. Visit lorinroche.com.