Self Realization: Yoga Beyond the Mat • Nicole Doherty Ananda

Yoga is a path toward Self-Realization or seeing the truth of who we really are.

It’s a journey of awakening to our divine essence. Through years of navigating various sacred and spiritual texts, philosophies and viewpoints, I’ve extrapolated that in essence all paths I’ve studied lead to the Yoga of Self-Realization and being at one with Source or God.

In that I realize the massive responsibility I have in teaching the totality of Yoga, not just the asana practice, but the entirety of its scientific study because it contains important keys to unlocking the mystery of our next phase of conscious evolution.

Yoga was designed to be a lifestyle that transcends the mat and informs the full spectrum of our journey toward higher consciousness.

Yoga graces us with self-reflective tools like listening, conscious breathing, inward gazing and rhythmic movement that entrains the mind. This daily practice of introspection brings forth the focused concentration and meditation that we all are benefiting from on a larger scale. It’s an exciting time to see what is transpiring on the mat.

Yet what happens, when students leave the mat?

I’m finding that students do not have the tools to navigate all that has arisen from their limited 1.5hr practice. There is a gap that needs to be bridged. As students I encourage you to go beyond the mat and dive deeper into the philosophy and science of the Yoga Sutras or find a teacher that understands the deeper teachings of Yoga and take some privates.

As a teacher, I have a responsibility to impart my wisdom in Yoga’s intelligence beyond the physical asana practice off the mat. I need to educate my students and clients that Yoga is an integrative holistic medicine that heals energy, emotions, and mental traumas. It prevents and cures disease.

Every day I witness the mind-stuff (citta) arising in my own field of awareness and empathically experience this in my students. The path for me can seem arduous sometimes when I recognize the complexity of human nature and all of its constituents – body, emotions, mind, and spirit. Layer social dynamics on top of the individual’s path and I have an even more complicated exploration. Yet I feel humbled and graced by the wisdom of God to be able to share my intelligence of this important practice.

We are in a pivotal phase of evolution and we need to dive deep into and uproot the shadowy unresolved unconscious behaviors and habits.I have begun to incorporate Shamanism (a powerful Self-Realization tool) Reiki (a Divine healing energy) and Sound Healing into my Yoga teachings. I’m offering them as a post-operative experience to help students deal with what’s arising on their mats.

Through these tools, I’ve discovered my ability to see beyond the veil of illusion and have gained the understanding of the true distinction between the Purusha (Soul) and Prakrati (Nature, body, mind).

Now is the time to go deep into the realm of trauma, the wounds of childhood, and the residue of ancestry to eradicate the patterns of behavior that keep us bound and constricted and in the past.

It’s our responsibility to forge new ways of relatedness with one another and with the world around us.

I encourage all my friends, family and students to join this journey into the unknown and to really see what is at the root cause of your suffering. I encourage you to explore the scripts that play behind the scenes and how the mind weaves new stories that don’t serve us if we don’t attend to understanding the scripts. It’s a wild web we weave. The scripts many never disappear, but we can learn how to control our reactive behavior toward them.

Our job as spiritual warriors is not to avoid suffering or challenges or obstacles, but to embrace them as our teachers.

The path of Yoga is not about spiritually bypassing our ego either. It’s about having a healthy relationship to our human self and all of its imperfections as a method of discovering the True Self again as God.

Yoga and Shamanism teaches us to recognize our experiences as opportunities to learn to love more deeply, beautifully and unconditionally.

I look forward to diving deeper with all of you on this journey of awakening through our shared experiences on and off the mat.