What is Stability and how do we Achieve It?

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Blessings,

Here are some questions I am investigating this week. If anyone has any thoughts on these questions ? please share. I really am looking for help and understanding to extend and deepen my Yoga practice. All week these questions will be on my mind.

[ul]
[li]What is stability in Yoga?
[/li][li]How does it help us achieve Samadhi and Rising the Kundalini?
[/li][li]What asanas can help us achieve stability in our lives and practice?
[/li][li]How do we achieve stability in:
[/li][LIST]
[li]Body
[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Breath
[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Emotions
[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Mind
[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Energy
[/li][/ul]
[li]Why is stability important?
[/li][li]Can stability be detrimental to our Path in some cases?
[/li][li]Is stability the same thing as balance or does stability somehow depend on balance?
[/li][/LIST]

Thanks for any responses. I really do appreciate any insight on these questions.

Blessings Be?

#2

Blessings,

It seems stability arises when balance has become a way of being. When we have found that place, that razors edge, and bring all of our focus upon it, it widens and becomes the ground from which we can rest upon. Balance often conjures the idea of uncertainty to me ? as when I am standing in Tree Pose. I have a really hard time being balanced because of a birth defect that yoga has slowly helped me heal. I teeter and totter, holding tightly, muscles tense, fighting to hold myself up, and then get down on myself when I fall. And so, I have learned how to invite balance in my life and with balance, stability. With the Tree Pose I go out and stand with a tree. First, I hold onto its trunk for support. It holds me steady and strong. Then I hold onto its branches, giving me support but also the opportunity to reach out on my own. Then I hold onto a delicate twig ? the wind moves me, I am shaky, but holding onto the twig as an anchor - I stand. Then I hold onto a leaf. Even more unsteady and at the whim of any bird (beautiful distraction), insect (doubts, fears, and anything else eating away at me), the wind (thoughts coming and going), and yet, I start to open up to the light ? to the asana. Now, standing under the tree, standing together, I comfortably reach for the fruit and partake in the beauty of being a tree! Stability ? what a beautiful thing.

Blessings Be?

#3

Blessings,

Here is a practice I have learned to encourage stability in my practice: Entering into an asana I take a few breaths ? watching and paying attention to the quality and essence of the breath. Often times I find it takes a few moments for my breath to stabilize and balance. In strenuous asanas or asanas that pinch/squeeze my lungs or restrict my diaphragm, I find it takes thirty seconds or so for my breathing to stabilize. Once my breathing softens, relaxes, and calms, I do a body scan: bringing my attention to all the major areas of my body one at a time. Wherever the energy is stuck, stagnant, empty, or otherwise imbalanced I bring my attention to that area and stabilize the energy: getting it moving in some cases, slowing it down in others, relaxing, filling, and so forth.

What I have found in doing this is that it helps stabilize my mind by slowing down and ultimately stilling the incessant thoughts, it stabilizes my emotions by bringing my attention to the energy directly and not as a secondary experience of its movement, and it stabilizes my body by helping to balance the energy.

Blessings Be…

#4

Suba,

Our senses are designed to absorb a limited range of signals and we condition our brain to churn out a very glossed over, uncomplicated, approximate world-view so that we can glide through the chores of living unscathed. We realize how unreal all this is only when the apparent is questioned.

What is stability? Are we talking about "oneself’’ as an object that is stable? Does that mean unmoving? unchanging?

All objects of matter have life, the cosmic energy that is ever vibrant through waves, movement, rhythm and change. That is in real state. Can we perceive this state ‘as is’? No, not until we learn to break away from the compulsions of sense-based cognition.

A simple example is, when we fly. The initial push and pull during take off, soon goes away and we feel ‘stability’ when we are actually flying exactly as fast as the aircraft. Are we really stable?

When we look at a plant, each time we see it as ‘stable’ though the transformative process of seed to fruition to flowering to drying to new seeds is continuous. Our own aging is continuous, in living we die, in dying we re-live.

So stability in Yoga is -

1/ one of recognizing the rhythm and movement in breathing, emoting and sensing,

2/ gauging the spikes, irregularities and captivity of automatic reflexes

3/ learning and practicing the ideal or natural rhythm

4/ consciously aligning own rhythm with the natural one and stay that way

This alignment brings perceived and real stability and is to be achieved for the body through asanas and breathing, for the mind through yama-niyama to enter the domain of soul with pratyahara and progressively through dharana, dhyana and Samadhi to be inherently aligned needing no effort.

Stability is a long process and balance is crucial in the initial stages for alignment. But one legitimate question is - how does one know the natural rhythm and the fact that one is aligned therewith? The missing key is awareness. In all our efforts to balance and align we travel through the thickness of gross into the fineness of the subtle. As the body is purified, wild emotions are tamed and reasoning becomes discerning, awareness rises from gross to subtle. One also develops the proverbial ‘sixth sense’ to which the ‘stability’ is simply known when achieved.