05/10/2025
Balancing The Elements
We can have an intention to face each day and night with remembering the blessings of life. We are not here for long and it could be taken away at any moment. We can connect with the fundamentals of life through awareness and appreciation of breath, heart and spirit through the gifts of yoga.
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The GUNAS
(Sanskrit for strands or qualities)
are energetic forces that weave together to form the entire universe and all that is within it.
There are three Gunas, each with its own unique attributes:
Tamas (stability)
Rajas (activity) and
Sattva (consciousness).
It might help to think of Gunas as tendencies:
the habitual ways you respond to any situation that arises.
How might you be feeling in this moment? ...
From asking this question regularly, we can choose the yoga practice to level ourselves up towards the middle path, the contentment and ease of Sattva being.
All three Gunas are present in every experience in a constantly shifting relationship with one another. One quality is always more present or dominant than the others, depending on what challenge you’re facing—
and, most important, how you respond to it.
When we overreact because someone pulled out in front of your car, then rajas becomes dominant.
If you emotionally shut down to avoid having a difficult conversation, that’s a sign that tamas has taken the reins.
As you emerge from a beautiful restorative Yin practice on Wednesday, you may experience the sattvic quality embracing your experience.
Understanding the Gunas is important because while the challenges of our everyday lives can disturb their delicate balance, these energies, like in an intricate dance, create all that we are, all we are becoming, all we experience, all that we see, and all that remains unseen.
Tamas provides our foundation;
Rajas gives it vitality and freshness;
Sattva fills us with consciousness and compassionate awareness.
All are within our nature, and welcomed essences of being alive.
Our yoga practices always have an intention of balance of our Gunas, as all three are useful to move through at different times.
But we meet ourselves where we are at, then travel to feeling balanced again in accordance to our needs in the moment.
When we feel mentally low, exhaustion, heaviness in the body, and notice a tamasic state is over-riding, we can try gentle movement to balance ourselves upwards (gentle Yin poses, or Kundalini refreshment).
When we have a busy mind juggling so much, or we have had high activity in the body, we are feeling an over-riding rajasic state. We can then choose to harness our focus in our physical practice (direct our energy in steady balancing postures of Hatha, dispelling tension & monkey mind, returning to a more calm and regulated state).
Why not view my U-tube channel to understand this more.
I have a class for balancing the Rajasic and the Tamasic state of being, then lots of meditations too. A link to my channel, I will add below.
Have an experience and note down how you feel , the Guna state you may be witnessing, before the class and afterwards.
Be in inquiry around this.
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LUNA YOGA:
https://youtube.com/?si=xbUzUnd9ABTqoafX