Our Philosophy
For most people nowadays Yoga starts with the physical practice, the asana. Often the wish for more balance in life is what brings people to Yoga classes. It is the feeling that there needs to be a remedy against the stress, speed and overburden of daily life. With the joy of moving the body, feeling great afterwards and a regular practice, soon people start to experience some positive changes in how they feel: More inner calmness and clarity, more balance and mental stability, and also more physical health.
Many of us have a diffuse feeling deep inside that there must be more to life than just work and consumption.
Maybe that’s exactly what most of us are looking for. But then there is the OM chanting at the beginning of every class and you may get the feeling that there must be a whole universe hidden behind these Indo-Tibetan symbols, and that Yoga may actually go much deeper. At the same time many of us have a diffuse feeling deep inside that there must be more to life than just work and consumption. Ultimately, the above mentioned, positive changes are mere side-effects of a regular Yoga practice. Yoga in its entirety goes much deeper: It is a radical transformation on how we see our own life as a human being, and yet it feels completely natural, it feels like coming home. It makes sense!
We are a part of the all-embracing Consciousness, we are connected with everything.
The “I”, the ego, which is central and so important in our hyper-individualised, modern society, inherently includes many problems. It cages us forever in the patterns of wanting and not-wanting. We are never going to be really happy and free with the “I” as the central organisation element, because it is intrinsically not made for this. Yoga leads us step by step away from the exaggerated and one-sided identification with the “I”, with our emotions, with our thoughts and with the body. It is not about suppressing the ego or wanting to get rid of it as it is a useful tool for daily life, but about realising through exploring the depth of Yoga that we are much more: We are a part of the all-embracing Consciousness, we are connected with everything, with all other human beings, with animals and plants, with all beings. We are not alone! This makes us free and happy from the very core of our being. A sense of communion, love and joy becomes natural and normal.
See the details about the “Introduction into Yoga Nidra” Workshops offered twice a year here.
The tiger we saw in the Kanha National Park knows about the benefit of Yoga Nidra…
Yoga Nidra – „the sleep of the yogi“ – originates in the Yoga Traditions of the Himalayas. Swami Satyananda Saraswati from the Bihar School of Yoga in India and Swami Rama, who founded the Himalayan Institute, have both systematized such a practice. The origin of Yoga Nidra is a Tantric practice called Nyasa, which means “to place”. The awareness is placed in the body in different ways, traditionally together with prayers and visualisations.
Yoga Nidra is by now a modern and highly efficient method of deep relaxation that helps us to completely relax and regenerate on a physical, mental and emotional level. At the same time it is vitalizing and gently invigorating, the mind becomes fresh and clear.
This technique is suitable for everyone, it’s very simple. It’s ideal for all the “high performance people” among us who are constantly stressed, they will draw great benefit. However, the original and true purpose is a spiritual one: You can gain deep insides in the nature of your consciousness with this practice. Yoga Nidra is a conscious deep sleep state where the awareness “sinks down” into the formless stillness and spaciousness of pure awareness. The intensity of the influence of our mind through karmic habit patterns (vasanas, samskaras, old mental imprints) gets milder and milder and ultimately these imprints get dissolved: Ultimate Freedom!
I think it should be mandatory to have Yoga Nidra in the personal survival kit for this lifetime. No, really!
Swami Satyananda gets to the heart of it when he says:
“Weather you think too much or you don’t think at all, you accumulate tensions. If you work physically or you do not work at all, you accumulate tensions. Weather you sleep too much or not at all, you accumulate tensions. Weather you take a heavy protein diet, a carbohydrate diet, or a vegetarian diet – these days we would have to add vegan diet-, you accumulate tensions. And these tensions amass in the different layers of the human personality. They accumulate in the muscular, emotional and mental systems.”
Through the regular practice of Yoga Nidra these tensions are tackled and resolved on all levels, even on the deepest formless level.
In Yoga Nidra we lie in Savasana (corpse pose) while the teacher guides us through a series of awareness exercises and visualizations, depending on the method you use. Thereby we sink first into a state between relaxed wakefulness and dream and later with more practice into conscious deep sleep. On any level of practice we can gain experiential knowledge of deeper levels of our mind, the unconscious or subconscious mind. The awareness goes back to a simple, fresh and unobstructed state.
If practiced on a regular basis, Yoga Nidra represents a source of health, strength, inspiration and joy. And a source of wonder and amazement about life in a human form as well!
As a secularly raised and scientifically trained person, the devotional practice of Bhakti Yoga was not easily accessible for me. I always felt drawn to it since the moment I came across a Harmonium in a random “inner awareness – spiritual” workshop in Canada.
Only through several peak experiences with LOVE, which is the background matrix of this whole circus we call “life”, the seed of Bhakti Yoga in my heart fell on fertile ground inside my being and could start to germinate. Gifted from the Universe with our Kirtan band project “Shakti Shuttlez” – how did that happen, wow? -, the little tender plant was nurtured and could slowly grow stronger. It’s still a small little plant, but its roots are already reasonably deep and it is steadily growing. I can even call the chanting of the thousand names of the Mother/Father Consciousness in the Heavens praying these days without feeling weird!
As a scientist I am interested in creating experiments and check the results with total honesty. It’s extremely interesting what a Mantra chanting session (Kirtan) is doing to the mind and heart! In many occasions I experienced how Mantra helps the mind to get out of very narrow, negative thinking patterns and away from not helpful or even destructive patterns and emotions. This happens short term right away when you stick to the chanting continuously for at least 20 min, and long term, over months and years, it will open new pathways in the brain, which help to bring our whole system (psychic, cardio-vascular, neurological, immune and endocrine) in a coherent, healthy state.
A Kirtan session is a community event, that’s why we call it circle! It’s a place beyond right or wrong, sing as if nobody is listening, dance as if nobody is watching, just be yourself and free. Often we load our shoulders with unresolved stuff and the emotions get stuck in our hearts and over time will have negative effects on our system: In Kirtan we let all these emotions flow again. Love, longing, union, separation, lust, despair, mourning, anger, hate, sadness, ecstasy, joy, oneness… you name it, they all have a place when we chant together the names of the Divine.
More details about our next Healing Breathwork & Yoga weekend @ Airyoga see here.
Breathwork for us is part of Yoga and it is about creating a space for deep self-awareness and the exploration of states beyond the ordinary. In the last years the word Breathwork has been widely used as a name for many different forms of powerful breathing practices, which induce non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Deeper layers of blockages on the physical, psychological and spiritual level are resulting often in narrowing experiences in everyday life. In order to access these often unconscious blockages one usually needs more powerful methods than the ones practiced in modern Yoga (all the “normal” pranayamas). Also the expanding of the everyday experience of “reality”, as it may happen with this kind of Breathwork, can be a deeply healing experience and may trigger a transformation process towards wholeness (holiness).
We have been holding space for these intense breathing sessions since many years. They are part of our “Yoga & Temazcal” format and also of the “Healing Breathwork & Yoga” Adrian has been offering since 2011 mostly at Airyoga ZH together with Guido Lenz.
Carefully we are preparing as a group (as the circle) the space for this extra-ordinary experience. Sharing rounds are an important part of this work and creates the opportunity to learn from each other.
We are very conscious about the delicate space we are opening up together. We hold the space with utmost care, clarity, strength, love and humor.
The afternoon workshops at Airyoga Adrian has developed together with Guido Lenz.
Guido Lenz has more than 30 years of experience in accompanying people into altered states of consciousness, where the self-healing powers get activated. For more than 35 years he has been working as an organic wine farmer closely interlinked with nature and for all that time he has been “walking” on a Native American shamanistic Ceremonial path. This taught him how to open a healing space, how to hold the space and how to move together within.
On this path Guido has guided thousands of people through such breathing sessions. He has developed his own style, which derives from “Rebirthing”.
Retreats and classes with focus on Meditation are coming soon.
Our main meditation teacher in Tibetan Buddhist meditation was Dr. Dan Brown with associates. His focus on bringing people in a week long retreat to their first taste of awakening was speaking very clearly to our hearts and minds.
He pointed out the maps of meditation very precisely from the first concentration practice all the way to Buddha-hood. With these maps we were able to reflect all our previous meditation experiences and put them into the right place, including also all the peak-experiences of altered state of consciousness with teacher plants.
We only started to understand Meditation instructions of different traditions like the Yoga Sutra or Bon practises through the teachings of Dan Brown and the first-hand meditation experiences we had under his guidance. We are eternally grateful to him for this introduction into Dharma!
The way we teach meditation depends on the format of the retreat. So far we have not yet put all our knowledge and experience into a concise, separate curriculum. We are working to make this happen in the near future.
We designate as Yoga all the practices, techniques and ceremonies – on whatever level of the human being – that bring us a little closer to the experience of the ultimate Truth, the realisation that at the core of our being we are one with the all-pervading Consciousness. Since all people are different, there is no uniform, straight path, which works for everybody. It is much more about being open, light-hearted and courageous to start to explore oneself. If you sincerely start to walk on the Yoga path, helpers and teachers will show up in your life, they will teach you, accompany you, challenge you and give you important hints on how to progress. Sometimes the teacher shows up in person, sometimes they talk to you through books, podcasts or films and yet at other times they take a completely different form: plant teachers.
A very important basic principle is to do the right practice at the right time in your life. It’s all about timing! Because it is not about an intellectual understanding of Yoga, it is important to practice only what you can currently integrate into your life and worldview. It is often a patient step-by-step development and transformation. For rational people with the “gift” of unfailing doubting it is often difficult to advance into the depths of Yoga mentioned above, because we are extremely attached to the materialistic worldview and the high value of rational thinking. For this kind of people, me included, it makes sense to have experiences way beyond the rational, conceptual ego-mind, which will strengthen the faith in the (Yoga-)path. It’s not important how we get to this peak-experience, as it is mentioned in the Yoga sutra 4.1:
This sutra lists different possibilities on how people can have peak-experiences beyond the ordinary consciousness, which can open up an important, essential field for the holistic health of a human being: The spiritual world, the direct access to the Divine. It says that certain people have this access by birth (janma), others can reach it by the use of Oshadhi (or Aushadhi, Entheogens, Teacher plants), or through the work with Mantras, through intensive spiritual practices (tapas), or through the Yoga path (Raja-Yoga) described in the Yoga sutras, meaning through concentration, meditation and samadhi states.
This deep spiritual experience lets you overcome the doubt and you realise that what the Eastern Wisdom Traditions are talking about is actually real!
