Bhumi Yoga Talks with Maxi Meissner

In this talk I share a little bit about what it’s like to go and practice in Mysore. Many of my students have asked me, so I decided to talk a little about it.

I share a little bit about

• The new shala (Sharath Yoga Centre)
• The process of applying for a spot at the shala
• That you can now get a great cappuccino in Gokulam in various places.
• Why it is so special to practice there
• That going to Mysore comes with compromises (family, finances, time...).
• ...and more

In the end I also share a little bit of my personal experience and a little of what I uncovered within myself during my last trip.

While listening to this talk please bear in mind that this talk was recorded right after I taught a full primary series - after teaching a full primary I am not all that fresh anymore. And that we had about 20 minutes for this talk before we had to clear the room as the next class was setting up...

There is a lot more that can be said about going to Mysore!

Even though a lot more could be said about going to Mysore, and I will probably do that at some point in the future, I still wanted to share this talk as I feel it can be insightful to some of you.

Hope you find it valuable!

xx, Maxi

Upcoming opportunities to study with me:

This episode is a recording of our recent satsang. The topics of this satsang include:

• Dinacharya which refers to the routines that help is feel balanced and well.
• What is a dinacharya
• How does a dinacharya help us feel balanced and live the life we intend to live - what are the great benefits of having and maintaining a dinacharya?
• The power of consistency in your dinacharya
• A short dinacharya (15min) is fantastic

• How discipline is needed to direct focus to attend to your dinacharya
• What discipline is and what it's not
• The misunderstanding that discipline is rigidty
• Discipline as your support to feel balanced and go in the direction in life that we intend to.

I hope you find this episode valuable.

This episode is a recording of our recent satsang.

I receive a lot of questions from practitioners that are wondering whether it is ok to have a shorter practice and how to go about shortening practice in the light of time constraints or other situations.

I also witness a lot of practitioners struggling with the well-known all or nothing approach to yoga (and life) - Perhaps you recognise yourself?

So in this episode I talk about:

• Is it ok to have a shorter practice? (Can you guess?)
• How to practically go about shortening your practice when you are low on time, energy, traveling.
• The all or nothing approach that many of you are very familiar with. Like this notion of “If I cannot do my full practice, what’s the point, I am not a good yogi then, so I can just leave it altogether”.

I talk about these topics from the perspective of yoga being an embodied practice. A practice that allows us to become more literate about the language of our body, through this allowing us to be more self-aware, and to better understand cause and effect. Yoga, as an embodied practice allows us to arrive at a good space to make decisions from.

Enjoy!

**I received the consent to leave in parts where other people talk and share**

Welcome to this episode of the Bhumi Yoga Talk.

In this talk I discuss how we can cultivate a skilful presence when things show up in our practice, and when they show up frequently. 

With things I mean:

• Our patterns of holding ourselves in a negative way

• We may feel we don’t progress

• Something is coming up that we don’t have skill to place it yet

• Resistance in our practice

• Avoidance

• Dissociation:  When we make the movements but we are not really there, we are just going through the motions.

Let’s face it, the practice we engage in, some people practice daily, others towards 3-4 times a week - it’s frequent practice, hence it’s practice and this brings us face to face with ourselves. Navigating this can be challenging.

So how can we remain skilful when challenging things surface during the practice, and when they surface more frequently.

In this talk I touch on:

• That when we start the practice as a beginner, the presence in our practice (is for most) different. Then when we become more literate about the practice and ourselves the real work is starting. This is when we are not so entertained by the practice anymore (we are not new to it anymore) and we start to see our patterns showing up in practice. 

• What our collective tendency is in how to deal with things that we call negative or unpleasurable. And that is to avoid negativity, to push through or away from that, to shut it out. I talk about that this is not skilful and the underlying charge remains.

• What are then skilful ways of being with things that come up in practice.

• Awareness and acceptance

• That through tristhana we can cultivate awareness to the level of the body

• Examples of tristhana to cultivate presence

• …

THE GURVADI GUNAS & HOW THEY BRING GUIDANCE TOWARDS MORE HARMONY IN YOUR INNER & OUTER LIFE, AND YOGA PRACTICE

Listen to this talk to learn about how the gurvadi gunas help us bring balance to how and what we do, on and off the mat.

You will hear Maxi talk about:

• What the gurvadi gunas are.
• Why they are important.
  • How you can use gurvadi gunas to understand everything in life on a physical and subtle level. How they helps us understand our own nature and tendencies and they give us direction towards harmony
• How can we apply the gurvadi gunas in practice and the insights and guidance they can offer us here - a more balanced approach to our practice (and life), Maxi provides examples...
  • Cause and effect, self responsibility and agency vs. victimhood
  • How working with the qualities allows for interoception, self-acceptance and allows  for the cultivation of self-compassion - an integral aspect of ahimsa.

Enjoy!

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Tune into this episode to better understand what can get in the way of your practice.

Maxi talks about:

• What actually is success in yoga?
• What can get in the way of having success in yoga. / How not to have success in yoga.
• What are the six poisons of the mind and how can they be steadied?
• Abhyasa (practicing being present) and vairgaya (being very aligned with ourselves)
• What are predictable distractions of the mind towards practice and their indicators? (Everyone will face distractions to practice.)
• Distractions vs. obstacles to practice

Tune into this episode and receive guidance on how:

• You can deal with resistance along your yoga path 
• And how you can use your yoga so that it feels  sustainable and nourishing to you instead of something you think you need to do.

In this talk, Maxi discusses  the power of sticking to the basic principles of the practice, to keep it simple, and sustainable.

In yoga, as in life, we can easily get caught up in wanting "it all", doing a little bit too much and attaching to / being fixated on certain outcomes. Herein, many of us have struggled at one time or another with wanting our yoga practice (or anything else in life) to feel or be a certain way. 

Attaching to having it a certain way creates unnecessary struggle, tension and suffering for our mental, energetic and physical bodies, our life and our surroundings.

Keeping things simple and sticking to the basic principles is one key towards cultivating harmony (a sense of balance and peace).

Keywords and concepts of this talk:

👉Tristana

👉Rhythm vs. control

👉Mahagunas

👉Attachment to how something feels

👉Short-term vs. long-term fixes

👉How to keep things simple and create harmony

This episode of the Bhumi Yoga Talks was recorded on 22 July 2022 after the Led Primary at Bhumi Yoga. 

This episode of the Bhumi Yoga Talks was recorded on 15 April 2022 after the Led Primary at Bhumi Yoga. 

In this episode Maxi discusses:

• The breath as an aspect of tapas, and as an aspect of effort and non-effort
• What paying attention to the cadence of your breath can do for you
• The Yamas, the first limb of the 8-limbed path.of yoga, and your GPS for life.

In this episode of the Bhumi Yoga Talks, Maxi talks about one of the Niyamas: Santosha.
Santosha refers to the practice of contentment.

The practice of Santosha asks us to take root in a calm center, recognise the richness already present in our lives and be grateful for what we have.  Easier said that done, right, especially in this world where our attention can so easily get distracted by all sorts of things we seemingly "need to acquire / achieve / get done before our life can really start".

Maxi discussed the ingredients that make it possible to cultivate Santosha and herein explores:

• Tapas
• Knowing what you truly value and what is really worthwhile your time
• Understanding that your time is limited
• How you spend your time defines your life
• Agency
• Gratitude