Inner Body Bright

If you take an Anusara-influenced Yoga class, there is a big possibility that you will hear this phrase. Allowing, encouraging, and guiding your inner light to shine more brilliantly is a main focus of the Anusara style. To describe what the inner body is takes more art than science, but having a bright inner body has very practical applications. When I describe inner body, I usually say that I think inner body is everything about you that you can’t see with your eyes. So it includes the inner layers of your skin, muscles, organs, energy body, your heart connection with spirit, and more.

When I came across the book by Donald Moyer aptly named “Yoga: Awakening the Inner Body” I had to check it out.  Donald begins his book by “defining” the inner body in this way, “For me, the inner body involves every aspect of a person’s being: the anatomical, the physiological, the mental, and the spiritual.” He then classifies different aspects of inner body as subtitles: surface muscles versus deeper muscles, anatomical body versus physiological body, the active mind versus the reflective mind, and the ego versus The Self. (The Self is the way that many yogic writings acknowledge the collective consciousness or universal grand energy of life. So, it’s not your individual self but the bigger Self.)

I used a passage from his Active Mind versus the Reflective Mind section as the inspiration for classes this week:

 “At the mental level, the active mind represents the outer world of thinking, doing, and acting: the reflective mind stands for the inner world of feeling, sensing, and responding. For the practice of yoga to be nourishing and creative, there must be a dialogue between the active, or intentional, mind and the reflective, or receptive, mind. If you are ruled by the active mind, your practice becomes forced and mechanical because you never listen to your body: you treat it like a machine. If you are ruled by the reflective mind, your practice becomes formless and inert, and loses its sense of purpose.”

This concept of using the reflective mind in harmony with the active mind in both practice and daily life allows us to stay in better touch with our inner body so that our actions have greater purposefulness and become more effective and fulfilling. Our inner body, which includes more that just the physical body, is often clueing us in to ways to make our lives more harmonious. Often though, we are so caught up in the outer world of form that we lose this connection to ourselves as individuals and to the bigger Self.

By cultivating an awareness of your inner body and encouraging your inner light to shine more brightly you will experience a greater sense of freedom and lightness of being. Here’s an exercise to help you experience this concept:

• Begin sitting or standing in a way that you can be calm for just a few moments
• Become aware of your breath without trying to breathe better and without judgement – just let yourself be perfect as you are
• Notice the effects of paying attention to your inner breath and inner body
• Reflect on what you feel and then allow your breath and your inner body to guide you in making subtle adjustments to allow your inner body to feel more free and expansive
• As you inhale encourage your inner body to become so bright and expansive that your outer body expands and as you exhale allow your outer body to relax and feel more settled. You might think of the way that we can see a sleeping baby or a peaceful animal breathe as they rest with ease
• Just breathing more fully in this way will help you experience greater harmony = vitality AND peace. You can add to it though by envisioning your inner light becoming stronger, clearer, and more free with each and every breath cycle. 

Your inner body is also what makes you unique. It is your personality, your interests, your talents, gifts, and skills. We all come here special to support and inspire each other. By shining your true light more fully into the world you add to the goodness and beauty of life.