What is Natural Yoga? 99.9% of yoga is FAKE
I did yoga for over ten years on and off. It all started when I picked up a Hatha yoga book at a used book store. It was from the 70s, it seemed so honest and mystical. I practiced one pose for 20 minutes daily to really master each pose. My body transformed, my mind became more focused. I was hooked. I realized that the gentle exercise of yoga made my body long and lean whereas biking and running made me shorter and bulkier. I loved yoga for the mental and physical benefits. It is also seemed that at certain times if I held a pose just right I would experience emotional healing and once in a while I felt the twinkle of a spiritual experience. I felt like yoga was bringing me into a deeper spirituality.
I continued to practice yoga (or what I thought was yoga) for 20 minutes a day. I either practiced from a book or went onto youtube to do 20 minute routines. If I did yoga every day I stayed in perfect shape. I got curious so I took some classes in person. I got even more curious so I started to do 90 minutes a day of kundalini yoga through an online live course. This proved to be detrimental. I started to experience a lack of appetite that lasted a year. I couldn't eat anything even though I was extremely hungry. I felt flighty and couldn't relate to others. I stopped doing yoga. Shortly thereafter I moved to Costa Rica where I fell in love with surfing. Surfing replaced yoga completely and my yoga moves were mostly relegated to a series of poses I might do to stretch out before going out to catch some waves. In Costa Rica I pretty much forgot about yoga.
I spent more time in contemplation during my three years in Costa Rica. Once I returned to the USA and bought a house I thought about doing yoga again, but something irked me about yoga. I just didn't feel inspired to do it and the renovations of my house demanded a lot of physical energy. I was staying incredibly fit! To exercise on top of all of the manual labor I was doing felt like overkill.
Slowly over time my house started to come together. I entered into a period of solitude again. My life became much more peaceful and gentle. Just as it was in Costa Rica I felt called to spend time in contemplation. However, this contemplation was different. I was no longer in the wild and chaotic energy of Costa Rica, I was in a quiet and peaceful prairie home. My bills were paid, there was copious amounts of delicious and healthy food around and for the first time in my entire life I had a safe and quiet home to call my own. I felt rooted, secure and peaceful. I still felt no need for yoga. I spent my free time relaxing, resting, recharging after an entire childhood and adulthood of "survival mode."
Then it happened. July 28, 2022. I felt something that I had never felt before. I had been meditating on and off for several weeks prior. Not any sort of guided meditation, but a style of meditation I developed and teach in my Natural Meditation Course. It's how I have been meditating since I was 12! After weeks of meditating like this I experienced a blissful sensation emanating from the top of my head. I felt and knew that the presence of God was all around me. I experienced the awareness that comes from feeling fully the impact of God's love. I felt one or in union with God. For the first time in my entire life I experienced true or natural yoga. My life forever changed at that point. I lived for 9 months entirely absorbed in this bliss.
Yoga means to be yolked or "union." In union with what, you might ask. Yoga means union with God or the divine. Some people do not like to use the word God, but I do. Christians refer to this experience as Union with God and some have written about this phenomena. Saint Teresa of Avila has written extensively about it and her experience very closely resembles mine in the first months of my union.
Interestingly enough, while being in this deeply engrossing blissful state that I at times would experience spontaneous movements of my body that closely resembled "yoga." In fact I experienced spontaneous phenomena that resembled all of the 8 limbs of yoga and I still experience them this day. These are: yama (moral disciplines), niyama (positive duties), asana (different postures), pranayama (breathing techniques), pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dharana (focused concentration), dhyana (meditative absorption) & samadhi (bliss). I also experienced spontaneous bhanda (locks of the body), nadi shodhana (alternate nostril breathing), breath retention, mantra, singing, dancing and drishti (gaze). While these were all experienced spontaneously they weren't out of my control. I had to surrender and allow these phenomena to occur. I was not "overtaken" with any of this.
As the months unfolded I found that regularly throughout the day if I allowed, I experience this natural yoga unfolding through me. As I allowed this natural yoga to occur either changing my breath or moving my body in certain ways I would either maintain or deepen my state of bliss. My body would heal itself of any ailments it might be experiencing and I would be infused with a ton of energy to go about my duties in life. I also had a sense of awareness and discernment about which actions to take in my life. I still live like this to this day with more intense asanas occurring for me as I allow which may be all day long, but as I live a pretty normal life I usually will allot time morning, afternoon and night to be more deeply submersed in yoga.
When I experience natural yoga it is EFFORTLESS. I may even end up in a headstand and it is still effortless. There is no pain and it releases any tensions or stored up energies in the body. It is healing and it always leads to bliss. It has given me muscles I never had, straightened my teeth, balanced my face and even changed my face, brought my body strength and developed my singing voice to a degree I never thought possible. This has all been effortless and thoughtless. If I ever feel I am getting sick I go into a state of yoga. Yoga heals my body and brings me vitality. This natural yoga fulfills all of the promises that the corrupt yoga claims to fulfill.
I now know that the yoga practiced in 99.9% of yoga studios and ashrams all around the world (yes including India) are corrupt and do not actually lead the seeker to true yoga. They mistake the result for the way. You experience asana as a result of yoga (union) you don't do asana in order to achieve yoga (union). Gurus require that their students utter mantras in order to achieve enlightenment, but I promise you, thousands of mantras will be uttered spontaneously and effortlessly as a result of enlightenment. We do not enter into union with God or yoga through action. We enter into it through being. We must undo the external scaffolding, dogmas, beliefs and patterns that keep us from our natural state. This is the work I have done and the work I invite clients into in the life coaching and spiritual mentorship I offer. I am grateful that I have brought many clients to the door of yoga and have seen several enter into a state of union with God through their own BEING.
It is very hard to convince others that the "practice" of yoga can actually be dangerous. Natural yoga is so gentle and subtle. The movements that you experience in natural yoga are fluid. Many movements occur over a short span of time and are in sync with the breath, the environment you are in and in direct relation to what your body needs at the time you are practicing. What my body needs today is different than yesterday. What it needs this second is different from the previous second and it is certainly going to be entirely different from what your body needs. No one can teach yoga. To claim to be a yoga teacher is ridiculous. One can only help another to undo any external scaffolding that is keeping another individual from experiencing union with God or rather what is keeping the individual from having the awareness to know that they have always been in union with God.
For life coaching and spiritual mentorship email me hi@nicolebrenny.com
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