Here are some of the methods and practices we employ in our instruction. This is an elaboration on the content in offerings: themes. Thus, if you have not already, you may want to read that section first.

⋄ uplift the body
⋄ feel the breath
⋄ unveil the energy
⋄ deep dive into emotion
⋄ deep dive into thought
⋄ nailing the person
⋄ touch life, know the divine

uplift the body

Let us consider a few important things: food and digestion, outlook towards our body, posture and asana, putting our physical difficulties into perspective, focusing on the right things (and releasing our obsessions
with the wrong ones).
And there are many more.

Although, there are many things to cover in relation to the body, food and digestion are the foundations.

Food, from when to eat, how, what, to when to fast (not eat anything, or not eat certain things), how, and why, is extremely important in our lives.
Much more important than most of us take it to be.

Molecules of the food literally stay in our bodies for years, and that is mainly what our physical bodies consist of.
When you are about to consume a piece of food, look at it well and realize that it will break into very very small parts, and some of these parts are going to be part of the skin on your fingers, or part of your lungs.
Moreover, food becomes part of our personal existence also in other ways, yet to be understood by science.

But this is only the scientific perspective.
In spirituality, we care mostly about the experiential perspective.
We care about how we experience our bodies, our health, our energy, our emotions and our mind.
We need all that in good form for many reasons: to enjoy our day, to perform well in our activities, to be nice to others and enjoy their presence, to meditate and find depth, etc.

Nowadays, there is a lot of instruction about nutrition.
From a spiritual perspective, this instruction falls short for the most part.
The one thing that works is experimentation.
Firstly, we understand some of the basic foundations of health and how to be conscious of them as they manifest, one way or another, in our bodies and minds.
Secondly, we always observe.
Lastly, we come to know and we, naturally and easily, shift to eating in a way that works for us.
(And heal our bodies in the process, if that is an issue.)

You wake up. Is your body thirsty? Does it need food? Maybe you drink some water and you skip breakfast today.
You will fast for a bit; your body is asking you to do so.
Maybe you only start to realize hunger is arising around 13.00.
You take your time to prepare the food that your body seems to be doing well with.
Not just "in general" doing well, but specifically in tune to these days of summer (when the weather is getting hotter), for example, or these early days of autumn (when the weather is shifting and your body seems to be sensitive to it).
You prepare the food with the right attention, care, and emotion. You cook it properly, and maybe you skip a certain ingredient in the recipe today.
You eat it fresh. Maybe with company, maybe alone.
Maybe you choose to speak a little, maybe you close your eyes.
Maybe you fold your legs, or one leg, or just sit normally on a chair.
Maybe you adjust the lighting or the ambience somehow.
Maybe you choose to start with a sip of water, a prayer or a thought.
Maybe you eat quickly (while chewing well and making sure you do not create a rush inside of you!), or maybe you take a lot of time.
Maybe you finish eating, you decide you are done and you rush to work.
Or maybe you take a moment, go out to the patio, feel the air, and slowly return to your day.

All these are considerations that should arise naturally as we develop a keen awareness on what works for us and what does not.
We need this wisdom in our lives, in order to feel well, to be healthy, to connect to life, to find purpose.
If we do food the wrong way, it can become a huge impendiment.

feel the breath

Breath is a fantastic tool in spirituality.
However, it tends to be an involved tool and it is not something
that it pays much to analyze intellectually.
We bring it in our instruction in a simple and natural way.

If it is significant for you, you may take it further later on. We will assist you in finding your way.

unveil the energy

Energy is a complicated matter, both in intellectual and experiential terms.
We like to break it down in simple terms and get to know it by better understanding our environment.

We want to understand the sun, the water, the sky, air, food, soil and the rocks. This is a very individual path and each of us connects to this understanding in different ways.
Understanding the scientific side of energy (as in Physics)
is also very helpful.

We like energy because it is the most direct way to depth.
If we seem to be able to connect to it somehow, even if mostly intellectually, it can form the foundation of our "physical" worldview.
The concept of energy is the great unifier.
It brings cohesion to our understanding of our environment.

All the above is the more intellectual side of energy.
There are other aspects that are quite involved and deeply experiential.
Like the breath, they are too involved to analyze intellectually.

Some of you will have a tendency that allows this experiential aspect to naturally manifest in your experience. We will attempt to assist you with that and instruct you where to go from there.
There are a lot silly and reckless things we can do, and there are a lot of wise and harmonious things we can do too.
It is a compicated issue and, unfortunately, it is not easy to find good counsel on it. We can help with that.

deep dive into emotion

Experientially, emotion is very related to energy, and it has a deep and involved aspect to it that can be extremely beneficial if we tap into it.

The good bit with emotions is that they are extremely accessible.
This is partly because they are very well connected to our intellectual process.

Emotion is actually the primary vehicle of spiritual practice in most spiritual traditions today. And it is outstandigly effective. (Although very effective, using it properly takes a lot of learning/effort.)
We would be unwise not to take advantage of it.

Note that while working with emotion is very natural for some people, it is quite evasive for others (for these people it constitutes an advanced element of practice).
But that is only in the beginning.
Because we all have good access to it.

Let us see a few methods now that we may employ
when working with emotion.

We will start with the experiential ones.
First method is awareness, awareness, and awareness.
Awareness of emotion is the foundational practice.
We see how we feel and we acknowledge our emotions.
In time, we will start to see the patterns, then we start to understand our emotion.

When we develop enough awareness and enough alignment with life,
we can also start to understand and resolve our limitations.
However, our emotional world is absolutely full of blind spots,
and it is so easy to miss our shortcomings.
Thus we may prefer to employ a methodical approach.

We can use one of the various maps (developed along the ages), which outline the patterns of human emotion and expand on the polarities along which these emotions manifest.
(In our school we make use of one of those maps with great success.)
This allows us to go deeper into our shortcomings, and do so step-by-step.
Taking our time and treading softly with emotions is very important. Because so much is happening that is not available to our consciousness and can potentially result in great impediments.

And now, time for some magic! Let us talk about emotional engineering.
If we recognize emotions inside of us deeply,
we can start to shift or pacify emotions.
Very simply and naturally. Some of you may have a talent for it; hopefully you can make it work for you.

And lastly, let us touch a little bit on the big one: devotional wisdom.
Whether in conjunct with naivity or out of deep wisdom, there is the possibility for humans to develop constant, or near-constant, sweetness of emotion and take their whole world to be a beautiful beautiful thing.

This is a quality that we can actively cultivate. When it starts to fill our experience, the smaller things in life start to fade away. They can hardly distract us anymore. Navigating life is slowly becoming effortless and sweet.

deep dive into thought

Thoughts are the perfect place where to practice awareness.
Look at your thought. Make that a habit.

The other key thing is letting go. The thought comes, we just let it go.
That is not very simple though.
We often practice that without any additional instruction.
The simple instruction is: "see the thought, let it go".
This can help but it is very inefficient for many of us.

It is important to put things into perspective; understand the nature of thought, what it is, where does it come from, contemplate on it, and meditate on it.
We should understand the difference between emotional and existential reality, or at least get a feeling of how thought shapes and affects our experience and vice versa.

Then we start to engineer thought, in a way similar to
how we do so with emotions.
Letting go of thought is actually an aspect of engineering our thought.
But we need to have the right perspective, because it is a tricky thing to do.

If we focus on something, we only intensify it in our mind, even if we focus on how to get rid of it.
If we create aversion to it, oops, we messed up! That is not how do it.
If we also develop guilt around it, well, now we really messed up!
We should not fight our minds. Our minds are gardens that we need to cultivate with patience, wisdom and insight.
We are to be soft and pleasant towards our thoughts, but also firm and determined as to how this garden of our mind should develop.

There is a lot of nitty gritty, but it is a process that we can easily organize intellectually as long as we keep working on it.
And that is a good thing; "organized" means streamlined and easy.

In time we also start to see our purpose and vision, and we can consciously align our thought with that.

nailing the person

In spirituality, we are called to nail the person (the "illusory" boundary to the rest of the existence), to crucify it. We are called to die and resurrect.

This may sound extreme, unattainable, and maybe harsh or violent too.
But it is actually beautiful and kind and sweet. And it is also an actual possibility for all of us.

In this school we are very passionate about this subject. That is why we wrote a book about it. And we like it even more because, from an intellectual standpoint, it is the basis of spirituality.

This is a major part of our teaching.
For information, have a look at the book [click here].

touch life, know the divine

This is definitely the most experiential part of practice. We try to get to depth simply by making use of life around us.

Depth is always there. It is a matter of whether we are experiencing it or not. (This is connected to the devotional wisdom that we mentioned in the section with the emotions.)

Each of us is sensitive to different things in life. If we can identify one thing that seems to penetrate deeply into us, we can learn to be present to it. This is our gateway to being present to life.

Life is the great teacher. If we are present to it, we are on the spiritual path.