What is your Life Saver? YS II - 33

What is your life saver? Technically one would picture a ring like in the picture on this post. A life saver is defined by www.thefreedictionary.com/lifestaver as :

1. an attendant employed at a beach or pool to protect swimmers from accidents and or
2. a life preserver in the form of a ring of buoyant material

Then you might wonder how does this apply to you? As you know, if you are a reader of this blog, that this blog entitled "Always Be Om," consists of yoga related information related to this theme. So in that context I am now using the live saver as a metaphor.

What got me to think of this subject is the energy of the time we are living in. According to the news we are in" a recession". This is affecting everyone, depending on how they see as I spoke about in the posts on "Thoughts as Eyeglasses" and "Taking Pictures". Thus, whatever we choose can fall between "Bondage and Liberation" for us.

So getting back to the original question of what is your life saver, for me it is my yoga practices. Case in point my practice of swadhyaya, self study which includes studying the yogic texts like the Guru Gita, which is latter part of the Skanda Purana. (The Guru Gita is a Hindu scripture of 182 verses, authored by the sage, Vyasa. It is a part of the larger Skanda Purana.) You can also see the post I did on swadhyaya.

I was feeling a little down noticing some thoughts I was having. I won't go into detail about the thoughts as what you focus on expands, however I do acknowledge the process. So I applied pratipaksha bhavana (a Sanskrit term)- When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite ones should be thought of. Pratipaksha bhavana is a method which is given as a clue to control and obstruct thoughts in Yoga Sutra II - 33 - VITARKA BADHANE PRATIPAKSA BHAVANAM .

I had not sat down and chanted the Guru Gita for a long time, even though I do play the CD of it from time to time. So I sat down and recited this text. I cannot begin to describe how much better I felt! My focus was no longer on the thoughts I had or how I was going to solve the situation. I was studying my Self and refreshing my self with the text of the Guru Gita. This was better than attempting to numb myself with other alternatives, which as a yoga teacher I do not do anyway. But one can see pretty much that when others do not know of yogic/or other healthy alternatives that they may attempt to "escape" through other means such as drugs, alcohol, food, shopping,etc.

So hopefully I can probe you to ask yourself what do you use as a life saver? Is it a positive tool? Again for me, my tools are the many branches of yoga which are really life savers.

Stay tuned. Check out the workshop I will be doing on 12/14/08 at http://www.bometernally.com/