Day Four-Clear Skin

Of the many benefits of fasting, clear, soft, glowing skin is the ultimate freebie.  It’s our face, smile, eyes that send signals to the world how we are doing  long before we open our mouth.  So important in our culture its confirmed by the gazillion dollar cosmetic industry and the amount of time spent digitally altering magazine covers. Yet despite these wonderful and obvious benefits, I find myself bargaining with what I’m willing to do on the cleanse. For example, I’m supposed to be drinking 6 servings of fruit and 5 servings of veggie juice, with additives like psyllium and bentonite clay, drink 5 oz. of Aloe juice, yet I’ve negotiated a deal with my alter self and have whittled it down to 4 fruit, 4 veggie and 3 oz of Aloe, so much for discipline despite how much better I’m feeling and looking.

Oh the struggle with the inner voice, is beauty only skin deep?  Here is a quick reference on what the ancient yogi’s practice to develop deep inner glow and mastery of ego, as discovered in recent Yoga Journal newsletters:

Yoga comes out of an oral tradition in which the teaching was transmitted directly from teacher to student. The Indian sage Patanjali has been credited with the collation of this oral tradition into his classic work, the Yoga Sutra, a 2,000-year-old treatise on yogic philosophy. A collection of 195 statements, the Sutra provides a kind of philosophical guidebook for dealing with the challenges of being human. Giving guidance on how to gain mastery over the mind and emotions and advice on spiritual growth, the Yoga Sutra provides the framework upon which all yoga practiced today is based. “Sutra,” literally meaning “thread,” has also been translated as “aphorism,” a tersely phrased statement of truth. Another definition of “sutra” is “the condensation of the greatest amount of knowledge into the most concise description possible.” Keeping these meanings in the mind, we might think of the art and science of yoga as a kind of magnificent tapestry that is woven together by the threads of universal truths.

Most yogis feel freer when they look inward and choose poses that are healing and nurturing—even if that means doing something different than what they originally thought they’d do. This insight is spelled out in the eight limbs of classical ashtanga yoga, which ultimately lead to samadhi, or freedom.

The first limb is yama, a group of five qualities that can be summed up as “self-restraint” or “control.” Among other things, the yamas teach us about ahimsa (nonviolence) and satya (truthfulness). So when you apply nonviolence and truthfulness to your practice—avoiding poses that don’t feel right or that might cause injury—you eventually reach a place of freedom.

Namaste,

Deby

This entry was posted on 23. October 2009 at 07:45 and is filed under Groovy Tunes and Yoga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.