yoga with jeff
Based in household yoga practices of more than 40 years, Jeff’s yoga work will include group sessions, and additional content not focused exclusively on posture. That additional content will include 9 Minutes or LESS, and will include THE PRANA PROJECT. Jeff will share therapeutic, maintenance, and training that alternate between the Playful (Lila) and the Heroic (Vira). Look for an occasional Book Review, Interview, Creative Adventure, or Personal Note in realms practical and imaginative.
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
Jeffry Farrell / yoga with jeff@jeffryfarrell
October 11, 2023
VIRA and LILA
The Vira means the Heroic and the Lila means the Playful.
To practice Vira is a powerful practice because there is either victory or defeat. Victory is not the perfect pose, but the fullness of the practice. What do I mean by that? To make a Vira practice is 1) to establish the whole grounded presence (shtira), 2) to set an intention (sankalpa), 3) to enter into the fullness of oppositional expression with effortless effort (sukha), until 4) we identify limitation, resistance, obstruction, pain (dukha), and 5) to exit, either to return to the original position or to carry forward into another intention.
With Vira there is no retreat, no wiggle, no adjustment as I go. With clarity I can observe my intention and the quality of its expression. There is victory in that observation. There is a foothold or grip. I can make the adjustment next time. There may be failure, or a break in the pose. If so, I release and start again from the beginning. Kumar would say, “There is no shortcut, man.” The purpose is to activate discipline and functional will, not merely to achieve a desire or outcome. Through concentration and discipline one achieves, but ultimately, the Vira practice isn’t about the glory of the posture but the instincts of life.
To practice Lila is to play out an intention, and not to play in a random, crappy, anything is ok way. That isn’t honorable play. To practice Lila is to play, to carry shtira with effortless effort, and to continuously adjust oneself into greater shtira. Lila is the willingness to observe, to explore, to discover, and to seek adjustment in the moment, to seek the shtira in the expression and the effortless effort. To practice Lila is to approach dukha and respond in presence. With Lila I maintain the vessel of intended asana and improvise within that form, using breath and adjustment with curiosity and discovery.
Vira is to withhold adjustment while learning the clarity of specific limitation, dukha. With that learning, I can adjust myself internally so that my next repetition includes the adjustment.
Lila is to improvise well and within an intentional form.
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Articles
Picking up hand balances again after years away.
What is needed for hand balances? How do they build? How do we enter and exit? Where is shtira?
Beginning again means asking familiar questions and looking for the answers in the posture, observing what doesn’t work, and what does. Learning twice, and twice again in Beginners Mind.
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Morning practice, Wake Up With Yoga
I recorded this last night because I must be on the road during our usual time. Here we observe three planes of functional spinal movement with breath. I invite you to recall warm-ups of this past week and to practice from whatever you can recall. If you cannot recall, then reboot yr favorite livestream recording and use that.
This week marks the start of a new endeavor at the SAMURAI INTI Martial Arts Studio in Frisco. I’ll be teaching i a group class there at Sendai Sebastian Mejias ‘ dojo on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
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