Malas by Amy Defigueiredo and the Practice of Japa

Grateful for the mantra and japa practice her first yoga teacher gave her, Amy DeFigueiredo began designing malas. "We work hard at asana in order to lay a ground work for a calm mind. We work hard opening and clearing the body's channels in order to allow a peaceful mind to flow. Mantra is a friend that guides and protects. Resting the mind in japa practice is a steadfast and true technique which gives the mind the support it needs to rest. Ultimately, the mind will realize its own nature. I want my work to honor the practitioner's efforts."

Informed by her experience as a jeweler, she strings on silk, hand-knotting between each bead. She uses semi-precious gemstones, pearls, and rudraksha seeds oiled with Australian sandalwood and jasmine. She finishes each mala with sterling silver or a sacred relic. 

If you are interested in her malas, please email her at threeletters.amy@gmail.com

Blue quartz and turquoise

Citrine

Pearl and agate

Rudraksha and pearl

Turquoise

Japa, repetition of a mantra, is a yoga practice and has been recommended by many illustrious teachers.  K. Pattabhi Jois spoke often of this practice, and Sharath Jois recommends 20-30 minutes of japa each evening before sleeping. 

Malas (the word mala means garland) are strands of beads used to keep count of the number of repetitions. Malas traditionally have 108, 54 or 27 beads.  To use a mala for counting, begin on the central bead which is called the guru bead, and pass the beads between the thumb and middle finger, repeating the mantra once for each bead.  The index finger is said to have a somewhat negative energy and is not used for counting the beads. When you arrive back at the guru bead, rotate the mala and go back the other way.  This prevents mantra repetition from becoming mechanical. One can also count on the fingers.  

Malas are often made from Rudraksha beads, seeds of the tropical tree Elaeocarpus ganitrus.  Malas are also made of Tulsi, Sandalwood, Lotus seeds, and precious and semi-precious stones.

Japa and chanting sacred texts are aspects of the practice of svadhyaya, which is one of the Niyamas, the second limb of Eight-Limbed Yoga as described by Patanjali in The Yoga Sutras. Svadhyaya means "self-inquiry". Mantra repetition and chanting are powerful practices that quiet and purify the mind.  

What sounds or words can be used as a mantra?  This is a complicated topic.  To learn more about mantras and the practice of svadhyaya, you are invited to attend Heart of Yoga classes at the Kentucky Street studio, Fridays at 5:30-6:30 pm, in which we discuss the traditional practices and texts of yoga, the path of yoga and our experiences. There is no charge for Heart of Yoga classes. All are welcome.

Please note that Heart of Yoga will be on break from October 2 - December 25, 2015 while Laura is in India. Heart of Yoga will resume January 1, 2016, and the topic of the first class will be New Year's Resolutions - Inspiration for the New Year. 

Pilgrimage of Practice

On September 9, Susan Reid, Gail Minotti and I are leaving for a week-long workshop with Ramanand Patel, Pandit Mukesh Desai, and one of the renowned teachers of Vedanta (probably Sw. Tattvavidananda) of Arsha Vidya Gurukulum. Arsha Vidya is a traditional Vedantic school.  Students of Vedanta come for around the world to study this illustrious philosophic system on the nature of enlightenment.  We will have a week of twice-daily yoga classes with Ramanand, a daily music class with Mukesh and twice daily Vedanta classes with Swamiji.

Ten days after we return from Arsha Vidya, September 28, Gail and I will leave for India.  On October 1 we will meet Karen Cairns (YE class of 2003) in New Delhi to participate in a pilgrimage to various sacred places in North India.  In parts of this pilgrimage we will be with our Ashtanga teachers Shri R. Sharath, Shri Saraswathi and Shri Sharmila Jois. This trip is organized by the publishers of Namarupa Magazine. You can read more about the trip here. There is a map of our route and some photos of some of the places we will be visiting. As described in the pilgrimage brochure, "These places where the sacred stories unfolded are sometimes called tirthas.  A tirtha is a place of crossing over and most literally refers to the fords of rivers. It also refers to a spiritual crossing place, where the divine is more easily intuited, recognized, or experienced.... It is a source of spiritual renewal."

Some of the places we will visit are New Delhi where the journey begins, and nearby Varanasi, the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world through which the Ganges river flows; and Agra and the Taj Mahal. Back to Delhi, then we travel to Haridwar, the gateway city to the Himalayas. From Haridwar we go to Rishikesh, the home of ashrams of famous teachers and gurus such as Sri H.H. Pujya Swami Dayananda (founder of Arsha Vidya Gurukulum), Shri H.H. Swami Sivananda (founder of Sivananda Yoga); then to Uttarkashi where Sharath will hold a five-day Ashtanga Yoga Sadhana (Practice) Retreat with us.

From Uttarkashi we venture progressively deeper into the snowy Himalayas taking a 15 km trek on foot or by pony to Kedarnath, one of the most sacred temples to Lord Shiva. This impressive, ancient stone temple is believed to have been originally built by the Pandava brothers at the end of the Mahabharata War (6000 -500 BCE). The present temple structure is thought to be about 1000 years old.  In June of 2013 the temple withstood a catastrophic flood that destroyed most of the town of Kedarnath and obliterated other towns and villages downriver. This was the worst disaster to strike India since the 2004 tsunami, and more than 5,000 lives were lost, many of them religious pilgrims.  Modern buildings, bridges and roads were swept away. The temple lost its massive doors but otherwise survived intact and with only minor damage, a testament to ancient methods of construction. More information about the flood can be found here.

"Kedarnath Temple1" by Naresh Balakrishnan - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kedarnath_Temple1.jpg#/media/File:Kedarnath_Temple1.jpg

After we descend from Kedarnath we travel on to Badrinath, a temple to Lord Vishnu, and from there back to Delhi.

Gail will return to Louisville to help Erin Cronin teach the Mysore classes.  Karen and I will go on to Mysore to spend a month continuing our Ashtanga study with Sharath. I also use my time in Mysore to take flute lessons with Ravi Shankar Mishra, and Karen and I will both probably take Sanskrit lessons with Lakshmish Bhatt, the KPJAYI Sanskrit teacher, as we have done for so many years.

At the end of November I will travel to a spiritual retreat center in Maharashtra state in Western India near Mumbai. This will be my third visit to this center, but I have not been here in eleven years, so this is a special treat for me.  Here I will spend twenty days immersed in seva (service), yoga, meditation and study.  During this time I will not have access to the internet or my cell phone. In fact, we are not allowed to use our cell phone even to tell the time; it has to be put away.  The last five days of the retreat are spent in total silence.

I know people wonder why we undertake this travel every year. What can I say? I grew up in a small town in Tennessee.  When I was about five years old my mother told me about a man in our church who practiced yoga and could stand on his head.  When I heard the word "yoga" it profoundly affected me.  I didn't know what yoga was, but I wanted to do it, and I began to practice headstand in my room.  When I was about eight or nine, my mother showed me Lotus Pose and explained how to meditate: "Imagine that your mind is like a chalkboard, and when thoughts come like words written on the chalkboard, erase them."  When I was fifteen my mother gave me a magazine article about yoga postures that had helped a woman afflicted by polio, and said, "I think you would like this."  Back then no yoga classes, no yoga teachers, no yoga books were available, at least not in rural Tennessee.

When I was nineteen someone gave me the book, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahamsa Yogananda. When I read the part where young Yogananda meets his Guru, I could sense that I, too, had a guru, but I didn't know who it was.  I couldn't imagine the circumstances of my life changing to the extent that I would ever be able to meet a guru.  However, in 1986 I traveled to India (you can read that story here), but I didn't meet any gurus.  I moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 1989 to practice law, thinking, "I will not meet my guru in this lifetime."  Life is unexpected.  I met Maja Trigg, founder of Yoga East, and two years later she made it possible for me to meet my guru.  Not only did I meet my guru, I have met other illustrious masters and gurus: Shri K. Pattabhi Jois, Sharath, Saraswathi and Sharmila, Ramanand Patel, Swami Dayananda, Francois Raoult, John Friend, David Swenson, Doug Keller and more.

"That practice becomes firmly established when practiced for a long time, without interruption, with devotion." (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1.14) 

These were Sharath's last words to us when he left Louisville after two weeks of teaching here in 2003. This is why I continue to study with my teachers as often as possible, year after year.  Next year, 2016, will be forty-nine years of yoga practice, twenty-five years of study with my guru, twenty-two years of Ashtanga Yoga, eighteen years with David Swenson, seventeen years of returning to study in Mysore with Pattabhi Jois and the Jois family, fifteen years of study with Ramanand and John Friend, and twelve years with Doug Keller.

The first year I studied with Ramanand, he said in one of the classes, "There are sixteen ways to balance the hip joints. Today I will give you two."  That was fifteen years ago, and I'm sure Ramanand has come up with more than sixteen ways now, but he has not taught all sixteen.  My guru said that one has to accept that sometimes one's present understanding is inadequate to comprehend what the teacher is teaching.  In this past weekend's workshop, I could see that very new yoga practitioners were not yet able to apply everything that Doug was instructing.  I told some of those students, "This is why you have to come back to Doug's workshop next year.  Next year your level of understanding will be deeper."  One time we were in a class with Swami Dayananda, and someone asked a very simple, very elementary question, and many people in the audience groaned with impatience.  Swami Dayananda held up his hand and said with great patience and understanding, "I will answer this question. One can only ask a question at one's present level of understanding."

One of my teachers once said, "If you are looking for water, you can dig a lot of shallow holes, or you can dig one really deep well."  This is why I go back year after year to India, why I study in Mysore every chance I can, and why I study with all of my teachers as often as possible.  I want to dig one really deep well.

Bend of the River: A Journey to India

I first traveled to India in February, 1986. I had very little information about traveling in India, only the Lonely Planet Guide. Back at that time, friends and family used to ask, "Why India? Why don't you go to Europe?"  I could only answer, "I don't want to go to Europe; I want to go to India."  I had been practicing yoga for almost ten years and back at that time it was hard to find information about it. I decided to go to the source, so I took leave from my job and bought a plane ticket to India.

I arrived in New Delhi and met two women from Texas on the bus from the airport. One woman had been the daughter of a missionary and had grown up in India; her friend had never been out of the county in Texas in which she was born. I spent three delightful days with them. We toured New and Old Delhi and the Taj Mahal at Agra.  The missionary's daughter showed us the ropes of getting around in India - how to hire a rickshaw, how to bargain with merchants, how to use an Indian toilet - the important stuff.  Thanks to her I wasn't totally lost. A few days later they flew on to Chennai.

A casual acquaintance back home had given me a package for his cousins that I was to drop off at the New Delhi headquarters of the Seventh Day Adventists. They were teachers at a school in Roorkee, Uttarakandh. When at arrived at the headquarters and tried to drop it off, the people at headquarters insisted that they should drive me there so I could deliver it in person. So I took a hair-raising half day car ride to Roorkee to the Seventh day Adventist School there.  I was treated like a visiting dignitary and given a tour of the school and stayed as a guest at the principal's home.

The next day the teaching staff took me on a tour to Haridwar, a holy city on the banks of the Ganges River which was another few hours' drive away.  Haridwar was preparing itself to host the Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of human beings on the planet, held every third year at one of four holy cities where it was said that drops of the Nectar of Immortality had been spilled in the fight between the Devas, the celestial beings, and the Asuras, the beings of the underworld.  Haridwar reminded me somewhat of Chattanooga, where the Tennessee river makes a big curve called Moccasin Bend around Lookout Mountain. The Ganges river enters the plains from the foothills of the Himalayas.  I waded in the water at the ghats, the stone steps that line the river bank.  The current was swift and the water clear and cold.  I saw the sadhus with their jata, dreadlocks. Some had hair so long it fell all the way to the ground. Some were dressed in orange, some only in loincloths, some naked. One young man was so beautiful and graceful as he dried his long hair that I suspected he might be Lord Shiva Himself.

I had a horrible trip back to Delhi on the bus and shortly after I arrived back in Delhi, I was terribly ill for several hours. I slept for twenty-fours straight.  I spent several days trying to figure out what to do next. I met a British woman who told me about her travel agent, so I visited him and he arranged a tour to Jaipur, Aurangabad, Mumbai (Bombay) and back to Delhi. Jaipur is called the pink city due to the pink stone of its buildings.  I stayed in a mini-palace in a garden that was quite like something out of a fairy tale.  I had a spectacular view of some craggy mountains, and as the sun set, huge thunderclouds loomed over the mountains, slowly making their way toward us, lit by brilliant flashes of silent lightning.  Hours later, the thunderstorms arrived and rain poured down, drenching everything.

When I arrived at Aurangabad, I toured the caves temples at Ellora.  The Kailasanath Temple was awesome beyond description. It was a mountain that had been carved from the top down to create a vision of Kailash, the mountain abode of Lord Shiva, supported by a base of life-size stone elephants. I spent some time alone in the inner sanctum with the huge lingam, a stone column that represents the transcendent, formless presence of Shiva, the One who is bright, auspicious and shining, the Lord of Yoga.

Kailasanath Temple

My rickshaw driver asked me if I would like to visit a jyotirlinga temple.  I had heard of the jyotirlingas but had no idea I would be near one.  Of course I would!  He took me to Grishneshwar temple.  This was a busy temple with many visitors, but in the inner sanctum there were only two people worshiping the lingam. I didn't know what to do, but I knew this was special, so I simply stood quietly near and prayed to Lord Shiva for His grace.

Grishneshwar

After Aurangabad, I went on to Mumbai. I had more adventures, saw more things, but really my trip was winding down. I had seen enough. One evening I sat in my hotel room and watched flocks of pigeons and green parrots soaring through the dusty, hazy afternoon rays of sunlight slanting through the trees in the hotel courtyard.  Even there in New Delhi in a high-rise modern hotel, I felt India with her arms around me as an ancient, mysterious, divine presence.  I knew I had been changed by my journey.  My life had turned, like the bend of the river, and I was now flowing onward in a different direction than when I had arrived.

I thought of something that someone told me about her trip to India... "I can't say I had fun," she reflected, "But I would go back."  I felt the same way. It had not been fun. It had been one of the most challenging things I had ever done, dealing with the rigors of solitary travel in an unknown land, strange customs, a language barrier, relentless beggars and other uncomfortable and sometimes frightening situations. However, I had made it through. I felt that I had broken through an invisible barrier that separated me from my true self, and I was now more in touch with my own heart and mind. Yes, I too, would go back.