From the Kashmir Shaivite philosophy of yoga we are each seen as being unique expressions of the one, the divine, the source. As such we, as individuals, experience cloakings that have us feel limited and the tradition outlines 5 ways in which we experience limitation and forgetting that at our essence we have the qualities of the source.

Niyati: is the cloak associated with feeling limited in space. In our bodies we often feel tight and bound, constricted, contracted, and confined. As if our ‘body suit’ (a lovely term for our superficial fascia) is too tight, either generally or in specific places. Our practice can help us physically feel greater space, freedom, gliding, sliding and fluidity of the tissues. Our practice asks us to explore space and gravity and offers us greater possibilities of movement and of sensing ourselves. As we know, practice is not just physical, after all, we have 5 bodies yoga says, and the physical is just the densest one. When we feel physically less bound I feel we feel more spacious and connected to a greater whole. There is space in our thinking, space in our hearts. We feel there is less boundary between ourselves, and everything else. This is one of the veils that yoga practice has really helped me feel a freedom and ease in my body that I didn’t have in my late teens and early 20’s. Our practice can be a way to experience ourselves as spacious, unrestricted openess … full of possibility.

Eagle poem