Journey Into the Quiet Zone
Despite hot temperatures and our usual Bay Area sunny days, it is possible to sense a subtle, almost imperceptible, shift in our environment. Even without full conscious recognition, we can sense that the days of summer are indeed waning, and the days of autumn are waxing ahead. With nights growing longer, and daylight bringing deeper shadows, we intrinsically register that right around the seasonal corner is the Autumn Equinox, a time when nature slows down from the activities and stimuli of the summer and prepares itself for winter. It is with this change of season in mind that we at Being Yoga have chosen the theme of “Journey into the Quiet Zone” as the theme for the month. Please read on:
More often than not, most new yoga students come to yoga bent on enacting, or forcing, a change. They come to yoga determined to make a change in their bodies through sheer physical effort and activity. With practice, however, students begin to register an almost imperceptible shift in their internal environment. As important and admirable as physical effort is, yoga students begin naturally to experience a shift in consciousness. Like the change of summer into fall, students feel themselves moving toward a deeper, more peaceful spot from which they can accomplish the goals they desire. Yogis refer to this shift as “Pratiahara,” or the quieting of senses. It is the beginning of their “Journey into the Quiet Zone.”
The “Journey into the Quiet Zone” is a concept quite foreign to most of us Westerners. We have been taught that in order to achieve, we have physically to work hard, push, strive, and even fight to get ahead. We have been encouraged to work until we drop in order to succeed. Such encouragement has driven most of us to become addicted to physical activity and mental stimulation and to frown upon rest and relaxation, peace and quiet. We lose touch with our bodies as we push ourselves harder and harder and pay more and more attention to the noisy “voices in our heads.” The outcome is that we become dissociated from our “bodily experience,” as author Donna Farhi calls it, and “When we are not in our bodies, we are dissociated from our instincts, intuitions, feelings and insights…”
Yoga helps us to move into the “Quiet Zone” because, as Farhi expounds, in yoga we “focus our mind’s attention completely in the body so that we can move as a unified whole and so we can perceive what the body tells us.” By connecting to the body, we start to find stillness, and quietness, and we begin to perceive and tap into what some people call our “soul nature.” Our soul nature is nothing short of our connection to the divine. By connecting with the divine, we can access everything good in life: peace, health, well being and even abundance. Paramahansa Yogananda said “God is the mirror of silence in which all creation is reflected.” We have access to “all creation” in the Quiet Zone of silence.
It is Being Yoga’s mission to provide a sanctuary for all yogis on their Journey to the Quiet Zone. We offer a welcoming, safe, and peaceful environment where we encourage each individual to begin their journey.