All the Yoga out there & the symbolism of AUM
AUM Symbol
After a few years of falling deeply in love with everything I thought Yoga was about, I began – as lots of us do – to become overwhelmed by all the different kinds of Yoga I was bumping into. What should I be practicing and how often? Are the physically strenuous practices such as Ashtanga as ‘Yogic’ as sitting for hours in deep meditation, for example? Does the fact that social media throws up images of Goat Yoga, Tequila Yoga and many more kinds of yoga and counting, somehow threaten the authenticity of Yoga’s origins?
What is Yoga really all about? And if whatever kind of Yoga we’re drawn to makes us feel great, does it matter to ask this question anyway?
Nowadays although I keep returning to the question of what Yoga might be about in my own practice and in teaching, I feel less confused and less doubtful about the massive variety of practices on offer out there. And this partly came about through returning to the symbolism of the OM Mantra in teaching a lovely group of students in Penzance and on-line on the Foundation Course 1 (British Wheel of Yoga).
I want to share this teaching here as how many of us know or remember the meaning of this ancient Sanskrit symbol? How often do we chant OM or see the symbol, whether it’s carved in wood or in great big diamanté on a black t-shirt (I used to wear one!)?
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Some of the words below are from Mandala Ashram’s great book on Mantra called ‘The Ashram Chants’.
“Om represents everything – the beginning, the middle and the end, the past, the present and the future. It encompasses all sounds – mankind, nature, machinery … it is the hum of the earth.”
The Mandukya Upanishad
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A. U.M. (the sounds)
• ‘A’ ( “awe”) – this sound represents the beginning – the creation of the universe and everything within it.
• ‘U’ ( “oooh”) – this sound signifies the steadiness that carries you along and the energy that preserves and sustains you and the world.
• ‘M’ (“mmmm”) – characterizes the sound of closing in and the beginning of the end.
There is also a fourth sound: SILENCE; the residue we are left with once the breath and the sound fades away. Arising from stillness, maintained by steadiness and fading back into silence
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And then there is more to the visual symbol itself ……. and this returns us to the ULTIMATE meaning of YOGA - which stemming from the Sanskrit root YUJ - means to connect, yoke, join -
The connection can be between attention and sensation, between breath and movement, between ourselves and our loved ones - but ULTIMATELY, the meaning is in the numbered symbol below - look at numbers 4 & 5…….
AUM Symbol
The Meaning of the AUM Symbol
This curve represents the waking state
This curve represents deep sleep or the unconscious.
This curve represents the dream state (which lies between waking and deep sleep.
The dot represents the absolute state of awareness which illuminates all other states of consciousness.
The semicircle represents maya (or the veil of illusion) it separates.
Whatever kind of yoga we’re drawn to, we usually come because something might be out of kilter in our lives - whether that’s physical, mental, or emotional.. And what the AUM symbol reminds us of - whether or not we love chanting - is that we all have a default tendency to veil (5) or blur ourselves from a full experience of being completely relaxed and spacious (4). When we feel fully relaxed and spacious we can be really connected to an intelligent awareness that far exceeds what goes on in our thinking minds. And the point of Yoga in ALL OF ITS GUISES is to bring our awareness to this veil - to notice what we put in the way of ourselves - often self-limiting beliefs such as ‘I am not good enough’. Once we begin to notice this obfuscation, this blurring of reality, then something begins to shift…..
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And by the way, these two parts of the AUM symbol (4&5) are what inspired my Space of Being Logo - have a check next time you see it…
Thanks and love
Rebecca XXX