For several decades he was the editor of the Ashram journal Mother India. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (referred to as "The Mother"), Sri Aurobindo Ashram was founded. In 1993, he began searching for a location to establish an ashram to cater to the growing interest in his yoga classes. Read, enjoy, and perhaps find a way to incorporate these and other poems into your yoga practice. Yogini and poet Kaye Martindale takes a look at the enigmatic way poetry shines a light on the practice of yoga. However, yoga seems to be the most important practice for Koltunov. As taught by Grilley, Powers and Clark, it is not intended as a complete practice in itself, but as a complement to more active forms of yoga and exercise. It’s a common alignment cue that many teachers use to encourage students to activate certain muscles and to point us towards a more grounded practice.
It’s a poem I come back to again and again in my own practice and one that I regularly read out in class. This poem from the German mystic poet, Rilke, Poetry About Yoga expresses the essence of yoga; both the practice of asana along with the inner work of opening the heart and healing the mind. Obviously, for Koltunov, there was no difference between his esoteric ideas and his work as an engineer. In the lower animals this unconscious work is called instinct. One of the obvious reasons in this case was the fact that governmental officials regularly suppressed esoteric communities in the USSR. As one of my teachers, Jess Huon, puts it to ‘let gravity have its way with you’. If you have never been to NY, then you may have an overwhelming experience by visiting this place. From the lowest animal to the highest angel, some time or other, each one will have to come to that state, and then, and then alone, will real religion begin for him.
I say 'snapped' because that is the only way I can describe it - it's like I was being pulled by elastic and it was stretched and then let go when I was dropped back into my body. Now the effects being different, the causes must be different. He explained that in order to develop full flexibility, the student must restore his own primal nature, through several Taoist yoga practices, as follows: yin asanas-mostly sitting or lying postures; yang asanas-more active, strenuous postures; Taoist Flow yoga-both yin and yang yoga postures practiced in continuous, smooth and circular motions; qigong-involving simple and gentle movement and breathing techniques; and Taoist alchemy-based, supposedly, upon the Taoist theory of the five elements used in Chinese medicine. The following three poems are meant as offerings to our yoga practice, our bodies, and our lives. It is a path to liberation even though practitioners are not so much concerned with liberation as they are with the actual love. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Love is the very pinnacle of human existence - there is nothing higher nor nothing deeper. Self Compassion invites you to consider your shortcomings as part of the human condition.
The alchemy of poetry is to express this human experience in a way that circumvents the analytical mind and helps us to see our self, and so our reality, from a totally fresh perspective. Both poetry and yoga ask us to pay close attention. Sri Aurobindo's close spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (born Alfassa), came to be known as The Mother. Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Columbia University Press (2008), p. Bengal: change and continuity, Issues 16-20. East Lansing: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University. This liberalization of atmosphere in the arts can help us understand, why poetry, songs and literature in general became one of the most obvious ways to express esoteric ideas in the late USSR. And if it is correct, why should we not regard the very concept of deep and comprehensive cultural differences between the USSR and the West, at least in the case of esotericism, as a mere piece of the Cold War ideology?