When to add next step?

[aditya]

How do you know when to add next step? How did you do it? (chronologically and which signs did you check to see if you are ready)?

[Manipura]

Hi Aditya - I wait until I feel comfortable with a practice, do it a little longer to get  REALLY comfortable, and then add another one.  So far it's worked just fine, with one exception:  I jumped too fast into mantra enhancement.  I should've stayed with I AM for a year or more; instead I was impatient and upgraded to SRI SRI I AM I AM, and altho there have been no bad side-effects, I sometimes wish I'd lingered longer with the simplicity of I AM.  For reasons that I'm not quite clear about, it's not recommended to return to the old mantra once you've moved on.  I don't feel I've committed a great sin or anything - just sharing with you an insight that at some point may be helpful.

So, I'd say wait until you're really comfortable with a given practice, add on a few weeks for good measure, then begin the new one.  And with the mantra, add on a year for good measure.  

[Jim and His Karma]

Aditya

Let me try to explain something that may help - it's a point I think even some more experienced practitioners may miss.

As Yogani stresses again and again, meditation is all you need, and the rest is just gravy (though darned tasty gravy). So AYP isn't a "course". You don't have to get to the later lessons, you don't have to "work thru the book" to get to the end (of yoga). You do need to add practices in the proper sequence insofar as you choose to add on, but all practices aside from meditation are strictly optional. Bearing that in mind should dramatically change your outlook on self pacing. It's not just optional when to add a new practice...it's optional WHETHER to add a new practice.

You ask about "next step". The AYP practices aren't a series of steps. The whole system is nothing more than a toolbox. The "steps" happen within you. You could be doing every single practice taught by AYP with limited results. Or you could be doing meditation to the point of complete realization. Use and choose your tools wisely, and in no hurry. If you have lots of bhakti and crave enlightenment with vast unquenchable thirst, and this creates an attitude of hurry, that's cool. But if you're in a hurry to complete a sculpture, the notion that you must work as fast and thoroughly as possible through a set of chisels would be silly. Same here.

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So when you start your first practice - meditation - settle in for long haul. Don't immediately start watching for an internal cue to move on to other things. Just do it, milk it, plunge into it. At a certain point you may or may not feel an urge to step on the gas - by which I don't mean two or three meditation sessions that "don't go anywhere", and I don't mean a nervous, striving feeling of wanting more "results". And if you get such mileage out of meditation (or whatever set of practices you're doing at a given point) that you miss that point, by weeks or months or even years, it's ok. Meditation (plus whatever else you've chosen to add on) is all you need, baby. You're good.

But when your practice is stable and your "real life" feels relatively smooth and you feel like you've made your practice your own and the stew needs some spice, add the next tool. When in doubt, don't. And if the doubt lasts a long time, even forever, don't sweat it.

Caveat: meditation's all you need, but spinal breathing's nearly essential to add, and probably ought to come soon after meditation. And, gosh, samyama's awfully nice. And sambhavi and mulha banda are incredibly helpful. And asana helps melt your coarse blocks. Etc. etc. through the toolbox. All these things are non-essential, but awfully nice. But meditation's nicer.

Does that help?

[Shanti]

Hi Aditya,
I could not have said it better than Jim.. Read what he has written a couple of times. there is a lot of good stuff there.
Lesson 38 talks about "what is your time line".. you can go through that.
http://www.aypsite.com/plus/38.html

When ever I have asked this question before.. Yogani and Jim have always told me the same thing.. "when there is no excess energy and everything is smooth during the day... you may add one more thing".. You have just started.. maybe meditation and spinal breathing.. in your prev. post you said you have all this excess heat in your hand and leg and lower back.. so if  there is excess energy.. there are blocks.. so I don't think you should add anything else yet.. Enjoy your meditation and spinal breathing.. take it from us.. these are the two best tools you will find.. later, after you have some inner silence you can add shamyama..

Trust Jim when he tells you "meditation's all you need, but spinal breathing's nearly essential to add, and probably ought to come soon after meditation." rest  "All these things are non-essential, but awfully nice. But meditation's nicer."

[Anthem]

Hi Aditya,

First, I should probably warn you that I am definitely on the enthusiastic (sometimes overly) side of the equation when it comes to moving forward and adding practices etc. So the price I have paid on many occasions, especially in my first year of AYP, was symptoms of over-doing and having to self-pace and cut back.

That said, the way I chose what to add was by what was already happening automatically during practices. When I first became aware of my inner energies, many practices would occur spontaneously on their own like mulhabhanda, sambhavi, yoni mudra kumbhaka etc., so I formally introduced those to pranayama fairly quickly. A little pranaburn or irritability made it obvious for me when I was over-doing.

Later on I chose to add when things seemed to be in balance and I had no symptoms of “over-doing”.  I would add, if it proved to be too much, I would cut back so it was always a precarious balancing act. This is probably a more aggressive approach than most. These days I probably spend more time cutting back, because the inner energies seem to get more powerful all by themselves over time!

Again in my haste to push forward etc. that I had most strongly in the first year, I feel the same way as Meg, that I moved on from the simple "I am" manta too quickly. I wish I had done it for at least a year as well, but most likely for the same reasons as her, I chose not to revert back after having added the mantra extensions.

Hope this helps,

Anthem11

[Jim and His Karma]

One postscript to Andrew's post...."automatic yoga" (the stuff your body does involuntarily) does indeed tend to resemble many/most of the practices. But Yogani made the point to me via email (and it may be in the lessons, not sure) that just because your body is "reaching" for a practice doesn't mean you ought to do that practice. It's not a "sign that you're ready".

That's a bit counter-intuitive, but over time I've seen that it's true. The body wants everything right NOW. If it got it, there'd by hell to pay in over-doing symptoms. Hence the doctrine of "self-pacing" as opposed to just letting it all flow. Even in yoga we still use our minds...for what our minds do best: consideration of parameters, smart decision-making, and self control.

[AYPforum]

Moderator note: Topic moved for better placement