“True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. Yoga is not to be performed; yoga is to be lived. Yoga doesn’t care about what you have been; yoga cares about the person you are becoming. Yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose, and for it to be truly called yoga, its essence must be embodied.”
Dear Yogini,
One of the most humbling aspects of yoga practice is that there is no rushing the process. As well-intentioned or driven as you may be, you actually do not get to say when, where, and how things shift and change. The more something fails to meet your expectation of it, the easier it is to get caught up in the discontent that is bound to follow, and that something then risks becoming the driver of your actions.
In this, your body becomes the ground from which you begin to explore being courageous, and every action you commit to that strengthens the resolve of the heart, your sankalpa. (2) Yoga becomes the way you reengage with the world to create harmony and healing. It is how you and I participate and create relationship. It does not mean you dive into a situation without forethought. On the contrary, yoga is asking you to be curious, to look at what is going on, and to train your attention to actively engage in and connect with the process.
Engagement happens on many layers, starting with the material world and at the physical level with asana, or posture. You maximize asana to enhance your sense of well-being, reduce your reactivity to stress and to work towards a balance of physical strength and mobility. As an embodied practice, asana is a tool like any other on the path of yoga that serves to place the attention on the inner state. The somatic feedback it offers guides and refines the yoga practice…
However, when asana is used as a device to achieve some external ideal or goal without suitably addressing the needs or requirements of the practitioner, call it what you will but it is bound to dilute the yogic experience. Many try yoga on for size only to conclude it is not for them for reasons of injury, overwhelm, feelings of ineptitude or insufficiency. In these instances, the asana experience sets illusory expectations that are not consistently realistic for the practitioner. For every person who decides that yoga is “not for me,” there is a teacher who has not received the appropriate training to meet their individual need, and two more yoga practitioners like yourself debating whether to be a yoga teacher or not who will want to take this understanding into account. (12)
Perhaps it is time to shift the paradigms around misleading assumptions and negative experiences of asana, as much for teachers-in-training as for the yoga practitioner. Can we grow our interoceptive awareness by choosing a more conscious and refined engagement of asana that invites rather than imposes the somatic experience?
You and I both have an understanding that every pose unfolds at its own pace for each and every practitioner of yoga, depending upon commitment to practice, physical prowess, somatic intelligence and, of course, the asana’s complexity. The essential poses are named after elements of nature whose qualities they embody, like vrkshasana (vriksha/tree and asana/pose), which integrates the solidity and steadiness of the tree rooted to the earth. Then we move into the territory of the animal kingdom where postures become somewhat more intense as they mimic or assimilate the idea of that creature’s behavior or essence, like kurmasana (kurma/turtle or tortoise), a seated forward bend named for an animal that withdraws into its shell when startled or threatened and which, by design, is intended to shut out sensory distractions and quiet the nervous system; or nakrasana (crocodile pose) which mimics crocodilian locomotion. Finally we venture into the realm of Indian sages and avatars (rooted in Hindu mythology) whose character traits and temperaments are embodied in the postures that serve to represent them, as in Natarajasana (Nataraja, “the Lord of Dance”) where in any one of a number of variations, Lord Shiva’s dancing avatar symbolizes the cosmic cycles of birth (creation) and death (destruction) stamping out the ignorance from our minds through the divine act of dance.
Another, Virabhradrasana (vira/hero, bhadra/friend), the classic ‘warrior pose,’ is named after a mythic warrior arisen from the ground where Lord Shiva, one of the Hindu trinity of gods, supreme ruler of the universe, throws down a lock of his hair and beats it to the ground upon hearing of his wife’s demise at her father’s yagna, or great ritual sacrifice. There, Shiva’s creation, Virabhadra, vows to destroy the powerful priest Daksha and all his guests. After Daksha fails to invite his youngest daughter, Sati, and her consort, Shiva, to his ritual offering, so the myth goes, Sati finds out and decides to go alone, then enters into an argument with her father and, unable to withstand his insults, vows: “Since it was you who gave me this body, I no longer wish to be associated with it,” and throws herself into the fire.
While Virabhadra first seeks to avenge the death of his wife, he later becomes understood as a symbol of dharma. When Shiva sees the chaos that his creation Virabhadra has wrought, Shiva absorbs Virabhadra back into his own form and then transforms into Hara, the ravisher. Filled with sorrow and compassion, Shiva finds Daksha’s body and gives it the head of a goat, which brings him back to life. Sati too becomes reborn.
Do the various warrior stances of Virabhadrasana, for example, not embody your question with their invitation, in practice, to discover within yourself the courage (vira) to transform the personal struggles of the ego into finding purposefulness and significance in living? You know that yoga is more than a stance or a stretch or a bend in an unfathomable direction. Your practice asks more of you than mere physical prowess. It is a simple fact that how you live your life manifests itself in how you approach your practice. If you live your life full speed ahead, you will find yourself applying the same high-velocity temperament to your practice. It follows then that any shift in the dynamic of your life is a corollary to the conscious shifts you bring to your approach of yoga.
As your practice becomes your laboratory and your mat a test-tube of sorts, you will start to see how it is you engage with yourself in practice and thus how you comport yourself in your life. It is from this vantage point that you can stand in yourself, in yoga, to see yourself more clearly. The journey of yoga guides you through your inner states to the center of yourself. It is no accident that the struggles that show up on the mat are metaphors for the inner battles, the things we all struggle with within ourselves in the refracted light and the lurking shadows. Your practice is an opportunity for you to become the heroine of your own life. This, dear yogini, is courage.
Yoga is the process you engage in to understand your body and how it moves, to see your mind and its machinations, and to tune into the subtle and intricate complexities of how the mind and body communicate with one another. Notice how your sense perceptions and thinking can take you down the rabbit hole of distraction and distress. Whether it’s music played in class or perceived shortcomings of the body or physique that undermine your exertion, your bringing your attention back (to the subtlest movement, to the coming and going of your breath, to every sensation and each moment’s experiences) invites you to witness your reactivity to what is.
Pay close attention the next time music is played in your yoga class. This can be either an asset or an irritant to your practice. Sometimes the music is conducive to enhancing the experience of your practice; sometimes it dissuades you from discerning the more discriminatory effects of your exertion. You may find it offensive or triggering which sets off a reactive chain of samsāra, emotional and mental wanderings that preclude you from being with the somatic experience of your practice at all. It is also possible, on the other hand, that you remain oblivious to its presence throughout, although there may come a moment when the strains of melody or song permeate your consciousness. Whether music enhances your practice experience or detracts from it, start from your initial point of observation—the moment you notice any sensate reactions or feelings—to bring yourself back with ease to your breath. Placing the attention on the breath in the subtlest way allows you to create space, so you are no longer in constant service to the stimuli. The breath is quite an ingenious tool in yoga because it mimics the nature of your thoughts in its perpetual motion yet is easier to access, manipulate and manage than the mind. This is a vastly different experience from that of watching TV from the relative place of detachment you necessarily adopt with the mechanical repetition of your footfall on a Stairmaster or treadmill!
As you practice yoga, ask yourself, How does this feel in my body? What are these thoughts? What is this story? How about this sensation or feeling that has come up? How can I work with this? The subtle art of questioning is a way to engage your attention and direct your mind on the breath, on your thoughts, on the sensations that come up with a quality of curiosity rather than judgment.
The process begins with the attention and choosing to place it upon a specific object. In asana, I might place my attention on the action of my feet in a standing posture and notice how it affects the stability of my pelvis; in breath work, I might focus my attention upon the steady stream of my breath moving through me and observe its effect on my mind; in sitting practice, I might sit with my monkey mind and witness its nature. The mere act of paying attention effects demonstrable change at the most microscopic level.
This physical principle illuminates the power of the mind to affect a shift in energy dynamic when placed upon an object such as an aspect of the physiology in asana. In downward-facing dog pose, for instance, you can ask your abdomen to engage by drawing the naval towards the spine and this creates an energy dynamic that supports the lengthening of the lower back muscular framing the lumbar spine, nurtures the kidneys and sends a wave off energy to the realm of the heart and lungs inviting the chest cavity to feel more spacious.
In the same vein, the nerve cells, or neurons, in the human brain have the capacity to reorganize and repattern with repetition and frequency over time and form new neural connections throughout life in response to a change in their environment. This means that the repetitive nature of yoga practice has the capacity to repattern the way our muscles drive action in the physical body when we apply a discerning quality of consciousness to said action. Without this mindful application of our awareness to the ways in which we engage our physical actions, the rote performance of asana in yoga practice risks reinforcing the very patterns of stress in our lives that we carry in our bodies and that then show up in our practice.
Thus, yoga is a process of direct experimentation used to explore your observations and answer your questions, much like the scientific method. Yoga is science based on Samkhya philosophy, which is the very basis of all sciences. (3) Samkhya translates as “that which explains the whole” and embraces the whole universe—how the universe came into existence and all relationships within the universe. It explains human life on all levels which is why yoga is such a potent path to resolving your dilemma.
Where yoga holds particular vigor is in the knowledge gleaned through the sensate experiences of posture, the breath, the mind, the intellect, and overall awareness that understands something to be true because it has been directly perceived. It may not always make sense to your faculties of reason. And so, by heightening your powers of direct perception, you test and cultivate your ability to feel your muscles and bone, to tune into the subtleties of your breath, to witness your mental fluctuations, then to directly perceive the still subtler energy shifts of your inner being and eventually that deepest seat of the Self, the quality of spirit or that something intangible yet comforting and sweet.
This paradigm is affirmed by Patañjali in the first chapter of The Yoga Sūtras (YS I.7) which essentially informs us that “correct knowledge” is based on three types of evidence: direct perception (through direct experience), reasoning (through inference or deduction) and trusted testimony from a higher authority. I can personally attest to the power of direct perception: Everything I teach I know to be true because of my direct experience with it. It is a spectacular process once you learn to trust it. There is a powerful word in the Sanskrit language that expresses this epistemology: Śraddhā, a faith born from experience, or more literally, as anything or any act that is performed with all sincerity. To engage śraddhā, you must learn to trust yourself.
Yoga, as a science, a philosophy, and a practice, asks you to partake with consistency and dedication in a process of observation to connect with the unchangeable Self which sees reality as it is. From this vantage point of seeing clearly what is, you can stand in trust of yourself and participate in conscious relationship with the world. You learn how to be at peace with difficulty and how to embrace joy. You become skillful at managing expectations and engage with your life as a friend rather than an enemy. You also understand that yoga changes your relationship with yourself. As a result, you may lose friends or loved ones who, out of their own discomfort or intolerance, cannot or will not abide these changes.
The Yogic Wisdom is the path to solving your dilemma, my friend, as you learn to trust in yourself along the way. Forgive me, dear yogini, if you already have a fundamental understanding of Patañjali’s classical eight-faceted path of Yoga (delineated in sutras II.28-34) as the path the yogin takes to shift the arc of their life towards freedom and peace.
Given all the emphasis placed on physical practice in the West, note that Patañjali falls somewhat short on describing asana, or ‘posture’ in his yoga sutras. Of course, there are plenty of other texts that reference a system of physical techniques (notably Svāmi Svātmārāma’s Hatha Yoga Pradipikā, which outlines yoga in four stages or chapters). There is, too, a wonderful collection of verses of the Indian sage Gheranda (known as the Gheranda Samhita) that sets itself apart from other texts on hatha yoga with its reference to the ‘person’ rather than the ‘body.’ In this, Sage Gheranda teaches his disciple, King Chandakapali, techniques that work on the body and the mind in the context of a seven-fold path to the realization of the Self. Like other root hatha yoga texts, however, the Gherana Samhita does not appear to concern itself much with the ten precepts that make up the first two facets of Patañjali’s classical Yoga.
The continuous exploration and exploitation of Patañjali’s fundamental precepts—yama, or moral restraint, rooted in the reflection of our true nature, and niyama, or personal observances, (4) rooted in our evolution towards harmony—invite the practical application of Yogic Wisdom to unfold in the context of life itself. Yama and niyama serve to polish the multi-faceted surfaces of yoga practice and experience, as a diamond is cut to produce the ultimate brilliance and fire. In applying these precepts to your yoga, with specific attention to your thoughts and your ways of seeing, you will change the relationship you have with yourself. You will alter the relationship you have with others, and you will recast the relationship you have with the world as you come to terms with how you resolve your question.
The third facet, or asana, the physical aspect of your practice must include equal measures of persistent effort to realize the objective of self-knowing and a corresponding release of attachment to the stuff that stands in the way. This might manifest as striving for standards of external accomplishment, listening to the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘cannots’ decided by your ever-fickle mind, or quashing the traumas and tragedies of the heart that have taken up residence in your body and are stored in your subconscious. All of it bubbles up at the end of the day, if not on your yoga mat, then in your life. So perhaps it is not such a bad thing if you can take the seat of asana and act upon your body with wisdom. Notice the distractions, the discouragements and the boredom that are an inevitable component of practice, and allow those unprocessed stories and emotions behind them to rise up and occasionally disturb the smooth layer of platitudes that protect your inner realm.
Add to this some modulation of the breath, or prānāyāma, the fourth facet of Yogic Wisdom. You breathe, you pay attention to your breath, and you vary your breathing patterns with pranayama, techniques to remember to be intensely present to what you are doing and what you feel in the moment. Our consciousness is colored by our attachments to sense objects such as our environment, people, ideas, opinions, narratives, and other such things. The breath serves to control the senses by drawing them inwards to focus on the more subtle movements of prana under the surface layer of awareness. What does it mean to control the senses, and what import does this have in yoga practice?
This is pratyahara, the fifth facet of the path you are on. When you have little control over how you respond or react to external stimuli you are at the behest of your conditioned tendencies or habits, referred to in yoga as samskaras, you risk defining yourself by the nature of your experience, thereby taking things personally. This means you will avoid pain and gravitate towards all things pleasurable, unable to hold the space between stimulus and response. Unlike the intellect, which operates along the lines of reasoning, your understanding moves from looking out to seeing in, from outer listening to inner hearing—tuning into that quiet voice that will serve you in your quest for an answer to a specific question—to kinesthetic sensitivity in the deepest layers of your being, to savoring the air you breathe.
This, in turn, develops the sixth facet, concentration or contemplation. This is called dhāranā. In the first sutra of book III of the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali states that gathering consciousness and focusing it within is dharana, or contemplation; you are beginning to transition from the realm of practice, per se, to progressive internal states that evolve from the earlier cultivated practices, facets of the yogic path that have been ‘shined’ by your consciousness. The same attention and awareness that is present in dharana is also brought to dhyana, meditation, the seventh facet of the yogic path, as to the initial states of samadhi, the eighth facet, seeing clearly things as they are. Eventually perhaps, total absorption is achieved—the ability to rest in the spirit of purusha, to step into the power of perceiving reality as it is, where the coverings, deceptions, illusions, and contraptions of the mind fall away and the light of consciousness shines through.
Analogous to the clarity of a diamond, which refers to the absence of inclusions and blemishes, so does the Self shine when we bleach our consciousness of its colorings. This is not to say that you have to abandon your possessions, your friends or beliefs. Yoga simply asks that you recognize their transitory character and release yourself of those that no longer serve you when the appropriate time comes to do so. This is something I needed to do for myself by releasing myself of the bonds of a marriage that denigrated vows I took to heart. Patañjali states, in sutra I.41, that our consciousness becomes like a “polished crystal” (5) that allows the light of our authentic Self, the atman, to shine through brilliantly without distortion.
I make frequent reference to Patañjali as the forefather of yoga as we know it here in the West so as to neither dilute the teachings of yoga or to misappropriate the richness of all that yoga offers. My wish is to make these age-old wisdom teachings and powerful practices accessible and applicable to contemporary life for it is here you will find resolution to your question. I share with you my experiences and understanding of the science and art and methodology that is yoga to show you that yoga works. Your yoga will inform your life, and your life will inform your yoga. It works both ways. I hold the candid belief that no matter how life shows up for you your sincere embodiment of the essence of yoga will serve you in living into an answer to your question.
Eventually, dearest yogini, your resolute and vigilant enterprise on the yoga mat will lead you to a clear resolution of your dilemma for the simple reason you will become clear on your thoughts rather than identify with them in mistaken or confused understanding.
Peace and beautiful practice.
Sincerely yours,
Nicole