From the Archives: Jan 8, 2009 What Is Yoga?

From the Archives: January 8, 2009

What is Yoga?

  The body, mind, and heart are inseparable.  What happens in one has an effect in the others.  They are all aspects of a whole, but we are more than a sum of these parts.  We exist in a physical world.  Our most obvious environment is that which we can touch and see.  With a yoga practice, we begin our intimate journey at the surface, the most gross level, the body.  Yoga is a journey within.  Over time, through a systematized process, and with the guidance of a qualified instructor, we move from what we know “is possible” through what we think “might be possible” and into what “certainly no human being is really capable of!”   It is a process that takes us across the terrain of the body, through the tossings and turnings of the mind, and past the foggy depths of emotion.  We come to the center, beyond these obstacles and distractions to discover ourselves in our purest, truest form.

Through asana we open and strengthen our body, mind, and heart.  Asana is the physical application of yoga.  Moving our bodies into and through various postures,  holding these living sculptures for several breaths or minutes before releasing and moving on to the next.  I myself practice the Ashtanga method as taught by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharath Rangaswamy.  This process, an intimate journey inward, moves from the gross to the most subtle.  In our asana practice, particularly in Ashtanga, the breath is incorporated.    It is synchronized to our movement, there to facilitate our effort or release of effort, our expanding or contracting.  The process of inhaling and exhaling moves energy, moves our awareness and draws us yet deeper inward.  The breath is a natural link between the awareness of the mind and the sensations of the body.  It is something that happens without our thinking of it, but also, we can override this automatic process and move the breath as we choose to, expanding our lungs more deeply with each inhale, lengthening the exhales, strengthening our diaphragm.  The whole time we can feel the breath passing the nostrils, the throat, filling the lungs. You may already notice that the breath changes depending on how much exertion is required of our physical body, our state of mind, and also our emotional state.  This relationship can be reversed.  As we learn to control and manipulate the path of the breath we also manipulate the reactions of the nervous system.  As we steady, lengthen, and calm the breath, our nervous system responds, relaxing the body, steadying the mind and bringing peace to our heart.  This is the pranayama practice. 

Yoga is traditionally undertaken only with the guidance of a Guru or qualified teacher.  Their job is to lead you through the process of self-discovery.  They have been there and done it.      It is not possible for you to anticipate the lessons you will face or what you will need to absorb them and grow.  A teacher is there to recognize the patterns that resist you, to show you what is possible and also to help you find your humility.  Through consistent asana practice over a long period of time we work from places of tension and stiffness or weakness and fatigue to places of freedom and release, to strength and stability.  While the asana practice has many health benefits that could be in and of themselves the purpose, there is more to it than that.   Within the experiences of the body we come to our first road blocks, our first uncrossable obstructions and learn that these can be overcome.  No matter the pose we are working on or our abilities regarding that pose, the real lessons are about how we react to the challenge.  When faced with resistance we learn what we need to move beyond.  Maybe our tendency is to retreat when actually more effort is required.  Or possibly the opposite, we use too much physical effort when we really need to just relax.  Without a teacher, we can become stuck without realizing we’ve retreated into habit.  In some cases we can actually cause injury by approaching something incorrectly.    Yoga shows us our habits, over and over again, until we learn new methods, retraining our bodies and developing a deeper awareness of how the body moves.  The challenges though are yours to face, a guru only gives you the tools to forge your path through the tangled brush that bars your way, to help you find your yoga for yourself.  The body transforms and how we perceive of the body transforms.  The body is, in a way, a training ground for more subtle challenges of the mind and emotions, and as we work through asana we are already beginning to incorporate these other aspects into our adventure.

So, as we struggle with a particular posture we not only feel our muscles straining, joints aching but we come to notice the dialogue dancing loudly in our mind.  What is that dialogue and is it really truth?  “This is too hard!”  “I’ll never get through this.”  “My arms are just too short for this pose.”  “I ate too much chocolate last night.”   Our ego, lovely companion on our journey, and only a distraction, though a strong one, is a way of identifying ourselves with things outside of the Self.  It is the ego that says, “I am too lazy to do yoga.”  or “If she can do this posture, I can certainly do it!”  It is the nature of the mind to do this.  Don't try to fight it or stop the chatter, only avoid attaching to those thoughts, send them into the background and shift your focus into the here and now.  The true Self is beyond labels or competition, it is present only in the moment of the experience.  A pose that is easy today may not be accessible tomorrow and we have to learn to accept that, to release expectation and be with the pose, be with the breath and our thoughts in that moment.  As we overcome one obstacle, then another, and then another, we learn that this negative voice of resistance can be silenced or at least turned down significantly, and we can keep moving.  The way we look at ourselves and perceive of the world around us begins to change without our even trying.  We stop the internal judgments and expectation and this expands beyond our skin to include those around us.    Just as the body was changeable, the mind is too.  Our thoughts extend into new worlds of possibility and we accept the challenges that come our way as opportunities for growth.  In a posture where the body is screaming for release and the mind is begging for escape we gain the strength to stay, one more moment, one more breath and let go of the fight.  In this moment, there is silence.

Beyond the body, beyond the mind, there is another dirty window through which we look at life, putting a haze over truth.  Emotion.   We store emotional experience in our bodies and we give stories to it with our minds.  As we open our bodies, as we open our minds we also open our hearts, often with very intense results.  When we go to new depths in a physical posture, overcoming self-doubt and judgment of the mind we reach that place of inner silence, and what we may find there is raw emotional experience.  Pain, fear, love, pity, anger, joy.  Whatever it is, it is brought to the forefront of our awareness to be released.  Sometimes we need to do further work, with assistance or with personal internal processing.  Sometimes the practice itself is enough to release the stored emotion.  A teacher once said to me that it is like a clog in a drainpipe.  When you’ve pulled out the clog, it may be necessary to examine it.  You discover that, “Oh, this is a hand towel.  I probably shouldn’t send that down the drain again, it will get stuck.”  Yet, other times it is simply enough that you’ve removed the obstacle and the passage is clear.  Toss the offensive thing away and move on.  Doing an asana practice, we have already learned that we have the strength and awareness to work through physical pain and resistance.  We have also learned how to discern the difference between self defeating thought patterns and our true beliefs.  Here, now, is the opportunity to work through emotional pain and resistance, to move past emotional patterns that have been unhealthy or that we simply no longer need.  

If the heart is opened through this process of yoga,  it is also, like the body and mind, strengthened.  We come to learn that we are affected only as we choose to be.  That it is the Self beyond the body, mind, and heart that is truly experiencing and can receive without reaction, can give without loss, can simply BE within the storms occurring around it.  Through the yoga practice, its struggles as well as triumphs, we gain compassion for ourselves and extend that compassion to those around us.  After all, we all hurt, we all have patterns that keep us stuck and expectations that lead to disappointment.  We learn to honestly, purely love ourselves and from that place we can offer love to others, allowing love to be an abundant flowing through.  The ego, sitting there in the passenger seat, becomes more and more sleepy and we begin to forget he is there.  He is no longer trying to control our choices, no longer shouting directions or attempting to grab the wheel.

On this road called yoga we make our way past physical challenges, mental distraction, and emotional blocks.  We discover the interconnectedness of body, mind and spirit.  Whatever happens within the realm of one, also has an effect in all the others.  It is not possible to isolate or categorize our human experience.    One event is intricately woven into and throughout the Self.  Through the process of a yoga practice we come to understand these connections.  Actually we come to understand that it is less a matter of separate things linked together and rather that it is one entity, the Self, the purest truest form of the Self that simply experiences its world through these differing filters.  It is this Self that yoga leads us to, introduces us to, makes us familiar with. The process itself is teaching us about ourselves.  That is it really, what this yoga stuff is all about.  It is a process of learning who we are, that we are not our bodies, we are not our minds or our emotions.  Who we are is something beyond all of that.  If at our core, in our most pure form we are an expression of tolerance, acceptance, compassion and peace, then we can see that expression at the core of all beings.  Beyond their own filters of physical abilities or inabilities, distracting and deceptive mental dialogue, and emotional wounds and protection mechanisms, the person is the same.  We are each of us the same.  When we sit, silent, our breath moving steadily deeply, our awareness drawn inward, awareness of the Self is allowed.  We can sit in our center and our edges soften and blur into the world around us.  There is equanimity and oneness.  This is the experience of meditation.  The Self is always there, it always has been, we are not attempting to create something new.  Yoga gives us the means to remove the debris so we can see clearly and so that our light is allowed to shine brightly outward.