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.   

Loosing Your Religion

A christian friend recently told me what a christian doctor of hers said about yoga. The doctor used to practice yoga and meditation, for years actually and felt he received great benefit from it (the benefits were not described) but he also found himself to be loosing his religion (again details not described). He concluded that yoga was the work of the devil and quit immediately and also, evidently, took to advising his clients of its dangers. At the time this little tidbit was shared with me, I sort of chuckled and thought - “well, sure, yoga WILL give you another perspective on religion.”  But for some reason it has stuck with me.

I have been through a sort of evolution in my perspective on yoga within the framework of spirituality and religion. In the beginning, I believed it to be non-dogmatic, spiritual but not religious, able to be easily reconciled with the belief systems of all and any religions. Then I started to realize that is does hold a systematic structure of beliefs and principles that define its practice - dogma. So I would describe it as a spiritual philosophy. Maybe it IS a religion -  a set of beliefs and values organized into a system of doctrine and practice. Sounds like yoga. In fact a yoga teacher and friend of mine, who came to the yoga practice with an agnosticism that was very resistant to the formal idea of God and religion, has in recent years opened herself up to a new faith and relationship with God. And she greatly attributes this to the yoga practice. The yoga revealed to her the truth of God. I myself, as a young adult, was greatly resistant to what I called at the time “organized religion” and even the word “God” especially with a capital “G”! I believed in a great mystical power that was the source of creation, but I hated the personifications of religion. Through years of the yoga practice I softened and my attitude towards religion. I became more allowing, more compassionate and I found myself saying the word “god” again when talking about my own belief system. But is yoga also potentially a destroyer of religion? What was it about yoga that had this doctor questioning or releasing his faith?

I think it has to do with the primary intention of a yoga practice that is to guide our awareness to the true nature of the self. We begin to see ourselves as perfect expressions of divine nature. As we see ourselves this way, we can’t help but acknowledge others as the same and then also all aspects of nature and the universe as divine manifestation. This is compassion and connection and oneness and includes people’s characterizations of God. As our vision and perception of God becomes all encompassing, how can we fully subscribe to any one specific set of dogma, labels and definitions? How can we limit ourselves to one label, one book of teachings, one name for God when there are so many that reveal the same message, the same truth? It is fear then, fear of abandoning our history, our personal, familial heritage. It is an understanding that falls just short of true oneness and awareness of our human, and preceding divine, heritage. We are all godly in nature, all expression of that are welcome.

Good Enough

Every yoga community has it’s culture. In my decade or so as an instructor, I have taught Ashtanga Yoga in a few different cities: Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, and visited many others for workshops and events. Each community has certain characteristics regarding their approach to practice, to discipline, to asana, to ego, etc. Of course there are aspects of each individual that may contradict the whole but when in the room with a group there is often an overall sense of that group’s identity. Maybe it is intellectual and skeptical. Maybe it is driven and overeager. Maybe it is experimental and noncommittal. Each time I sink into the experiences of a new community it causes me to reflect on my own approach to practice, my own personal culture.

I have always considered myself to be a bit lazy. I know Guruji used to say only lazy people cannot practice Ashtanga yoga, yet here I am. I am the person that really, I mean REALLY, struggles with a consistent home practice. I can come up with a million rationalizations why I just can’t practice: “Ooops I already ate something, I can’t practice now!” “The kids NEED me this morning.” “I practiced yesterday” “I have to be somewhere in three hours, I just don’t have the time.” And then if I do make it to my mat, I tend to practice just good enough: “Primary Series is good enough” “Half Second is good enough” “Didn’t catch my landing in karandavasana, but that was good enough” “mayurasana was a mess (always is), but it was good enough” Because I have realized my tendency to settle samskara long ago, I do my best to first get into a shala with a teacher - it really changes everything for my motivation, intention, accountability - and second, not give in to the laziness of being satisfied with good enough when I am practicing at home, which lately is very very often.

Recently I am realizing that it isn’t really the urge to require so little of myself that is my practice culture, it is the resisting of it that characterizes me. I mean, maybe Guruji was right, lazy people cannot do this practice. And maybe I was not in fact lazy. I had a practice that stretched into third series, a lazy person would not have journeyed that far, right? A lazy person would not have chosen the physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding path of instructor. So I have misdiagnosed myself. I am not lazy after all, I am quite determined, quite motivated - at least enough to overcome what maybe most of us feel with regards to discipline and a committed yoga practice. It is the overcoming that defines us, not the challenge. That being said, what is the progress we are striving for in our practice anyway?

After second baby, I had faced a possible truth that I may never practice third series again. That it was a practice for a time in my life that had passed. I accepted it, with grief and a lot of ego resistance. But then something amazing happened! I started practicing with a teacher for the first time since beginning my journey as a parent. My practice progressed steadily and quickly, and about a year and a half after birthing my second boy, I was again practicing my third series postures!

It was a bit mind blowing, perception altering, to accept a new truth - that nothing is certain, all things are possible. Then shortly after reaching the point in my practice that I had been before kids, a new revelation. While the postures felt familiar, accomplishable, some even easy… the practice as a whole, full second through a small handful of postures of third, thoroughly. wiped. me. out. As a mom who had to leave the shala to go home to two little ones in the getting-into-everything stage and the needs-mommy-for-everything stage, I wondered if I could maintain it. But why did I have to? Serendipitously, due to schedule issues and circumstances at home, I had to shift my practices from the shala to the garage. And with my previously mentioned tendency towards “good enough” I soon settled into a practice that excluded my newly regained third series postures. And it felt great! It felt right. I am now confident that third series, and maybe beyond, is something that is available to me in the future of my practice but am comfortable that the time is not NOW.

I look at the culture I am currently teaching in and see students that are so enthusiastic for that next pose, the next physical challenge, referencing superstars on instagram, or other students in the same mysore room, asking about handstand technique and drop backs. Will they realize eventually, that progress in our practice is not about how many postures we do, or even about how well we execute them - not really? Progress is about deepening our understanding of ourselves, and the opportunity for that is available in surya namaskar just as readily as it is in tic tics. I am reminded of something Sharath spoke about in conference during one of my trips to practice in Mysore. A student asked about something Guruji used to say about the practice - that the more stupid the student, the further into the 6 series he/she would have to practice to reach enlightenment. Sharath laughed and said then he must be the most stupid. And he clarified saying yes, while many need more, there is enough to work with in Primary series alone, even just surya namaskar, to guide a student to Samadhi, if the student is devoted and focused. So rest easy, whatever your practice, it is in fact, good enough.

Lost and Found

This is a pretty personal post, difficult to share my current vulnerabilities. But it is real

Four (or so) years ago my yoga practice was awesome! My execution of postures may or may not have been awesome … but my practice was incredible. I had time. I was disciplined. I was motivated. I felt good, most of the time. I was steadier than I realized at the time - mentally, emotionally, and physically. I realize it now, in retrospect, because right now, I am quite a mess. Since the times of my awesomeness, I have had two pregnancies and the resulting two kids. As mentioned in the previous blog, parenthood changed me - wiped me clean, stripped me down, essentially broke me. My sense of self was shattered, all identifying markers demolished. Shiva the destroyer did a number on me. Including my yoga practice. My youngest is now a year and a half and I am nearly back to practicing the progressive ashtanga sequences that I did BC (Before Child)  And it is far from awesome. Each day is a struggle to claim practice time and from there claim the luxury of practicing at the shala with a teacher. Once on my mat, it is a struggle to claim strength, focus, steadiness, endurance, surrender, focus, commitment … did I say focus? The teacher I am working with is a peer, a friend, and someone I have known for a long time. He has been moving me through the practice at a pretty good pace, knowing what my BC practice was. I trust him completely and surrendered to his guidance, accepting postures as he gave them to me, progressing as he saw appropriate. Some of the old challenges were hard again, but I was familiar with that work. Other postures were surprisingly easy. My greatest obstacles have always been related to strength. And this time around is no different. The postures themselves are integrating well enough, or at least as I would have expected. It is the overall tone and particularly the transitions that are a disaster. I am fairly easily distracted and fatigue sets in way too early. I am not feeling ease and steadiness, at least not in the way that I used to.
Last week I had to force myself out of bed and to the shala after an awful previous day, just one of THOSE days. I didn’t want to practice, I didn’t want to have to move my body, be aware of myself, feel myself, be with myself. I was the last person I wanted to be around that morning. But I went and I got on my mat. I just kept moving thru, one breath, then the next, one pose, then the next. Some tears were there, but I told myself to just get thru the practice. I knew it was the only thing that could shift my attitude. After wards I spoke to him about my feelings of self-doubt, wondering if I should really be doing the practice to this advanced level, that was struggling and felt that it must look horrendous. He was encouraging, saying, in his particularly charming way that he relates the postures to herpes - once you have them, they are never really gone. Ha ha! It echoes what I have also thought. I believe in the strength of muscle memory and established patterns in the nervous system etc. I have experienced it myself as I try a posture for the first time in 4 years and it seems surprisingly accessible. He assured me that my arctic was fine, to just keep doing the work.
A few days later, I find myself agonizing over this concept in a different context. I was driving to teach at 5 am following a long night of frustration with very little sleep, caring for my sick 3 year old. I was feeling like a far less than awesome parent, in fact, a less than awesome human being. What happened to me? I thought back to that girl with the incredible practices. I used to be so even in temperament. I used to be able to see the world around me with a certain mindfulness, maybe a hint of that non-attachment we all talk about in yoga. I intentionally tried to use Patanjalic principles in my relationships, in the way I interacted with my world. I was working the Yamas and Niyamas. I used to read and contemplate philosophical concepts then discuss them with my contemporaries over chai. (ok, it was usually a cafe con leche) I used to purposely work on becoming a better me. I meditated. I meditated! Crying in my car for an hour that morning, I grieved for the loss of that life and I wondered … if the asanas were always relatively available to us once integrated then how much of those subtler practices are also available. Does it work that way? I want a strong heart and steady mind. I want peace and serenity (not in my home - that would be an impossible request) within. I want to be a better mom. I want to be a better partner. I want to be a better person … again.
I think about what Guruji used to say about parenthood, about it being 7th series yoga. He is also believed to have spoken to students about taking their yoga out into the world. It is easy to have a strong and steady practice in Mysore, India where all you have to do is your yoga. There are no other obligations or responsibilities. The only distractions are the ones you choose and even that, on reflection, offers insight and an opportunity for self-study, a yogic practice. Taking your practice out into the world is the real challenge. Can you do all of that, what the world requires of you, and maintain your focus, your stability, your commitment and discipline, your buttery back bend? I am finally really understanding all of that - 7th series, householder yoga etc. Yoga is hard! It is hard to live spiritual /philosophical principles when you are sleep deprived, missing a shower, subsisting on coffee, the crumbs and leftovers from your children's snacks and meals, (oh and wine) When you’re just trying to make sure your little wild things don’t break anything, don’t spill too much, don’t hurt each other, but also have fun, explore their world, and learn something. When you are trying to stay at least a little connected to you partner, make eye contact throughout the day, maybe a kiss or two, and if your are lucky a good conversation every once in a while ( I am not going to say anything about the work it takes to avoid arguments) When you have a million phone calls to make, paperwork to fill out, schedules to remember, shopping, cooking, dishes, laundry, cleaning . . . Daily life is hard enough, where is the space to do the spiritual work?
I am realizing that it is, in part, a matter of simply making the choice, day after day, to carve out those two hours on my mat. Start there. I also need to claim my meditation practice again, establish consistency, commit. Beyond that - and this is the seventh series part, the part I am sure I don’t have figured out - approaching the day with the same intentions, perspective, and purpose that I did when everything was so easy. The only things that have changed are the things that are outside of myself. My SELF remains. The me that was once connected, mindful, conscious, is still there. This is my yoga: It is easy to have a spiritual practice and live philosophically when all you are responsible for is yourself. Now do that work with all of this other stuff too, and by the way, try to raise spiritually conscious kids while you’re at it.

Photo is during an attempt to capture a beautiful bakasana selfie - Ha!

here i am! . . . sort of

How do I even begin? It feels like this blog is an introduction, like it is the first blog I have ever written. I guess I need to just… begin. So much has happened in the past two years. I gave birth to my second son. We have been moving all over the galaxy, searching for “home”. I have been mommy - pretty much only mommy, with hints of Angelique tucked in to the crevices. That has been my yoga lately, a rediscovering of Angelique, a reclaiming of her, freeing her, giving her space and allowing her to be. The thing that I observed in my friends becoming parents, the thing I told myself I would never allow, the thing I thought I would be exempt from due to my yoga practice and starting a family a bit later in life than those I witnessed - I lost myself to mommy hood. It was a gradual process. A process of accepting the sense of another’s dependance, of choosing to fulfill their needs and wants over yours, essentially being what you believe to be a good mother. The days, weeks, months pass - breastfeeding your baby, changing diapers, pureeing foods, nap times, play times, walks, figuring out how to discipline, figuring out how to be cooperative with your partner, learning that you and your partner might not actually be on the same page on many issues, maybe not even the in the same book! For me, in the midst of this parenting thing, I found myself behaving in ways completely foreign to who I knew myself to be. I would ask myself “who the hell am I right now?” and struggled to answer that question, devastated by the answers I came up with. I tried to claim certain things that made me feel like myself again: Time spent with my sister - who knows the real you better than your twin sister? Getting back to a deeper commitment to my yoga practice. I looked back at the life I once had, only 4 years ago! - So frickin’ easy! All I had was me. My only obligations were to myself. I had a regular teaching schedule. I had a regular, intense, challenging ashtanga practice. I went to the beach, took naps, went out to dinner with friends. What a life! A life I would never experience again. At one point I accepted that I would never practice third series again. That was a time in my life and it had passed. I even questioned whether or not I was still meant to teach. Maybe it wasn’t a part of what my life was now supposed to be. Maybe it too was a time that had fulfilled itself and has now passed. I wondered if I would ever return to Mysore, India, the home and heart of the practice. The possibility broke my heart. I had been practicing, a bit, but it was more a going thru the motions. It was mostly shallow, distracted, unsatisfying, frustrating. Mommyhood had completely destroyed my ego, my sense of self. Every identifying marker gone. Those things were replaced by the egoic needs of the kids - which led to my personal crisis. I had lost my own sense of self into theirs, their view of me, which was only “mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy!” I had to finally get to a place of redefining. This is the moment I think I entered, or rather surrendered to, seventh series Ashtanga yoga. Guruji, Sri K Pattabhi Jois considered Ashtanga to be a householder practice. It was not designed for renunciates or saddhus. It was designed for people living in the world, with worldly obligations, including families. He referred to parenthood as seventh series yoga, following the six series of asana sequences that characterize this practice. I reached out to the community - the specific community of other Ashtanga mommies, particularly those that teach. From the words of this group I was able to give myself permission to take it easy - on myself. I was encouraged to just enjoy this time when the boys are young, to focus on them, as this time passes so quickly and then is gone forever. I was assured that the time to devote to a full teaching schedule will return, when the time is right - as will the time to return to India. I was inspired to just give attention to the practice, to let that feed me, strengthen me, remind me, redefine me. I began to fight for my yoga - again a gradual process. I wanted it to be easy, I wanted to be supported, encouraged, inspired. It was none of that. I struggled to keep choosing my practice over - well, everything else. I still struggle. Through practice, faint fingers of light dawned on my experience, I realized that my ego needed to be reformed. I could be a passive participant, letting my circumstances shape me or I could make decisions about who I wanted to be. I could let go of certain “shoulds” - those expectations, pressures, and judgements that all mothers face, from those around them and themselves. I could trust myself and make choices about the aspects of Angelique I want to express. My sense of self is returning but it is a brand new picture that emerges from the fog. I have recently been regiven the first few third series postures. It surprises me how much the body remembers, how the energy of my body - every molecule, atom, neutron - molds itself into those familiar patterns and shapes. While familiar, it means something new to me this time. It a testament to a deeper strength, to a longer story of my own yoga, than I ever realized, spreading back beyond my pre-child self to a self before even my own birth. It gives new confirmation to the calling that is my yoga practice and my urge to share the method. It is still a gradual process but I accept that, my practice reminds me of that every time I get on my mat. Slowly I see myself again, familiar but different.