Wednesday, April 21, 2004


atha yoganusasanam

since i'm still working on acquiring all my biscotti for the scaa atlanta conference, and also doing a last-minute round-up of steaming pitchers and tampers for the hands-on consumer espresso lab, forgive me while i take a page from patanjali and say, "now let's talk about yoga."

specifically, the dialogue i'm having with mba2005 on that blog.

i just wanted to take a second to clarify a couple of things i said there, if you don't mind. mba2005 and i are discusing the sloka from patanjali's yoga sutras, "sthira sukham asanam," (pada 2, 46).

this is usually translated to mean "yoga postures are easy and comfortable" or sometimes, yoga poses are steady and easeful.

to my mind, this firmly establishes the yoga outlook on the subject of pain. i know it's very common for people to go to yoga classes -- if it isn't just "gym yoga," that is -- a get a big lecture on how yoga is about pain and difficulty.

i certainly have heard many such lectures from well-meaning teachers. they exhort you to push yourself into poses and "embrace the pain." you must "progress" in your yoga! you must burn off your karma! these poses may be physically painful; or perhaps emotionally painful.

(if you don't understand how some poses in yoga seem physically simple but actually cause you to feel strong emotions while you're doing them, then you have just started practicing yoga!)

these teachers tell you that to find "growth" or "enlightenment" or whatever you must "push beyond yourself." thus we have read on blogs about people who have broken their noses falling over doing yoga, or wrecked their knees to the point of surgery, and proclaimed: i am getting somewhere in this yoga practice!

but not all damage is physical. i have students pushed in poses freeze in fear, lose self-confidence, and then castigate themselves for "failing." or perhaps they see others in the class do poses they cannot and they judge themselves.

this is some of the mental harm attainment yoga can do. but i am here to politely and quietly disagree.

i am firmly now in mark whitwell's camp: reject the tyranny of attainment yoga. attainment yoga simply creates a false consciousness in oneself; and this is the opposite of what our goal in yoga is.

i know many people go to different kinds of yoga classes and hope to achieve new, difficult postures, believing these poses will cure their bad knees, make them vegetarian, teach them to like themselves, sculpt their butts, whatever.

dear fellow yogis and yoginis, mastering astavakrasana will not improve anything about your life, except maybe getting a flat tummy. but having a perfect butt or flat tummy doesn't make you happy. you will still be yourself with the same problems and outlook on life.

this is why i discourage an attainment yoga of seeking prowess in postures, esp. if it involves pain. the sloka above makes patanjali's position quite clear: if it isn't easy, steady, comfortable, then it isn't yoga.

this is where my quotation from nancy la nasa comes in: "that's not yoga, that's bad gymnastics." what makes yoga yoga?

that yoga isn't about attaining or acquiring is also clear from the niyamas, one of which is aparigraha, "non-greed."

what is the difference between a yoga pose and a circus contortion? if achievement in the asanas were all, then most children under the age of 12 and all circus performers would be the supreme yogis.

those teachers who mean well but push pain have bought into an incorrect idea. they aren't bad people; they are often repeating what they have been taught. sometimes they are trying to propose advaita vedanta and not quite getting it right.

let me softly offer the idea that what makes an asana an asana is the breath and the concentration. yoga poses are moving meditations in which body postures serve as containers for the breath. that's all.

and yet at the same time, that's enormous! pretzel positions will not make me happier, but a meditative focus with the breath will over time truly change my life.

i remember once speaking to ashtangi eddie stern on this subject. and you know what he told me, frankly? something like: "the primary series should be enough. if you really were doing yoga in the primary series, then the other five would be needless."

this is exactly the same point i'm making here. look, of course we should develop our practices, we should learn new asanas and enjoy them. but we mustn't mistake the paintbrush for the picture. . .

specifically on the discussion with mba2005 now -- i was struck by the comments on pain. as if it were necessary. as if it were a good thing.

patanjali denies this, and explicity writes, in the sloka mba2005 quotes, "heyam duhkham anagatam," future pain should be avoided (pada 2, 16).

the statement mba2005 provided really struck me hard: "(Of course, it didn't help that the guy who practiced next to me kept telling me that I have to fall on my face a few time to 'get it.')" is a clear example, if you will forgive my bluntness, of attainment yoga on the part of the "guy who practiced next to me."

because of course you don't have to "get it." you are fine as you are. there's nothing to learn or acquire here; yoga is about letting go. this is why erich schiffmann says "love is what's left when you let go of everything you don't need."

that "next guy" seems to be creating a superiority for himself because he has "fallen on his face" (that hurts!) and now is in some "better" place because he "has it." and he appears to be encouraging mba2005 by saying, hey suffer, you'll get it, and then. . .and then? then what exactly?

and mba2005 duly felt briefly inferior and resolves in writing to try harder, maybe even buy a mouth guard, expecting that devasting crash which could break the teeth! with all due respect, mba2005, i would flee that class a.s.a.p.

i myself learned bakasana and the vinyasa to tripod headstand without falling once, by the use of a blanket and 2 blocks. i have never injured myself in this pose. i used the props until the day i didn't need them.

i had no idea when that would be. maybe i would always need the props. no matter.

as long as i practiced the action, breathed, and focused on the breath, on the stillness in the movement, i was doing good yoga. and lo and behold: one day i didn't need the props and i knew it. i asked for a spot from the teacher, alma largey, and wa-llah! that was that.

oh, i could do it. so what? the vinyasa -- the thread of the breath -- kept moving, and i followed with it. my "accomplishment" was fleeting and vanished into the past as the class went on with the practice that day.

the question was how i would face what was happening now. this is what the yoga sadhana teaches us: that what we are practicing is thought and behavior in the present moment.

thought and behavior for how to live in the now. and here we come back to mark whitwell's idea of "pointless movement, tourist consciousness."

because the asanas are essentially pointless. we shouldn't be attached to them. by themselves, they get us nowhere we need to go. (the sage sri ramana maharshi apparently only ever practiced one asana, savasana. )

and likewise pain will get us nowhere we need to go; it is only suffering.

our consciousness in our yoga practice is that of a tourist; we are witnessing what we are passing through along the path created by our ujjayi pranayama. . .the challenge is to take the witnessing into life beyond the mat. to understand that this witnessing is what we are.

in sum, to practice poses/thoughts/behaviors that harm our structures, our bodies, our minds, only harms them. that's not yoga, but dukkha, the suffering patanjali instructs us flatly to avoid.

this doesn't necessary mean abandoning your strenuous ashtanga practice: but rather, making it less ashtanga, and more purely yoga. . .

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