Be self-controlled! Give! Be compassionate!

From the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V:2

Today I listened through a recording of Tony leading us through the complete Ghosh series. He led us through it a few times during our training and, with all the posture variations (140 positions) and individual instruction it takes about 3 1/2 hours. As I listen back to Tony's guidance, one thing in particular strikes me. He is relatively brief in the postures. 

Tony often counts while we practice: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 at frustratingly unpredictable tempos, but in general he doesn't make us hold the postures for super long. (Though I must mention that some postures felt like forever. Two in particular are the 2nd expression of Chair and Balancing Stick.) As I have developed my own practice, finding my own expressions of the postures and sequences, I find myself spending longer and longer in each posture. Often 10 breaths, somewhere around 1 minute per posture. Tony's counts are more in the 10-20 second range. 

I realize that there is a difference between focusing on each individual posture, like I have been in my own practice, and focusing on the practice as a whole. Perhaps we don't need to get each posture perfect or even to its deepest expression. We only need to put our body in the position for a reasonable period of time, not too long, and then move on. Over the course of a couple hours and a few dozen postures, the cumulative effect of the postures takes shape.

A complete practice is the sum of many postures. Perhaps it is better to do 50 postures, as in the Master's Core System, for 20 seconds apiece than 20 or 30 postures for a minute apiece. 

At the beginning we do the postures to serve the body. We make the muscles strong and the joints mobile. At some point the relationship inverts and the body exists in service of the postures. We no longer do the poses to strengthen our abs; we have strong abs to enable us to do the poses. 

This begs the question: what do the poses serve? What is the purpose of the postures once they are no longer done in service of the body?

The goal of the postures becomes the same as the goal of yoga itself: to remove suffering. Our unhappiness is made in our minds where we create little universes for ourselves and try to rule them. We try to be the best and the most popular and have the most stuff, or whatever the rules of our ego-driven worlds are. We try to keep control.

The path to happiness is not by conquering our own mind-made universe, but by realizing its nature as a figment of our minds and gradually eradicating it. This is where self-awareness, honesty and meditation come in.

The postures become a place where we can settle our bodies, sometimes for long periods of time, and quiet the mind. They become points of focus. Each posture has a different point, and when we do the posture our mind can focus and rest there. The poses become practice for the mind in concentration and longer periods of shiftlessness.

"When the five senses are stilled, when the mind
Is stilled, when the intellect is stilled,
That is called the highest state by the wise.
They say yoga is this complete stillness
In which one enters the unitive state,
Never to become separate again.
If one is not established in this state,
The sense of unity will come and go."

The Katha Upanishad, Part 2, Chapter 2, Verse 10-11.

"While doing yoga correctly, one should not pant heavily. In contrast to aerobic exercise (which itself has benefits), neither the breathing rate nor heart rate should increase while practicing yoga."

"If, while doing several vinyasas in a sequence, one feels overworked or out of breath, one should take a rest of one or two minutes to regain one's breath."

From "The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga" by Srivatsa Ramaswami."

"The Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada are among the earliest and most universal messages... sent to inform us that there is more to life than the everyday experience of our senses. The Upanishads are the oldest, so varied that we feel some unknown collectors must have tossed into a jumble all the photos, postcards and letters from this world that they could find, without any regard for source or circumstance. Thrown together like this, they form a kind of ecstatic slide show - snapshots of towering peaks of consciousness taken at various times by different observers and dispatched with just the barest kind of explanation. But those who have traveled those heights will recognize the views: 'Oh, yes, that's Everest from the northwest - must be late spring. And here we're south, in the full snows of winter'" (The Upanishads, introduction and translation by Eknath Easwaran).

When I read this paragraph in Easwaran's introduction to The Upanishads, especially the last couple sentences, I was overwhelmed by emotion and recognition. My eyes filled with tears. For much of my life I have felt familiar with the teachings and explanations of Eastern philosophy and spirituality regarding human consciousness. I have never been able to explain or understand my familiarity and I have always thought myself a bit of a hippie or a kook. 

According to this description, my familiarity must come from some sort of recognition. Something within me has experienced these things before. Could it be a past life or the universal consciousness? I don't know, and there I go sounding like a hippie yogi kook again. 

One of my biggest challenges as a developing practitioner of yoga is my shifting consciousness. I have fewer words to describe the experiences that are occurring within myself. And I am at a complete loss about how to explain or guide my fellow Midwesterners. Pranayama exercises are putting me in touch with the nervous system throughout my entire body. I am witnessing and experiencing more pure energy from the earth, the atmosphere and within the body. These are things for which I have no vocabulary.

"As Mark [Singleton] points out in Yoga Body, the number of basic gymnastic or contortionist postures that the body can assume is finite and similarities between yogic āsanas and such postures as practised in the West cannot be put down to influence either way. But one feature of certain styles of modern postural yoga identified by Mark as an innovation brought in under the influence of modern Western gymnastics does set it apart from pre-modern yoga: the linking of āsanas into sequences. With a couple of anomalous and trivial exceptions it is clear from textual sources, travellers’ reports and my own fieldwork among ascetic yogis today that in traditional yoga practice āsanas, like the poses held by ascetics mentioned in the Mahābhārata and other ancient texts, are to be held for relatively long periods and that no fixed order is prescribed for their practice. Such a conclusion is unsurprising in the light of the implication of sedentariness expressed by the word āsana itself."

From "A Response to Mark Singleton's Yoga Body" by James Mallison

A post from my teacher Tony Sanchez.

MY MISSION 

In the mid 70's when, I first met Bikram, he was on a clear mission. He taught me the value of yoga and made me a believer. He used to say "Nothing is good unless you do honest work for it". I learned the value of daily practice with intent. And I understood that if, you teach and train the body and mind through Hatha yoga and healthy eating, they will serve you well. Hatha Yoga is a self-repairing system that will restore the body to optimum working order in a gradual and even way. Healthy eating will provide you with the needed nutrition to keep the body and mind going. The mission, I felt was to teach the world a simple, effective and natural way to stay healthy. And in good physical shape and mental peace in this challenging times we live in. It almost, sounded as if, at one time, it was Ghosh's mission.

The 6th, 7th and 8th limbs of yoga according to Patanjali are commonly translated as: Dharana - Concentration, Dhyana - Meditation, and Samadhi - Bliss or Union or Integration. I have been reading Health, Healing and Beyond by TKV Desikachar, and he translates them slightly differently.

Dharana - The ability to direct our minds.
Dhyana - The ability to develop interactions with what we seek to understand.
Samadhi - Complete integration with the object to be understood.

These translations help my understanding of the concepts, especially with Dhyana. Meditation is one of the main processes that we can use to develop interactions with what we seek to understand, but according to this translation it is the interactions, not the meditation itself that is the focus. 

I have always struggled with the meaning of Meditation. What is it? Does the mind stay completely focused or release from focus? Do we meditate on an idea or object, or do we meditate on nothing? These translations lead me to believe that all of these possibilities are useful forms of meditation. These various acts of meditation allow us to interact with what we seek to understand. Sometimes it is something, sometimes nothing.

These translations also shed some light on the meaning and process of Samyama, a concept that Patanjali elaborates in the 3rd chapter of the Yoga Sutras. In my understanding Samyama is a deep integration with an object or idea, somewhere beyond the concept of Samadhi.

"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.... Truth being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you understand that, then you will understand how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is a purely personal matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop you must pass through the valley, climb the steps, unafraid of dangerous precipices. You must climb upwards to truth... I maintain that no organization can lead man to spirituality... The moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth... I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free."
- From a speech by Krishnamurthi, excerpted from Health, Healing, and Beyond by TKV Desikachar