Following my latest Vipassana I found myself musing the following ~ it’s just an opinion, no offence intended. Yoga in Hertford.

What really is yoga all about – what are we doing when we are practising yoga?

That we should enjoy our practice, it should help our bodies be healthier, it’s nice to make new friends and connections ~ is great I love yoga for that. It can also support us when we face challenges.

The movements, breathing practices and the cognitive shift inward need to be relevant to us in our daily lives. It’s as if each time we practice yoga we are inculcating a way of being that can be useful to us ‘off the mat’.

The benefits might be improved sleep, which in turn means you are happier and more creative at work. Or a healthier body which is pain free and agile so that you can go about your day. Whatever the benefits of yoga might be for you, sooner or later in life we all encounter struggle, anxiety and pain. And when the dark clouds pass we look back and hopefully can see how things were a prompt for personal growth. After all, things could always get worse. 

Curiously, the inward work has an outer world reaction. We observe, we test and we learn so that we reflect the inner peace that we are experiencing and then work to staying inside that peace. Even stranger is that:

“Fear is rocket fuel for personal growth and development”

Let me explain

In his charismatic speech at The Yoga Research Society titled ‘Patanjali’s Influence on Me’ in 1987, Dr. John Lilly, inventor of the Sensory Deprivation Tank, is keen to impress the importance of stepping out of ones comfort zone and using the tremendous energy of a fear reaction to prompt introspection.

Yoga is one of many ways to do this. A fairly regular practice will give you a micro-dose exposure to challenge in a safe and supportive environment. Of course it depends on what you are doing when you are practising yoga. A distracted mind is no use at all for the this type of work, although awareness of this can eventually lead to a productive outcome. Also, not all yoga classes are the same…

One of the aims of my yoga classes is to seek intensity, sometimes we recognise it a presence, stillness, or a feeling of being moved, or at other times it’s the awakening of an awareness of something new/other. Whatever it is, our relationship with the practice is important and that’s the reason for the title of this article. Exercise or a good stretch are the byproduct but not the main attraction. 

Another, central pillar that primary importance is given to is ‘functional movement’ that is beneficial to the practitioner in their daily life. In other words, everything we do at my classes is tailored to you; the participant. I am looking for your strengths and weaknesses and together we are seeking ‘sattva’ the balance point. You might not experience this in the midst of the work, but it can be recognised as that feeling of calm, lightness in mind/body as you leave or in countless other ways. 

What really are we doing when we are on the mat? 

Is the mind meandering randomly, or engaging with petty comparisons, are we processing a stressful event, or just holding awareness and trusting process? 

Discomfort is not your enemy, it is the sign that you are ready to engage with the stuff of life, that time is ripe for change. Swami Ambikananda has described it as having certain markers. Such as, are we engaged with the action as an end it itself? What is the experience of time? Were you self conscious?.

Not knowing a future outcome is distressing but can we trust in the process to reveal the next step? In other words ‘How long can you wait with an open mind to reveal to yourself that which you need to know?’ Vipassana can get very uncomfortable.

One might ask…

Why would anyone want to do yoga if the result of it were pain and suffering? Why would I want to feel worse?

Pain is not the destination but one pathway to greater understanding. Through pain we learn to let go and shed what is not relevant, (we observe ourselves) to become more sensitive but less jolted when things do not go our way. We grow by the insight that the process reveals to us and then making an adjustment. 

Fancy people call this: self actualisation. I gather it’s a non-linear process of getting to know yourself, (I don’t know but they say) It means realising the potential within ourselves and harnessing all our latent capabilities to be freer in our choices, rather than jumping erratically between the pain of acquisition or the pain of loss. That might mean looking at oneself as being in a process, rather than the finished version. When we get stuck on a fixed idea about ourself anything that contravenes this idea is experienced as pain or loss of stature in someway.

This was one of the central thoughts during this latest Vipassana retreat. Our idea of what / who we are needs a deeper look. The longer you look the more the fixed ideas we hold tremble and shake.

“You have to feel it to heal it” I read recently one of those social media cards that invade our psychic space no matter how hard we try to shield ourselves. Annoyingly; this one hints at something useful. But if we stop at the emotional level, as in, turning inward to explore our emotions and stopping there then this is cultural appropriation of yoga – we have to move beyond life at simply the emotional level and explore deeper ~ really look.

The commercialisation of esoteric teachings is a modern reality that I (we) just have to get used to. After all, these are not medieval times where alms for wondering sages was an accepted norm. However, the commodification of ancient teachings is an insipid trend that we must to be vigilant of – to spell it out – too many times I see chunks of sacred teachings being separated from their wider whole and being bitesized, dumbed down to make them agreeable to a market demographic who will pay good money as long as what is being given fits neatly alongside their existing world view including the fixed version of themself.

My question is…

If the dominant paradigm is perfect why do people continue engage with ancient philosophies and practices?

The quick fix, the easy path, bio-hacking, or whatever faddish name it is cloaked in is the Wizard hiding behind the curtain. Could it be that deep down inside we know that things are not so perfect, that we can always look within? That our neat life situation is just a moment away from being shattered by some bad news. Instinctively we know transformation is needed, that we can learn and change and this gives me hope, as that is the Guru within each of us.

It’s unfashionable to say that the path inward is painful particularly because someone else will show you rainbows, unicorns and angel wings whilst you lay on your back bathed in the tranquil sounds of an exotic instrument.

Trends and fads come and go, the work remains the same. It takes effort to concentrate the wondering mind and keep it fixed so that the truth can reveal itself. Along the way courage is required to bear discomfort and yet persist. Mercifully change is happening in every instant, and yet the process might have been initiated years ago. 

Yoga is a means by which one can look at him/herself and ask ‘how can I change?’ And then combine effort with an environment allowing for that change to happen. We have to get serious otherwise we’re only playing games and probably wasting our own time.

Fire is non-discriminatory, it burns everything it can

Real teachers understand that they do not own knowledge, that they are the guardians of it. Fail to teach one generation of children how to read and the entire thread of a culture risks being lost. 

The ancients looked on knowledge like a sacred fire – it has the power to transform but can also be snuffed out if not protected. Lovers of yoga have to remember this. Our daily practice is the fuel that keeps our fire burning.

This is why yoga is not an ‘exercise’: mechanistic repetition with an end goal. Gloriously yoga teaches us that each breath is a moment to encounter the deep self. These are Asanas (to be couched in awareness) and are there for us to learn something about ourselves and maybe in the knowledge of that realisation to encounter the mundane as a vivid living experience. So… knowledge, like fire; has the power to transform matter from one state into another. 

Great human beings have courageously stood in front of this sacred fire and sacrificed the easy path so that they might become fuel for the transformational power of fire. This is the esoteric meaning of the Sun Salutation. In the east ultimately, it is on the funeral pyre that we embark on our next faze of transformation, it is fire that will complete our transfer on the material dimension.

Wolves, elephant goads and mountain yogis

In her translation of the Katha Upanishad Swami Ambikananda speaks of a break in the Vedic culture when after centuries of expansion and the establishment of vast cities certain yogis returned to the woods and mountains. The city yogis oversaw ritual, ceremony and temple life whereas the mountain yogi sought solitude and a life away from city living so that they might encounter the self, unencumbered by societal attachments.

As an undergrad I came across a novel that hinted at something profound. In ’Steppenwolf’ by Herman Hesse the protagonist explains why he sees himself as an outsider, a wolf of the Steppes. The conceit is a picture of Goethe that triggers his despondency at bourgeois predictability such that it makes him question everything. This is how I see the yogi of the mountain and forests…

In the end the real reason social media and the popular culture cannot teach you this is that it risks mental breakdown and is generally messy. Taking vows of renunciation and living on the side of a mountain is not for the faint of heart. Most of us just want a happy life; have great memories and a comfortable existence. The sages tell us there is no escaping it. When things go wrong we have to ask ‘why?’ We need meaning, a reason for the struggle, something bigger that we can latch onto to draw ourselves out of the mire.

All of this is symbolic

In Vedic astrology the asterism of Mula Nakshatra is symbolised by an elephant goad called Ankush. A special prod that the mahout (elephant carer) would use to control the biggest land animal on planet Earth. They do this by uttering a command and administering a poke behind the ear, through repetition the animal learns to preempt the poke and move forward or stop upon hearing the command. In time there is no need for the goad. 

The only way for the beast to free itself is to break the spell and suffer the poke whilst not yielding. This takes massive courage and capacity to sit with pain. Unless we take command of the elephant goad we will always fear its prod.

We are the elephant, it is us that has to overcome our anticipation of pain and break our conditioning. S/He who carries the goad has the power to command others. The goad was a symbol of power, Kings would carry these ornate ritual tools to show that they had transcended fear and thus commanded respect. 

We revert to symbolism to go beyond the material, what makes the human animal different is it’s ability to test, learn and adapt. It has brought humans to the pinnacle of life on Earth, without turning inward and seeing the unifying factor between ourselves and nature we can never be truly whole. When we can start to see nature as sacred we can find the sacred within ourselves.

Our history shows the same. We went west as far as we could then found the Americas, when the lonely cowboy could go further, the ‘space race’ started. Eventually we’ll colonise the moon and even Mars. Goenka likes to point out that: Not even the richest, most powerful person on the planet can control everyone. When it comes to the way inward, we might have more agency. 

You don’t have to do yoga to go inward – but when we come to yoga this is ultimately where we are orienting ourselves to.

Observations

I have noticed that; over time, the quest takes on another quality. Some things become easier. The doubting mind that questions whether or not this is a worthwhile way of life quietens, some broad landmarks become visible of the undiscovered country. 

One starts identifying the typical reactions one has during meditation or asana practice, they are still temporary blips but take our attention for less time than they used to. A sense of patience around them opens up, we see ourselves as engaged in a process and allow for it to take place instead of reacting and loosing the balance within.

You would be forgiven for thinking that it all gets easier. There are times when it feels easier, but a lot of the time it isn’t and yet the stillness gets deeper and more interesting.

Why do yoga?

To be able to go deeper; more and more resources have to be committed. One must have a quieter outer life in order to have the necessary resources to commit to the inner movement. We might change how we spend our time, the things we do, the people we see, the amount of time we had available for everyday dramas. Suddenly all that seems so exhausting.

A sensitivity awakens, you feel everything more keenly. The things people say, their intentions and emotions. We start to see some things as a strange TV show and that we are also a character.

The search goes on, we keep the flame burning and when encountered – it – is so beautiful that no words could describe it.