An Invitation to Yoga

Finding Yoga

I like to think of Yoga as something that is found.  Many people I know who are long-term practitioners talk about it this way. They recount how their life was one way or another until they foundYoga. Once they found Yoga so many things changed for the better. It is interesting that we talk about it as finding. Although Yoga is not a religion, this is the way we refer to a religious experience.  We “find “religion, we “find” God. No one I know says that every thing got better once they ”found” the gym or “found” exercise. They say when I started going to the gym or started exercising things got better. Even meditation, which has many shared qualities with Yoga, we typically refer to starting not finding e.g. things improved for me when I started mediating.  The very use of language, the “finding” aspect of Yoga attests to the depth of the practice.

My finding Yoga was a wonderful thing for me. It changed my life. The process was not straightforward.

Yoga is best experienced rather than described or viewed; yet if we do not depict it, how can we encourage someone who has never tried it to encounter it? My first experience with yoga was with a book. Although the first time I set foot in a Yoga studio was in 2003, that “first step” began some time earlier. It was not happenstance. It started several years earlier when I picked up Eric Schiffman’s book Moving Into Stillness.  In retrospect it all falls together, but at the time, I didn’t know where I was headed. I didn’t even know that I had found something I was looking for. 

The word Asana, which is used as a suffix to each posture name, is said to mean in its original use: with ease. At the time I picked up Moving Into Stillness,I was anything but at ease. I was on a quest for a sense of peace, which I was lacking.  I was looking for something, I didn’t know what, that would dispel the dis-ease I was experiencing. I was looking for a sense of equanimity, which was distinctly absent from myself at the time.  I think that is why the title appealed to me and caught my eye.  Oddly enough I did not read the book at the time. Oh yes I paged through it a little bit but mostly it sat on a shelf until sometime later. Yet, that book sowed the seed. Something about the peculiar body positions fascinated me. I couldn’t imagine what contorting your body like that would do for you, but I sensed it was something valuable and worthwhile. Then I had no idea where or how one could engage in Yoga. Sometime later an opportunity presented itself.

 It was a matter of fact occurrence, perhaps not as mundane as with a Groupon, which seems to attract most new comers into yoga studios now days, but certainly I wasn’t called by angels. Yet any story that gets one into a Yoga studio is a good story as far as I am concerned. My son was a high school athlete at the time and one of his coaches suggested Yoga as a way to increase his flexibility. I asked his coach where does one do Yoga? He suggested trying Bikram Yoga. I dutifully called the studio to inquire about enrolling my son.  I told the person answering the phone I wanted to inquire about Yoga classes for my son. The person asked me what about you? I hadn’t thought about doing it myself, but couldn’t give the person a good reason why I should not try it, so I decided to go together with my son for our first class.

My son hated the first class. He thought the heat was horrible and vowed never to return. (I am happy to say that since then he has returned and practices Yoga regularly). I was intrigued by the first class. My body and mind felt so much better afterwards. I couldn’t fathom how some of the students were doing the postures with such depth. I wondered what it would be like to be able to do the postures the way they did. I called my daughter on the way home and told her I had gone to a Yoga class and was amazed by it. She told me she had done several Yoga classes at college and said she had never felt so relaxed as she did after one of those classes. I agreed, and I knew I would be back. Since then I have done Yoga as close to everyday as I can.

That is how I found Yoga, and I am happy I did because it changed my life in so many favorable ways. It may seem unbelievable, but by findingYoga you can change your life.

Finding the Posture

An axiom of Bikram Yoga is that your body is different every day. The postures stay the same, but you are a different person every day you practice.  As a result, each time you practice another type of finding goes on.

When I think of this type of finding, I am reminded of a anecdote about the great 20thCentury cellist Pablo Casals, which was recounted to me from a book by John Holt called Never too Late.The story goes that an old friend of Casals came to visit. The two walked on the beach in the morning and then Casals sat down to play. He tuned his cello and started to play a scale on the instrument. He deftly hit the first several notes but seemed to get stuck on playing E.  He played the E several times and then went to C and then back to the E and then to the G and then back to the E. His friend looked on in amazement thinking is it possible that the world’s greatest cellist is having trouble finding E? Casals continued to work back and forth on the E note; and perceiving what his friend was thinking, Casals said to him, “Always, every day for fifty years, I have to find the E.”

In each practice one needs to find each posture similar to what Casals described about finding E.

The posture is like a puzzle or a riddle that has a different solution every time you perform it. Each day it remains to be seen how well you solve it if at all. The great insight you had into the posture yesterday, that enabled you to move deeper into the posture than you ever had before, surprisingly can seem unhelpful or irrelevant today. Yesterday that insight worked and clarified it all to you. You thought you finally got it, and today you seem to be back where you were a month ago; or worse yet, you can’t remember what insight you had yesterday that seemed to make it all happen.  This is the challenge of Yoga because your body is different every day; yet within this variation there are constants, and the longer you practice the more proficiency and consistency you will gain. 

I used to think that carrying out a posture well was a matter of knowledge, but in reflecting on this for some time I have come to think that doing a posture is more about awareness than knowledge.  Although one needs knowledge to unlock the mystery of each posture, knowledge is too limiting a description. It implies an intellectual understanding.  To be sure one needs knowledge of the posture to perform it. I think awareness is a more suitable term because it goes beyond the intellectual.  To practice Yoga one needs body awareness, and Yoga helps you learn that. If a posture such as Standing Head to Knee, Dandayamana- Janushirasana requires a locked knee and pulled in abdominal muscles, one must be aware of the locked knee and pulled in abdominals in order to execute the posture. It is through awareness that each day each posture is found.  

The mirror is used as an alignment and teaching tool in Bikram Yoga. It helps you find the posture. As your practice deepens, you will develop awareness of internal landmarks for the posture and depend less and less on the mirror. The most advanced Yogis can do beautiful postures without a mirror at all, because they are profoundly aware of their internal landmarks.

Each posture requires the Yogi to focus on many things at once.  For example, to do Standing Head to Knee one has to have a locked standing leg and a locked kicking leg and pulled in abdominals and relaxed shoulders. All of this has to happen at once.  How is this different from multitasking, which is an anathema of Yoga? How is it different from talking to a client at work on the phone while you respond to an e -mail to someone else? The difference in Yoga is that we are not tasking; we are doing a posture by focusing on multiple areas of body awareness. The posture isn’t a task; it is a key to body awareness. 

One can overthink the posture. This can be a danger. As I said above, the posture is not about thinking; it is about awareness.  Sometimes it is best to put the clutch in on the gears of your thinking mind and let your “inner flamingo” take control, as you feel your way through the Yin and Yang of balance.  Once again let me use the example of Standing Head to Knee.  This posture requires an awareness of the ball of your foot, your toes, and your heel different from any awareness of these body parts that you have ever had before.  You also need to develop an awareness of how your foot interacts with your abdominal muscles, pelvis, kicking leg, shoulders and hands. All these components of the body need to dance together in a rotating cycle of awareness like crystals shifting in a kaleidoscope.  Yoga creates a whole new awareness of the homunculus, the panorama of your body etched into your brain. As we balance our body in the posture, we balance our mind and consciousness by displacing thinking with awareness. The posture is its own reward. It is a choreographed, motionless dance with the gyroscopic stillness of a rapidly spinning top.

Because of the mind body connection developed in Yoga, you balance your body and through that you also balance your mind. As Yoga opens your body, it also opens your mind. In balancing postures you achieve a unison and equanimity with the physical forces of the world. You become a working manifestation of Newton’s Laws.

Bikram Yoga is a great physical work out, but above and beyond that is its value for the mind. Bikram Yoga promotes a healthy body as well as healthy mind. Yoga facilitates peace and calm and relief from stress and agitation. 

Part of this emanates from the practice of letting go. We need to focus on each posture when we are doing it, but once the posture is over we are taught to let it go. It is then we come into a space of stillness – in Savasana – a place of non attachment, non judgment, and non criticism where we do not rehash what we could or should have done in the posture, but rather we just breath.   This is a powerful lesson to learn. Just think how much we hang on to so many things that happen during any given day, most of which are of dubious significance yet cling to our minds and disturb us. The person who cut you off driving today you won’t even remember tomorrow, yet today you seethe about it far too long. In Yoga we learn to let this sort of triviality slide off so we can repose in the underlying freedom and bliss, which exists below the day in day out aggravations and disturbances that too often consume our consciousness.  Relaxation is active. To relax you have to let go of expectations, demands, goals, and preconceptions. Yoga teaches us the active process of relaxation.

What is the difference between stretching and relaxing a muscle? One can stretch without actually relaxing and this frequently happens unless we make ourselves aware of relaxing into the posture rather than struggling with the stretching. It is necessary to bring awareness to the posture so we are not just pulling but letting go. You are struggling to stretch, but in the struggle you are creating tension and resistance in the muscle.   One needs to be aware of this so that you can let go of the resistance. The letting go of the muscle carries over to the discursive mind. You let go of your thinking and stress just as you let go of the tension in your muscles.

Many people exercise to relieve stress. We are all aware of the runner’s “high” and the release of endorphins, which accompanies jogging and other forms of exercise, but Yoga does this in a more deliberate fashion. Yoga creates a sense of peace and relaxation, which exceeds anything I have experienced with any other form of exercise. That is because Yoga is not just exercise; it is more than exercise. Each posture moves one closer along the road of relaxation; loss of tension in the mind is begotten by loss of tension in the muscles and the body. I think you will find if you start practicing that this is more than a metaphoric or semantic connection. By creating an awareness of the body we switch our focus away from the time and task oriented processes of our mind, and we move into a different frame of mind than is our customary and daily norm. Yoga enables us to access a place, which is free from the tyranny of time and the rancor of the discursive mind. Some day Neuro-Scientists may be able to explain how this happens, but any practitioner can verify that it does happen. Somehow our ego, which is often as harsh on ourselves as it is on others, loses its strangle hold on us. We can just be. 

 The body is a great source of knowledge if only because it does so much on its own, without the participation of our conscious mind. For example the body digests our food, cleanses and circulates our blood, grows our cells and does so much more without us ever thinking about it. Where does our breath come from? I don’t mean the one we take consciously; I mean the one that happens on its own. It emanates from our being as a gift from where we do not know.  Yoga engenders a sense of our selves, which surpasses our typical preoccupation and obsession with our egos and thoughts. Yoga enables us to be aware that we are more than the voice in our heads.  Yoga teaches us to appreciate the wisdom of the body.

As I mentioned above Yoga is not a religion, but it has deep spiritual qualities. The term Yoga derives from the Sanskrit word that means yoke; it yokes the body to the mind and that mind/ body unit to the larger world and universe beyond.

The heat in Bikram Yoga intensifies the spiritual qualities of Yoga. The hot room has some aspects of a sweat lodge. 

The heat cleanses your system and detoxifies you. The heat loosens the muscles and allows you to go further into the posture. In a really hot class you are forced to concentrate on the breath just to be in the room let alone do the postures. 

Our breath is in the present moment, our bodies are in the present moment, but we are frequently not aware of our breath nor of our body. We are aware of our mind and our thoughts but our mind and thoughts are often not in the present moment at all, nor in the present space or the space of presence. The mind is frequently dwelling on the past or future agitating about what happened or what might happen. By focusing on the breath and our body we can link our mind to our body and access the present moment. In so doing, we can experience a place and space that is surprisingly unique and still.  To paraphrase the poet Alexander Pope, Yoga brings us to the Isthmusof the present moment, where we are now, between our past and out future. The postures and the breath open the door to meditation and the present moment, which enables awareness of energies and states which we cannot necessarily measure or verify scientifically. 

The heat forces you to be with your breath.  If you maintain awareness of your breath and don’t get ahead of your breath; if you move with your breath and let your breath be with you, you will intrinsically pace your practice. With the aid of your breath you can find ease in the posture. Let your breath be as free as the wind and you will move like a tree moves in the wind. Your breath will elevate you like the air beneath a bird in flight. Your breath is the wind of life.

Yoga can spur many wonderful changes in your life, but first you have to find it and let it speak to you. Once you have found it you are not at the end but rather just at the beginning.

If you are looking for yoga I hope you find it. I wish you well on your Journey! 

Josh Greenberg is a physician. He practices Yoga and Cardiology in the Worcester area.                  

© 2012Joshua Greenberg