Living Breathing Yoga

This week one of our students was frustrated with supta kurmasana and was clearly disturbed when we kept stopping her at this difficult posture.  She, like so many of us, was restless and itching to move forward in her asana practice; and again like so many of us, she wanted results and had become impatient with her progress. 

This reminded me of what our teacher once taught us about impatience.  He said that impatience is a subtle form of violence or hostility towards oneself.  (Of course then he looked directly at me and said that if a student is impatient they have not understood the the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.  Busted again!)  So, for one more week lets keep with the Yamas and the Ahimsa theme.You see according to Patanjali only one eighth of this classical yoga path is asana, and in his book he speaks about asana in only 3 of 196 verses.  His emphasis makes it clear for all of us that in this practice of yoga there are some other limbs that we must attend to.

Whether it is on or off the mat, if we are “practicing impatience” in our lives we have omitted a first and vital step in our yoga process, and quite possibly our yoga progress.  In the Yoga Sutras the chief Yama (the first limb of ashtanga yoga) is Ahimsa.  Ahimsa is an action centered attitude of “non-harming” or “non-violence,” and it is a vital, but very difficult, practice.  It deals with our actions towards others as well as ourselves.  We must cultivate this practice in ourselves and radiate it out to others.  As always the mat becomes the great mirror, and if we are willing to look, it will reflect back to us our true progress on this path. 

Ultimately, this comes back to choice.  We must make the conscious choice to practice ahimsa:  to be gentle with ourselves, to approve of ourselves, to have patience with ourselves, and after taking action, we must leave the results to God.  Of course in this practice if the struggle of this daily existence overwhelms us…   you can always do what Sri K. Pattabhi Jois tells us to do: “You breath You!” OmBe Blessed!  Peace, Out.J 

I was excited it was only -8 degrees Celsius!  The deep freeze we were living in was unplugged a week ago, and I was looking forward to actually getting on the mat without being frozen; even more so to having a long lingering practice…

Then I looked outside… Now maybe if you are melting from heat in Thailand it looks like a winter wonderland, but what frustration, the extra 15 minutes I thought I had for my practice was just re-assigned to snow removal. 

With no one around and a feeble grumble I started sweeping the car clean. I was reminded of what my teacher would say, “the mind wants to be negative,” and in the snow that morning, it wasn’t hard to watch this mind gravitate towards negativity. Especially when I loved these days as a kid.

There is no debating in Canada we have 4 seasons.  In the winter season things slow down, even our practices, and so it becomes even more important to remember ahimsa in our interactions.  This ahimsa, “non-harming,” or “non-violence,” applies equally to ourselves as it does to anyone else that we interact with.  To practice Ashtanga Yoga, we must bring attention to all the limbs and a luckily asana helps us with this.

Of course in the end, seasons come and seasons go, postures come and postures go, stiffness comes and stiffness goes.  To dwell in impatience and criticism of ourselves or others, or the situations we are in, is to misunderstand the necessity of practicing ahimsa, and to miss out on a great opportunity to practice yoga more fully in our lives.

But Dang, I’m still looking forward to spring.  Until next time… Be Blessed!   J

February 1, 2008

       Dang!!  It’s cold here in Canada!! … It was 3:00 am and -49 Celsius (-56 Fahrenheit) the last couple days when we were making our way to the shala to practice, now for those of you tuning in from Thailand for the first time, that is like living in your freezer.   Public transit wasn’t running because the doors were freezing open or closed, if you could start your car the wheels were frozen more square than round and bumped along for the first 10 minutes of your drive, and if you had any uncovered skin exposed it would freeze causing frost bite in under 2 minutes… Even the “momma deer” wanted to bring her baby inside...

   Oh, how we were missing India and Thailand… 

          
You can’t help but question your life choices when it seems more sensible to hibernate than to crawl out of bed from under piles of warm blankets.  Even in the heated room of the yoga shala my body never wanted to get warm and I felt the mental resistance to doing my asana practice.  Oh, the tricky mind, it wasn’t to hard to see that I had formed a strong attachment to the warm climates of India and Thailand, developing a craving for the internal heat that makes me feel so bendy, and the desire to “perform” asana rather than “practice” asana in the moment.   Patanjali who gave us the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga tells us that in order to achieve our goal we must practice and be non-attached or non-dependant. This week it is the Canadian winter that is reminding me to take heed of Patanjali’s words, to practice with sincerity and detach from the results.  Yoga is so much more than asana, and it’s clearly time for me to review the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga…. but more on that in a couple of weeks…