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For thousands of years, yoga has been a tool to open the
mind and body, bringing transformation. At its core, yoga
is a process that involves confronting your limits and transcending
them. It is a psychophysical approach to life and to self-understanding
that can be creatively adapted to the needs of the times.
Yoga transforms you by opening up the physical and mental
binds that block your potential, limiting your life. Transformation
is a process that brings newness and interest. You might
think that changing deeply could make you so different that
you'd lose touch with those you love and even yourself.
Actually, the transformation that yoga brings makes you
more yourself, and opens you up to loving with greater depth.
It involves a honing and refining which releases your true
essence, as a sculptor brings out the beauty of form in
the stone by slowly and carefully chipping away the rest.
Doing yoga brings many concrete benefits: it's a powerful
therapeutic tool for correcting physical and psychological
problems; it retards aging and keeps you opened sexually;
it gives strength and flexibility for other physical activities;
it can enhance your looks, posture, skin and muscle tone,
and vitality; and it can give your life a sense of grace
and overall well-being.
At its deepest level, yoga involves generating energy.
Energy is often thought of as a mysterious force which is
either there or not, and out of your control. But through
yoga, you can actually change its quality and generate more
of it, by enlarging the body's capacity as an energy transformer.
Everyone has experienced different qualities of energy.
Sometimes "scattered" or agitated--you're off
in different directions at once. Yet, at other times, you
may also have great energy and be very focused and calm.
Yoga involves learning to generate energy, and also to focus
it into different parts of your body. This enables you to
break through physical and psychological blocks, increasing
energy, which allows new interest to come into your life.
At any instant, the quality of your life is directly related
to how interested you are in it. Yoga involves far more
than either having or developing flexibility. Being able
to do complicated postures doesn't necessarily mean you
know how to do yoga. The essence of yoga is not attainments,
but how awarely you work with your limits - wherever and
whatever they may be. The important thing is not how far
you get in any given pose, but how you approach the yogic
process, which in turn is directly related to how your mind
views yoga.
There are different basic frameworks of mind - what I call
"headsets" that people bring to yoga. One involves
viewing a posture as an end to be achieved, a goal: how
far you get in the posture is what counts. Another one views
the posture as a tool to explore and open the body. Instead
of using the body to "get" the posture, you use
the posture to open the body. Whichever framework you're
in greatly influences how you do each posture.
Approaching postures as goals makes you less sensitive
to the messages the body is sending. If your mind is primarily
on the goal, the gap between where you are and where you
want to be can bring tension and hinder movement. You push
too hard and fast instead of allowing your body to open
at its own pace. Paradoxically, if you're oriented toward
the process instead of the end results, progress and
opening come naturally. Postures can be achieved through
struggle, but the struggle itself limits both your immediate
opening and how far you ultimately move in yoga.
Valuing "progress" is a deep part of our conditioning.
It's natural to enjoy progress, but problems come when your
yoga is attached at its core to results, instead of to the
daily process of opening and generating energy. This
attachment imposes one of the real limits to your yoga.
Many of you have probably noticed how your yoga is cyclical,
in the sense that you're into it, then out of it, then into
it again, and so on. One reason for this involves being
subtly hooked into accomplishments. When you're improving,
it turns you on, and you're motivated as long as you continue
to improve. When you "plateau" - as we all on
occasion do - you need all the energy it took to improve
just to maintain where you are. If your main incentive is
progress, the lack of improvement can cause you to lose
interest. Consequently, you may do less or no yoga until
you close up and your body complains. Then you do yoga to
feel better, and again you improve until once more you hit
a plateau.
The quality of mind that you bring to yoga is of utmost
importance. In fact, most of the real limits that you confront
in yoga live in the mind, not the body. People think they
are limited by their body's endurance - that tiring is purely
physical. I have found it is usually not the body that tires
first, but rather, the mind which loses the stamina required
for attention. When your mind tires, your attention wanes
and begins to wander, and sensitivity to your body's messages
diminishes. You treat the body with less care, and this
tires it more quickly. Yoga involves a balance between "control"
and "surrender" - between pushing and relaxing,
channeling energy and letting go, so the energy can move
you. I have found there are basically two personality types
in yoga. I call them the "pushers" and the "sensualists."
The pushers are more into control and progress - the sensualists
into surrender and relaxation. As yoga truly means balance,
if your tendency is to push, you must also learn to let
go, relax, and enjoy the sensuality of the stretch. If your
tendency is to relax, and be "laid back," you
must learn to experience the turn on of pushing your edges
and using control to generate energy.
The art of yoga lies in learning how to focus and generate
energy into different parts of the body, in listening to
the body's messages (feedback), and in surrendering to where
the energy leads you. The body's resistance should be respected,
since it is useful feedback. Trying to conquer resistance
and push past pain is actually another form of resistance
- resistance to your own limits, to what and where you are
now. When you change your focus from "resisting resistance"
to channeling energy into where the limits lie, your body
can follow its own flow and open on its own, with minimal
resistance. Trying forcibly to push past your limits actually
creates more resistance and tension, whereas surrendering
to the posture ultimately draws you into far greater depth.
The body will tell you when to move and deepen if you listen
to it.
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