After a couple months of Tripsichore, since my return from Edward Clark's tutelage, I had a couple of students ask me essentially, "Where are we going with this?" I was speechless when I heard the question- both times- proving how slow I can be! I was talking with one of my teachers, Katerina Wen, describing the question and wondering why people were asking me that. She said, "Well, where ARE you going with it?" I replied, "Enlightenment." She says, "What does that mean?" I said, "I don't know, I'm not there yet and no one else I know is either!" Then we both laughed.
The epiphany for me was that I am out of touch with my students to some degree, and need to be better at explaining the WHYS of what we're doing from their perspective. The gap is a result of the fact that this is my Life's Passion, which I practice and study incessantly, and some truths seem self-evident to me, but probably aren't so obvious to someone who wanders in to the room for a workout or to become more flexible.
Don't get me wrong, you can get a workout and become more flexible by doing yoga, and though those are not reasons I practice, they are wonderful side benefits. If you think about it, it's not likely the entire reason you practice either. There is something transformative that happens in a practice, whether or not you are looking for it. If you come to my classes, you may have heard me say that if you are doing yoga solely to be in shape and shapely, then go to the gym-it's faster and cheaper. And I'm not saying this to be flippant- if you think about why you choose to practice yoga; you know it's more than hot aerobics and a stretching class.
So why do I teach what I teach, make you do all this crazy stuff over and over until you can do it proficiently? Where are we going with this? It might be illuminative to understand philosophically where I am coming from. I believe that your practice is a training ground for Life. You learn, accumulate and practice skills that take you into the real world- where the true yoga takes place. So if practice is to assist you in your Life, we must imitate the circumstances of Life to some degree. For example, Life is not always predictable, so why should your yoga practice be? Daily Life is sometimes predictable, like the individual poses or components of yoga, and those things can be refined and perfected over time for efficacy, and then we try to move between the poses with Grace (like moving from activity to activity in your Life).
What if you never challenge yourself in Life? Your world closes in around you. The same with the body-if you don't move, you lose range of motion. If you don't move your body in different ways and challenge it, it won't get stronger, and in fact, may actually weaken. I ask people to leave open the possibility for growth-mentally, emotionally, physically. I learned from one of my teachers, Lux Sternstein, to use the word YET if you find yourself saying no, can't, won't, etc. It at least leaves open the possibility for something beyond your mental limitations. "The greatest progress in your life is when you know your limitations, and you have the courage to drop them." ~Yogi Bhajan
YOU ARE AMAZING. You can do things beyond your wildest dreams. But only if you try. Would you let your child use training wheels their whole life due to fear? Or, at some point, do you put them on a two wheeler and push them down the sidewalk, even though you know they will fall? What if your one year old child decided after a few tries, or even a couple months of trying that they could not walk and just made the decision to give up? What would you say? My guess is that you would tell them that they would keep trying until they figured it out. Period.
Nick Cave (not the singer, but a director of the Art Institute of Chicago) sums up my reasoning behind pushing oneself physically in a yoga practice as a vehicle for mental expansion, "I believe that the familiar must move towards the fantastic. I want to evoke feelings that are unnamed, that aren't realized except in dreams."
So assuming you're still with me- what do we do with all of this "stuff" we've stirred up with our physical practice- why are we doing it? We're trying to cultivate a sense of mindfulness, awareness and equanimity in all situations. We observe our inner reality as we move through the challenges of our practice without interfering with what we notice. This experiential observation, in the controlled environment of our practice, is helpful to understand our reaction to: pressure, fatigue, discomfort, frustration, even elation, excitement, pleasure- and we work to maintain the consistency of the breath to create equanimity in the mind. As Edward Clark says, "Evenness of breath synchronized with evenness of movement creates evenness of mind."
If we can become skilled in our practice with this (and this works in the physical asana practice as well as a sitting (meditation) practice) we are less likely to be swallowed by the complexity of experience in our lives. Another of my teachers, Aadil Palkhivala recently wrote about the space between feeling and reacting. It's in this gap where you decide what kind of human being you will be, and in yoga, we practice recognizing the gap. Everyone has "positive" and "negative" feelings, the question is will you react to them, and if so, how? The challenges created in yoga practice represent opportunities to practice in circumstances not regularly encountered, so it becomes easier to manage the complexity of ordinary life.
The other thing you realize over time is that nobody is judging your practice- only your inner critic. And isn't that how it is for us in Life? We are our own worst critics. You learn that even when you are doing your best, sometimes you still screw up and maybe this helps you judge others less knowing they are doing their best too- and they may not have your knowledge and awareness, or tools as powerful as yours. It's important, when one runs in to plateaus, challenges or even injury and illness, to TRUST THE METHODS. They work. Well, one caveat-the methods work if YOU do! This trust of the practice (which includes the option to innovate) requires patience. And who doesn't want more of that? My Yogi Tea fortune yesterday said, "Patience gives you the power to practice; practice gives you the power that leads you to perfection." Yogi Bhajan is not talking about perfection of the physical practice; he's talking about the uber Perfection with a capital "P".
Yogi Berra says, "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." So you must do your practice. Sometimes that means it's repetitive and boring, sometimes it means you learning stuff that scares you, sometimes it means extraordinary intensity and discomfort, and just as often, joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and just plain feeling good.
If you were one of the students who asked me "where are we going with this?" I did not have a good answer, and I apologize. If you asked me today, my briefest answer would be, "We are going towards being better versions of ourselves, better human beings in general, Self and/or God realization, and in the end, Enlightenment. Whatever the heck that is." As for the long answer-I hope this newsletter helped.
Feeling (en)lighter already,
Liz Doyle
www.LizDoyleYoga.com
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