“We are not required simply to adjust our vision, but to turn it inside out as well as outside in, a complete reversal. It means that the ultimate truth is inconceivable in normal consciousness... A life must be built on a foundation of reality that is firm...Learning to live with uncertainty is the great art of living...Only a life built on spiritual values (dharma) is based firmly in truth and will stand up to the shocks of life... All mankind lives unwittingly within the truth of yoga. Yoga is one. No one escapes the mechanism of “as you sow, so shall you reap.” Yet we deny the totality of our vision. We find ourselves in the position of having to portion it up, to compartmentalize it, to cherry-pick what suits us and reject what does not. Why? It is because we all misapprehend reality. Not just partially, but totally... Ignorance is, in its essence, taking the day-to-day self we know, for the immortal self, the true Self or Soul... Yoga’s answer is to say, “Discover the unknown, and you will encounter your own immortality.” —Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, 2005.

My teacher’s wife, Rita, tells a story of practicing a forward bend in front of where her Guruji, BKS Iyengar, was practicing. He corrected her practice, teaching her to use a slanting plank so that the posture did not exacerbate the scoliosis of her spine but helped her work with her condition. Manouso teaches Jānu Śīrsāsana with the Setu Bandha Sarvāngāsana bench (shown here modified with all the blocks, those are not for the start). There are more than two sides to a position. The perspectives (and possibilities) are infinite when seeing and acting from within.