From the periphery to the core

“In asana and pranayama practice, we should have the impression we are working on the outer to get closer to the inner reality of our existence. We work from the periphery to the core. The material body has a practical reality that is accessible. It is here and now, and we can do something with it. However, we must not forget that the innermost part of our being is also trying to help us. It wants to come out the surface and express itself.” BKS Iyengar, Light on Life p. 61

Dandāsana ~~staff pose

A little progress

“On this path no effort is wasted,

no gain is ever reversed;

even a little of this practice

will shelter you from great sorrow.” 2.40 Bhagavad Gita

Eka Pāda Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana ~~one legged upward bow pose

with support of wall and two blocks

On Studying Yoga as a Healing Art: Yoga Therapy

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured, and to endure what cannot be cured.”

— --Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar

“Practice. It will take care of all your problems.”

— Manouso Manos

First and foremost, I am a yoga practitioner in the lineage of Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, as a student of his student, Mr. Manouso Manos. I do not let my practice go unkindled. This is the most valuable gift I can give my students. This human body is a laboratory for learning. This is the most valuable gift I can give my students. I have practiced from states of despair, in anxiety, in agonizing pain of injury, in illnesses, through cycles and fluctuations of hormones and seasons, in pregnancy, in childbirth, after childbirth, in nausea, in irritation, in anger, in cold, in heat, in over-stimulation, in exhaustion and distraction, in fear, in ambition, in depression, in imbalance of all kinds, for twenty years. I use practice to solve my problems. Practice is the means to find balance and to find transcendence from these changing states--this is Yoga.  

I continue to be a student. I ask my teacher questions when confronted with cases outside my experience, and he answers from his experience as a yoga practitioner of over forty years, his studentship with Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, including assisting in his medical yoga classes for decades, and from his long teaching career.  Soon I head to the Abode of Iyengar Yoga in San Francisco, to attend or assist my teacher's public classes and the March Intensive. This will be the 21st week-long intensive since I began to study with him over fifteen years ago.

Last year, the International Association of Yoga Therapists granted me a certificate in Yoga Therapeutics, based on the thousands of hours of training and practical experience that I already have as a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher. As students of Iyengar Yoga, we are learning how to care for our problems, pains, and conditions from the very first classes. Yoga is intrinsically healing. Yoga teaches what to do and not do, based on the present conditions. It teaches how to become free from afflictions. "Yoga is about doing the right thing at the right time," as my teacher, Manouso has often said. While relief can sometimes come immediately for the practitioner, it can depend on how long we have been living in a certain pattern.  Practice is the means to change our behavior patterns (physical, physiological, mental/emotional, intellectual) that contribute to our suffering. Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar's devoted and intense practice led to the innovations in the teaching of yoga, through applying all the other limbs or petals of yoga to the practice of āsana. Practicing specific asana in specific sequences, with intricacies of alignment and the use of props (for less effort, to increase timing in postures) contribute to healing and relieve suffering from health conditions and imbalances. 

 It takes long study, long training, and uninterrupted, devoted practice over a long period of time to understand and embody the intricacies of alignment in āsana or posture in order to teach these aspects to others. I have already been studying "yoga therapeutics" with my teacher for all these years, and yet there is so much more to learn about its potential to relieve suffering in particular examples, specific cases and conditions. After the Intensive, I am heading to the Iyengar Yoga Institute of Los Angeles for the Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics program, which is directed by Manouso as well. I am grateful for this opportunity to be a student in the program with Iyengar Yoga teachers, colleagues, from around the world, and to have a concentrated period to learn with my teacher.  Its an opportunity to  learn more and to give more in the future  to help students on their path. "The known is finite, and the unknown is infinite...Yoga is one. Do not create divisions." Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar

“It is better to do your own duty
badly, than to perfectly do
another’s; you are safe from harm
when you do what you should be doing.”

— Bhagavad Gita, śloka 3.68

So grateful to be a student in an Iyengar lineage of Yoga that acknowledges and emphasizes and explores the therapeutic, healing power of alignment in yoga asana from the very first classes. One of the gifts of studying this method of yoga is coming to understand one’s strengths and weaknesses on all the levels of the kośas(sheathes or layers of being: muscular-skeletal, physiological/energetic, mental/emotional, intellectual) and then discovering the ability to learn and seek balance and eventually transcend duality through practice.

Starting the practice asking “what are the conditions of the body/breath/mind?” as Sri Prashant Iyengar says, gets us looking and questioning and seeing what needs to be done and addressed NOW given our present condition and situation.

Niralamba Halasana & Sarvangasana with double roll blanket below shoulders and single roll blanket supporting the mid-upper back skull.

Immersion

 “The practice of yogasana for the sake of health, to keep fit, or to maintain flexibility is the external practice of yoga. While this is a legitimate place to begin, it is not the end. As one penetrates the inner body more deeply, one’s mind becomes immersed in the asana.” BKS Iyengar, Light on Life, p. 24.

Ardha Baddha Padma Paschimottānāsana~~~”Half bound lotus intense stretch of the western side pose”

No, there’s no escaping, nor would I want to escape

this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution

to gravity and a single shape.

Now I am here, later I will be there.

I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,

the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs, that looks like a lamb. —Mary Oliver, “Life Story”

Dhanurāsana. Bow pose

“Physical sensations—cold and heat, pleasure and pain—are transient; they come and go, so bear them patiently.”

2.14 Bhagavad Gita

The effect of Asana practice is to transcend dualities.

Kandāsana. “The kundalinī sleeps above the kanda (the place near the navel where the nādīs unite and separate). It gives mukti (emancipation) to the yogins and bondage to the fools. He who knows her knows Yoga.” Hatha Yoga Pradīpikā. 

Rays of light

“It is difficult to speak of bodily knowledge in words. It is much easier to experience it, to discover what it feels like. It is as if the rays of light of your intelligence were shining through your body, out your arms to your fingertips and down your legs and out through the soles of your feet. As this happens, the mind becomes passive and begins to relax. This is an alert passivity and not an empty one. The state of alert repose regenerates the mind and purifies the body.” —BKS Iyengar, Light on Life p. 32. ✨✨✨✨✨✨

~~Parivrtta Jānu Sīrsāsana ~~”revolving head knee pose”