Mysteries, Yes

MYSTERIES, YES


Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.


Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.


Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,


and bow their heads. (Mary Oliver) 🌳🌿🍃 Practicing at home around family: children imitate, participate, realize the comfort of a posture as a natural vocabulary of being embodied. “Humbleness is the art of learning.” Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar

 

Who am I? And Who are you?

 “A human being is essentially a spiritual eye. The skin and bones fall away. Whatever you really see, you are that.” Rumi, VI, 812. 👁

“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming. Being does mean becoming, but we run so fast that it is only when we seem to stop — as sitting on the rock at the brook — that we are aware of our own isness, of being. But certainly that is not static; for this awareness of being is always a way of moving from the selfish self — the self-image — and towards the real.  Who am I, then? Who are you?” —Madeleine L’Engle 🌊

Through Iyengar Yoga, the body gains health through the practice of āsana—with the potential for experiencing so much more of Yoga. The outer body is only the beginning, the vehicle through which we live, act,  and gain wisdom. Every āsana in Iyengar Yoga has the potential for the experience of meditation and deep insight into who we are. One’s being is the instrument for contemplation. “When oil is poured from one vessel to another, one can observe the steady constant flow. When the flow of concentration is uninterrupted, the state that arises is dhyāna (meditation). As filament in the electric bulb glows and illumined when there is a regular uninterrupted current of electricity, the yogi’s mind will be illumined by dhyāna. One’s body, breath, senses, mind, reason and ego are all integrated in the object of contemplation - the Universal Spirit.“ Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga, 1966.


Supta Virāsana ~ “reclining hero’s pose”

The difference between luminosity and brightness

 “The difference between luminosity and brightness

is the difference between being

and being perceived, between the energy emitted

and the apparent magnitude.” Anna Leahy



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Setu Bandha Sarvāngāsana —construction of a bridge pose

Before teaching—

For calmness, clarity.

after teaching—

to relieve strain and rest.

Finding strength through tolerance

When B.K.S. Iyengar was asked about his use of the timepiece (his watch, timing his āsanas) he explained that he was watching to see what gave up first. During very long holds of postures, he was looking for his weaknesses.

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In this variation and stage of Dwi Pāda Viparīta Dandāsana, my teacher, Manouso Manos, taught us to lift the toes and metatarsals from the floor. In practice I watch to see what is tolerable to do for only a short time and then I revisit that repeatedly so the impossible gradually becomes possible and the weak places will gradually strengthen. This also helps with mental weakness. The noticing is what’s important when some part wants to avoid the work. Seeing that moment in practice (when  I quickly come out of a pose or give up on an action after only touching it) is a gift— noticing and asking why?  Repeating the intolerable makes it possible to see why it’s intolerable. That’s where the learning happens. Going back to the places that are hard, blind or scary brings alignment, balance to the imbalances, strength to the weak places, courage and illumination. 

“It is by facing up to adversity and suffering, and accepting it as a necessary means, that our anxieties are resolved and disappear. If we are loyal to the path we are on, our lives will get better, and the light of distant perfection will come to illuminate our journeys.” Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, p. 54.

Facing the terrible

 “We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage demanded of us; to have courage for the strange, the most singular and most inexplicable that we may encounter...If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened ... if a sadness rises up before you larger than you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and all that you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you do not really know what these states are working on you?”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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Ganda Bherundāsana. Bheranda means terrible; formidable. Ganda means the cheek or side of the face

This pose is facing the terrible side.

When I began Iyengar Yoga at just turned 18, I was experiencing (what I now understand as) post-traumatic stress disorder, through those college years and into my early twenties. Iyengar Yoga classes and practice brought relief from constant suffering. At first it was brief respites. Experiencing peace, freedom from the persistent anxiety, made me seek after yoga more and more. Iyengar Yoga progressively lifted the fear. Now, practice is for facing the dragons, the terrible aspect, so there will be more and more courage to face up to the difficulties of life.

tree of yoga

“The sap of the tree, the juice which carries the energy on this inward journey, is dhāranā. Dharāna is concentration—focusing the attention on the core of being. 
The tree’s fluid or sap links the very tip of the leaf to the tip of the root. This experience of the unity of the being from the periphery to the core, where the observer and the observed are one, is attained in meditation. When the tree is healthy and the supply of energy is wonderful, then the flowers blossom out of it. Thus dhyāna, meditation, is the flower of the tree of yoga.”
— Yogācārya B. K. S. Iyengar, Tree of Yoga, 1988, p. 9.
“ The unconditioned mind-in-the-moment eats, transforms, goes beyond, language. Art, or creative play, sometimes does this by going directly to the freshness and uniqueness of the moment, and to direct unmediated experience.”
— Gary Snyder

Adho Mukha Vrksāsana - downward facing tree

Unknown within

 “Do you have the willpower to make change? To get out of your comfort zone? To see where your prejudices lie? ...The reason why I was afraid of that pose, was because I was afraid. The teacher’s job is to keep showing the mirror to the students. It’s an opportunity to see. That fear that comes [in practice] is fear of the unknown.” —Mr. Manouso Manos

“The moment you start the backbends you are in the unknown world. Your body may be known, but your inner spine is unknown. You are entering the unknown world....For a yogi, backbends are meant to invert the mind, to observe and to feel, first the back, then the consciousness and the very seer. Through the practice of backbends, by using the senses of perception to look back, and drawing the mind to the back portions of the body, one day meditation comes naturally.....” —Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, Interview on Backbends, 1991.

Eka Pāda Rājakapotāsana I — “one legged king pigeon pose”

Involution for evolution

 “Tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live. —Emerson, “Beauty”

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“By turning our minds inward (which automatically happens) in asana and pranayama and teaching us the art of constructive action in the present moment, Yoga leads consciousness away from desires and toward the inner, undisturbable core. Here, it creates a new avenue by which reflexively to perceive, observe, and recognize the heart. In this way, the meditative mind created by Yoga is a powerful therapeutic tool for removing human ills.” Yogācārya B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga, 2005, p. 143.

Iyengar Yoga practice is working inward with awareness to explore what we are doing, how we are doing it, why and what happens as a result of what we are doing, on deep levels. This daily endeavor cultivates understanding of the depths of our interconnected nature, transforms one’s outlook, interests, values—working outward to align one’s actions to live out a deeper purpose. Thus involution leads to evolution.


“To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are part of a part and the whole is made of parts, each of which is whole. You start with the part you are whole in.” Gary Snyder, “The Place, the Regions, and the Commons”