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“Willpower is nothing but willingness to do.” Yogācārya BKS Iyengar
Waking and rising in the dark
Traveling through the cold rain
To practice, to study yoga
grows will-power.
Instead of seeing the difficulties
as what’s stopping progress
can we envision how they strengthen and teach us and shape our path? -
“The art of seeing has to be learned,” -Marguerite Duras -
“There is an art to learning as well as teaching” -Yogācārya BKS Iyengar
“One doesn’t arrive — in words or in art — by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know. You may set out for New York but you may find yourself as I did in Ohio. You may set out to make a sculpture and find that time is your material. You may pick up a paint brush and find that your making is not on canvas or wood but in relations between people. You may set out to walk across the room but getting to what is on the other side might take ten years. You have to be open to all possibilities and to all routes — circuitous or otherwise.
But not knowing, waiting and finding — though they may happen accidentally, aren’t accidents. They involve work and research. Not knowing isn’t ignorance. (Fear springs from ignorance.) Not knowing is a permissive and rigorous willingness to trust, leaving knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result, regarding as possible all manner of response. The responsibility of the artist … is the practice of recognizing”. —Ann Hamilton
The study of Iyengar Yoga teaches how to solve imbalances in practice. Starting practice is the act of looking at what needs care and attention. After driving an hour to bring children to school, the two legs do not behave equally in standing poses. Pushing a pedal for a period of time changes the way the two hips behave in the pelvis. Muscular skeletal imbalances can be addressed in standing poses. Yesterday the difference between the behavior of the two legs was very clear at the start of a practice in Virabhadrasana II. Aligning the hips in the pelvis meant perfecting the āsana on both sides, until they were brought into rhythm and harmony with the posture. Eventually the imbalances resolve to be nearly negligible. The practice of standing poses prepares the yoga practitioner for anything—balances and prepares the muscular-skeletal body; the consciousness is attuned, attentive, sensitive, watchful to every nuance of the now. From a state of balance the potential for exploration into new space expands.
Yogah Citta Vrtti Nirodhah. “Yoga is the stilling of the movements of consciousness.” Patañjali Yoga Sūtra I.2 🕉.
Marichyasana II — Sage Marichi’s Pose variation 2
“Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, in the eye of the storm… Art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. …. Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.” —Saul Bellow. “It is very important for the artist to gauge his position aright, to realize that he has a duty to his art and to himself, that he is not king of the castle but rather a servant of a nobler purpose. He must search deeply into his own soul, develop and tend it, so that his art has something to clothe, and does not remain a glove without a hand. The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.” Kandinsky
In Iyengar Yoga, the practice and art of posture (āsana) is the work of drawing the senses and consciousness away from outward (and inner) distractions, to become absorbed completely in the actions of aligning all the aspects of being in the posture, realizing a state of stillness and oneness.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Rumi
Philosopher Jacob Needleman’s abiding assertion: “There is always something more than two opposing truths. The whole truth always includes a third part, which is the reconciliation.”
“Āum as a whole stands for the realization that liberates the human spirit from the confines of body, mind, intellect and ego. By meditating upon Āum, the sādhaka remains steady, pure, and faithful.” Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, commentary on sūtra 1.27
For children, backbends come with ease and bliss. For adults, so much work is required to gain back that freedom. The effort needed may feel unnatural and frightening.When we see the child move and inhabit their body naturally, easily, joyfully with every expression of being doesn’t that inspire us to seek and rediscover that which has been forgotten and neglected?
Toni Morrison wrote, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” On the other side of that pain, is freedom. Keep going. ❤️
Standing poses are the foundation of this innovative method of classical yoga, named for B.K.S. Iyengar. In some form, variation and degree, I practice them daily. When practiced with utmost attention they awaken and tune one’s instrument. Standing poses develop strength, stability, balance, agility, alignment and the ability to see all the parts of one’s self at once.
“Actions mirror a man’s personality better than his words... The yogi conquers the body by the practice of āsanas and makes it a fit vehicle for the spirit... A soul without a body is like bird deprived of its power to fly.” —Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga, 1966.
“.The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended. And for this reason it is necessary for the artist to know the starting point for the exercise of his spirit.” —Kandinsky
“All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.” —Susan Sontag
Prasārita Pādottānāsana I — “intense stretch of the spread wide legs” pose, straight arm stage)
KEEPING QUIET
by Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
🌎
“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”
...”there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.” Mary Oliver
“Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and their art; learning to come into steady presence, free from the distractions of interest or boredom...Difficulty itself may be a path toward concentration—expended effort weaves us into a task, and successful engagement, however laborious, becomes a labor of love...Difficulty then, whether of life or of craft, is not a hindrance to an artist... Just as geological pressure transforms ocean sediment into limestone, the pressure of an artist’s concentration goes into the making of any fully realized work. Much of beauty, both in art and in life, is a balancing of the lines of forward flowing desire with those of resistance— a gnarled tree, the flow of a statue’s draped cloth. Through such tensions, physical or mental, the world in which we exist becomes itself. Great art, we might say, is thought that has been concentrated in just this way: honed and shaped by a silky attention brought to bear on the recalcitrant matter of earth and of life. We seek in art the elusive intensity by which it knows.” Jane Hirshfield 🌳
“Āsana and prānāyāma are the apprenticeship to that transcendence of duality. Not only do they prepare our bodies, spine and breath for the challenge of inner serenity, but Patanjali [author of the Yoga Sūtras] specifically said that āsana [postures] teaches us to transcend duality, that is, hot and cold, honor and dishonor, wealth and poverty, loss and gain.” Yogācārya B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, 2005, p. 16.
Dwi Pāda Viparīta Dandāsana - two legged inverted staff pose
FOREST HILLS, MICHIGAN | Jennifer@iycgr.com
