For years it had always seemed to shout “do good, be good!” to me. Which of course came with its accompanying self-disappointment when I did or was not. Then in a sudden shift in perspective, something I’d seen one way all my life, had a whole new connotation.

Snow

 All my life false and real, right and wrong tangled.
Playing with the moon, ridiculing wind, listening to birds….
Many years wasted seeing the mountain covered with snow.
This winter I suddenly realize snow makes a mountain.

-Eihei Dogen, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi

The only change possible, is the change we do ourselves.  It is never possible to change another person, it’s not even possible to make someone a better person.

The one thing, the only thing, that ever happens, is that we are at our highest most centered and allowing state. When another steps into that place, they may be able to change. But it comes entirely from them.  You did nothing, except yourself.

Even when we think we are with people who make us better by their example, they are not changing us.  They have inspired self-reflection, perhaps, but then we decide how we will step next, which must necessarily be the one and only way WE step. We cannot be that person and their achievements.

So instead of Ghandi telling me “Be better! Save the world!”, I now hear him encouraging “Let the world and others be.  The greatest support you can give to both is your highest most truthful and open self.”

The jewel is in the lotus. All that needs to be known dwells inside your own heart.

Viśokā vā jyotiṣmatῑ   PYS I.36

Or by concentrating on the supreme, sorrowless Light within.

The first chant is from the Buddhist tradition, the second, from the Yoga tradition.  This is one of many instances where they overlap (although there are also plenty of places where they don’t quite see eye to eye either).

Michael Stone, whose dharma talk podcasts I listen to often, and quote in my classes nearly as often, ties these traditions together well. Finding not only overlaps, but moments that inform each other in the traditions of each.

One of his recent talks on the Lotus Sutra was one of such moments, and called to mind for me the above chants.

He spoke of how in Buddhism, in order to be a Buddha, the requirement is not to get enlightened, but rather to be able to see another person as a Buddha. During my teacher training Davidji and Sharonji would often tell us our most important job as a yoga teacher is to see our students as holy beings. Just as important as our sadhana – our yoga practice, our meditation, our off-the-mat practices, is the way in which we see other people.  And granted, to see another person as a Buddha can be as challenging a practice as sitting for an hour.  However, we are gifted with an amazing imagination, and should call upon it in this case.

I’ve been reading The Brain That Changes Itself- a great book on brain plasticity (which I feel is in some ways the modern science of yoga), and had just read a section on imagination.  There were two experiments discussed where two groups were asked to undertake an activity – learn a piece on the piano, and perform a strength exercise. One group was able to practice physically, the other was asked to practice only mentally. They practiced the same amount of time, the same repetitions, over the same period.  The only difference was that one was physical, and the other purely in the imagination.  The results for both experiments were the same, but the results of the strength exercise are more clearly statistically understood, so I will give those.  The group that did the physical exercise improved its strength (and the brain area associated) by 30%, the group that did the mental exercise improved its strength (and the brain area) by 22%.  To the body and mind the difference between thought and action is not that different.

So take advantage of this.  Imagine someone who you can easily conceive of as a hair’s breadth from being a Buddha – a teacher, a child you know, the Dalai Llama, your local grocer.  Spend time imaging her/him in front of you, in detail. Note the qualities you associate with that state.  Then imagine yourself as that Buddha, infused with those qualities.  Then try practicing your next asana class from that place, and see what happens.

with Anna, Jen and Lindsay

Saturday, April 21st
9:30am-6:30pm

This workshop is intended for students who are working with binding, inverting in the middle of the room, and towards the “full” variations of poses. Students who are comfortable and knowledgeable in modifying these types of poses are welcome. Students will be led through an intelligently sequenced advanced asana practice. Modifications and breakdowns will not be included. As we flow with the breath through a delicious extended 2 hour vinyasa class, we will work toward an “advanced peak pose”. Students will cultivate endurance and challenge their boundaries, as they sink into the rhythm of a strict vinyasa practice. Expect chanting, music, dharma, fun vinyasa, a long savasana, and closing meditation – all the components you love in one of Jen’s classes.

This sutra appears at the end of a listing of various objects a yogi is suggested to use for meditation practice.  In the yoga system, meditation is almost exclusively encouraged through methods of concentrating the mind in one place, creating a groove in the mind in one direction that replaces and stills all the multiple grooves and dances the mind is usually following.  Once this one pattern is established, it too, eventually, is let go and:

Tada drastuh svarupe vastanama PYS I.3
-Then the seer abides in her/his own true nature

In Edwin Bryant’s commentary on this sutra, he mentions BKS Iyengar’s book Tree of Yoga.  In this book Mr. Iyengar offers what Edwin Bryant sees as an innovation to sutra I.39 – to take asana as the object of meditation.  This is an innovation because while asana is mentioned several times in the yoga sutras, it is never mentioned in this context. However, if a yogi were to practice asana with it being the single point of concentration, Edwin Bryant says, it would absolutely be in line with these teachings.  It might, he says, even be a more advisable practice than ever before, due to the way that most yoga is approached today – through asana.

How then can we put this in to practice? How do we make asana, which is constantly changing throughout a practice, something steady enough to meditate on, as an object of concentration?  The breath seems like a good lead, but that has its own sutra.  A specific body part could work, and I believe does in the Iyengar tradition, but it doesn’t really suit the vinyasa style class, in my mind.

This reminds me of what Davidji spoke about during the Master Classes at the beginning of the year.  While sitting in virasana (hero’s pose), he asked us to consider what the “energy signature” of the pose is. He said that all poses have their own energy signature – much like an energetic graffiti tag.  He encouraged us to see it.  Then to have a sense of each energy signature like a sound vibration, or like a letter, and that when we practice a vinyasa (especially a strict one-breath-count vinyasa like Suryanamaskars) to feel that we are stringing them together into a sentence, a chant, a prayer.  And it’s not cool to mispronounce prayers… So make sure that each pose is as fully “pronounced” an energy signature as your body is capable of, then let go and move onto the next.

I believe if we were to set this as our intention for our vinyasa practice – to really enact asana as chants or prayers, with that much concentration on fully enunciating the energy signature, we could approach this idea of using asana as a point of concentration.

To fully enunciate the signature requires a great deal of concentration – and a dialogue between the external structure of the body, and the internal energy.  Without the external structure and alignment being maintained, the energy signature gets static-y or completely fuzzed out. Without the energy signature, we may as well be doing any other form of workout. To fully enunciate a pose, to create a resonant vibration of a chant with our asana, it is necessary to have this back and forth between the external and internal – in every pose, every time, all class long.

From there we could begin to imagine how carrying over a practice like this to our day would make us more aware of the moment to moment of our lives.  We might be encouraged to savor the moments more, and be less likely to arrive at the end of the day and feel like it was all a blur.  We might even start to be aware of the “sentences” that we create with the physical and mental asanas we perform throughout the day, and decide if we could make them more true to the story we want to be creating on our path.

Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind.

Hrdaye citta samvit PYS III.35

By samyama on the heart, the knowledge of the mind is obtained.

The first sutra above is one well-beloved and well-known by most yoga practitioners.  It sets the intention not only for many a yoga class, but for the entire Yoga Sutras text, and for the practices of yoga itself.  Methods, tips, tricks, successes, failures, and breakthroughs comprise a large part of the discussion of yoga.

The second sutra is much less well-known, as most of the samyama sutras are rarely studied.  Samyama is the practice of dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (integration) simultaneously on some object.  When the distinction between object, the act of focusing on the object, and the person focusing blurs and falls away – samyama arises. When this happens, the person focusing may receive insights on the object of focus.  This is in some ways analogous to modern day scientists who devote hours and years focusing on some object to reveal its inner nature or some new truth.

Suprisingly, samyama on the heart reveals the inner nature of the mind – the main focus of yoga itself. When you consider that the actual energetic waves the heart produces radiate nine feet from the body, it becomes clear that the heart is not merely some sentimental expression of emotion, but can be a very real and powerful physical aspect of our yoga practice.

Whether engaging in a heart meditation like those taught by Aadhil Palkhivala, working through backbends, or simply using the breath at the start of class to not only bring clarity and steadiness to the mind, but to the heart as well – consider incorporating the heart into your yoga practice this month.

Recommended music:  Heart as Wide as the World by Krishna Das

It wasn’t until a few days later, just before my third class with Davidji, that I fully experienced what that meant. My mat was down towards the back of the room, and the scope of how many people were in front of me, how many people were practicing yoga became almost tangible. From there, I started to think of all the people in America who do yoga, and then started to think about the millions of people all over the world that do yoga.

Millions of people every day are doing yoga – and with time zones probably all day.  All of these people working towards cultivating clear seeing of the self, working towards living the yamas, working towards compassion and peace, working towards cultivating flexibility inside and out, working towards being the best they can be in this lifetime, and it is by and large confined to the studio.

Yes, amazing things have transpired “off the mat” because of the efforts of yogis. But I was staggered to think of the true potential, and also how we as yogis are not living up to it. I finally understood – felt – what Michael Stone speaks of when he talks about horizontal transcendence. Because what is the point, of all of that work, of all of the millions of people cultivating yoga, if it only stays in the studio?

Imagine the possibility if everyone in the world who does yoga in the studio, practiced while they were outside the studio, if we had all those millions of people walking around with yoga as the first step they take in each moment, paying attention to the way that they breathe, the way that they speak… if the world were as filled with what people cultivated on the mat – in the world itself.

So here’s to an auspicious year of living into the potential of uniting outside the studio in our practice – the way we do on the mat. Because what we cultivate is too precious, too transformative, too amazing not to be shared.  Not to do so is a waste– because we have the potential to transform, actually transform, what happens outside the studio, if we truly harness what we cultivate within and share it.

atha yoga nusasanam PYS I.1 – now is the practice of yoga

Sharon Gannon & David Life

Jivamukti Tribe Gathering
January 1st-5th

Rodney Yee & Colleen Saidman Yee

Vira Yoga
January 4th
Yogamaya
January 5th

Thank you so much to the attendees for their insights and energy, it was a special day.

Keep an eye on the events page for future Jiva Day Yoga Immersions

Yoga asks us to cultivate several different kinds of WHAT (yamas, niyamas, vairagya, isvara, karma yoga etc.), and it is generally best to focus on one or two at a time.  Abhyasa (practice), as defined in Patanjali’s yoga sutras, advises that the HOW be steady, consistent over a long time, in all earnestness, and joyful.

In yoga practice, on and off the mat, check in and see WHAT and HOW you are being a vessel.  You might be surprised, as I was, how often the answer is boredom, inertia, criticalness, ambivalence, or of course the “bigger” ones of anger, regret, guilt, joy, love, etc.  Once you spend enough time noticing this, take it even a step further, and set an intention for the WHAT and HOW you want to be a vessel for, in actions, thought, and speech.

This is not a program for changing us into better people, because there is nothing missing in us. We are already holy beings, are already whole, already light, already divine – whatever term you use. The key is to cultivate that as the WHAT that flows through us and the HOW as all the time.

Beings that have achieved that are the ones we call gurus – they are just vessels for the divine. It is that light that draws us towards them, and encourages us on our path. Teachers are beings who are vessels for the teachings. They are just a bit further down our path, and flow to us what they have seen and experienced.  Students are vessels for experience – for the real-life application of what has been passed down by gurus and teachers – whether in writing or spoken transmission.

That being said, it’s not realistic to say “I’m going to have ahimsa flow through me all the time.” One because inevitably we will fail in some small way, and two because external circumstances change. What is ahimsic one day, may not necessarily be the same the next.  The air in NYC flows differently than the air in Hawaii, and will inevitably affect WHAT and HOW flows through you, and your ability to be a vessel.

While we need intention, we also need to keep that intention fully open to the present moment.  This is not to say we become inconstant in our WHAT, but that we don’t become rigid in it either.  There must be a balance, a flow, to our practice as a vessel.

Vinyasa is generally thought of as meaning “flow” – but really it means: well-sequenced indivisible moments of time.  How well are your moments sequenced, how well are they chosen?  The better sequenced and chosen, the more you “flow” in practice – on and off the mat.