I started learning yoga so I would live a healthy life for whatever be my lifespan (āysh in Konkani, āyush in Sanskrit). The initial years were only about overcoming the effects of many years of desk work, jogging-running and wearing stiletto footwear on polished stone floors. All killers for the hip and knee joints, as I learnt when I discovered how the movement in these joints had become restricted. It became a challenge – regaining movements in joints and muscles that I had unwittingly abused, for so many years. A way to make reparation, or apologise to my body.
As the body regained mobility, the mind moved to extending the duration for which each pose was held. And lo, here was the next learning. As the duration extended, I found that the body would “relax” into the pose. The pose was no longer something to be “conquered” or “achieved”, but something to initiate and then wait for it to “happen”. At this level, the body no longer sweated, nor did the breath rate change (except in some of the more challenging balancing poses).
It took years of disciplined practice to reach this stage. In our achievement-oriented culture, we’re so used to working hard and striving for things, that the approach of just waiting and allowing things to happen was quite alien and counter intuitive. The most difficult part of reaching this stage, was learning to let go of control!
The process was not only slow, but painful. Our teachers tell us to embrace pain. A certain amount of pain is there as part of our individual karma or prārabdh. If you avoid physical pain, it will manifest as emotional pain; if you avoid emotional pain, it will come as psychological pain. The pain that is part of our prārabdh has to be experienced in this lifetime itself, so best to experience it as physical pain and get it over with, since that is the easiest to handle!
Pain is not necessarily a bad thing. One soon develops the discrimination (vivek) to distinguish between the pain of unused muscles being forced to work, or crooked joints being forced to straighten after many years of non-use. This is different from the sharp pain of something going wrong, as anyone who has experienced a slipped disc, dislocation or fracture etc. knows. So we learn to embrace pain as a sign that unused parts of the body are starting to work, which means that the breath and prānic energy will soon start flowing freely there.
And then the lockdown happened. Suddenly, there was plenty of time to devote to the practice. No interruptions for outings, visitors, or even the maid coming in to clean! The practice intensified, and in the silence of the lockdown, I started becoming more aware of what I could sense happening behind the skin and muscle. Ligaments and tendons, bones and joints buried deep underneath the flesh, started to come alive. Our teachers tell us, where the mind goes, the breath goes; where the breath goes, prāna (life force) goes; and where prāna goes, good health is inevitable. This was when the absorption (laya) started taking place – the engrossment of watching what was happening deep, deep inside the body.
It was like going into an unknown dark room, with a torch. You have no idea how large, or what shape the room is. The initial perception is that the extent of the room is as much as is covered by the beam of the torch. As you direct the beam of the torch elsewhere, to your surprise you find the room extends there as well. Similarly, we think we know our bodies. But as the sensitivity increases, one realizes the inner dimensions of the body are much beyond what was initially perceived. Our inner body is a huge, huge room, much beyond what can be imagined. We only need to move the beam of the torch – our mind, our awareness - there
Thus it dawned on me why a Guru is called a Guru – a dispeller of darkness. Not someone who brings us to the light (whether outside or inside us), but a person who dispels the darkness, the dark unknown spaces, within us. Not for nothing is it said that the body is a microcosm of the macrocosm. Everything that is there in the universe and beyond, is there within our body as well. This is beyond the realm of physics or modern science. This is esoteric science.
And so the voyage of discovery continues. Every so often, there is another aha moment, as yet another dark corner of the inner room is lit up. This is how, what started out as a purely physical “fitness regimen” has become the corner stone of an adhyātmic practice, a practice of constant self study, self purification
About the author : Ajita Kini has been a student of Iyengar Yoga since 2007
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