It’s been a little while since I’ve managed to update my blog. The city of Mysore has a mysterious way of crowding my schedule. I wake up most mornings with nothing to do except practice, but then as the day wears on I find myself going from adventure to adventure. I’ve been jetting around the roads of Mysore on the back of various people’s scooters and I think I’ve finally learned to get on and off with some grace. My Kannada is improving that is if the smiles on the locals faces mean anything.
The festival of Sankranti has gone by, known as Pongal in Tamil Nadu. Sankranti is a harvest festival and the temples were decked out in palm fronds for the occasion. All the street cows were painted yellow and now, about a week later, many of them still have the yellow dye on their hides.
Practice has been steady, though my schedule is quite bizarre. I start at 9:45am Monday through Thursday, 7:30am led class on Friday, and 4:30am led class on Sunday. I’m finding it a little difficult to keep the pace of my practice up in the Mysore room; the general breathing tempo seems so slow, much to the annoyance of Sharath. He’s been telling people to speed up their practices. He told the woman next to me last week that her practice was too slow because she was taking something like 1hr5min to 1hr15min to complete primary series (without finishing). The other things he’s been harping on in my ear shot have been the distance between the feet in utthita trikonasana, he wants it very small, and he’s been insisting that there is no head lift or back bend between each variation of prasarita padottanasana.
Conference has been an interesting experience: I asked a question yesterday regarding Sharath’s experience teaching small groups of students in the past and large groups of students in the present and how his teaching style has had to adapt and change. Unfortunately, I do not think he understood my question because he gave a long answer about the unchanging nature of yoga. “When the world began, when the Vedas began, yoga began.” Yoga does not change, only the perception of yoga changes.
Yoga is always there; however you have to develop skill in order to see it. Just as a sculptor sees a stone differently than someone with an untrained eye, the yogi will see life through a different lens. Sharath says that for certain things there is no direct proof, no pratyaksha, to use the word from the Yoga Sutras. There is only anumana, imagination. I found this particularly interesting because I have always translated anumana as inference. The term imagination makes sense, anumana being the coming by of correct knowledge through partial sense perception, as in seeing smoke on a mountain and assuming that there is fire. It follows that there must be imagination, vikalpa, involved to determine correct knowledge if it is not being perceived directly with all the senses.
In order to practice yoga a person must make some sacrifice. For the lazy man there will always be an excuse, always a reason to not practice. The sacrifice is not meant to be painful or to inhibit general living of life. Sacrifice means to bring some discipline – tapas, or austerity, is not meant to be a torture, it should bring clarity.
Sharath stated many times that perfection is important. The yoga student is always working to perfect each asana. Part of this is focusing the mind. When practicing asana the mind should be focused only on the practice. By continuing to focus, day in and day out, the practice becomes very meditative. Moreover, asana becomes a trigger that automatically focuses the mind.
Asanas’ effects are more than just physical. For this reason the step by step building, or krama, of asanas is very important. Doing more asanas that the person is capable of risks not only physical health, but also mental stability. The point of asanas is to build stability in the mind and body. It is important to spend some time contemplating where you should do your practice, when, how, and what should be involved.
The finishing postures are very important and should be held for a long time. Sarvangasana and Sirsasana, shoulder stand and head stand respectively, both conserve the amrta bindu, the nectar of immortality. Therefore they are often used for therapeutic purposes. Padmasana should also be held for a long time, though it does not conserve the amrta bindu, because in the Ashtanga sequence there is no jaladhara bandha; however, Sharath did say that there are other versions of padmasana, used in therapy, that do conserve this nectar. The finishing postures can slowly be lengthened over time.
As an aside, Sharath confirms, the drsti in pancha, or upward facing dog, is the tip of the nose.
Here’s something to think on: What happens when you give a diamond to a monkey? How does this analogize to the state of yoga practice in today’s world?
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