Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a couple of yoga teachers about different workout methods and physical fitness and I began asking myself, “why do I do this? Why yoga? Why not another form of body work or physical training?” I am not teaching the Yoga Sutra to my students in the hot room, I don't get very deep into mythology in class, meditation is a relatively small portion of what I do, so what sets this apart? Why practice yoga instead of another form of group fitness?
These questions stayed with me throughout the day and into the night. I went to bed last night without a real answer. Today I woke up with one.
Nataraja, the dancing Shiva. Image Credit
Yoga is more than a system of body work. It is a process of working through illusion. The body is the tool we use, as it provides a touchstone to reality, but the practice goes deeper into the core of who we are and how we approach our place in this world. There is a deep philosophy to the physical practice of yoga, and like all philosophical practices yoga makes us confront our daily illusions and helps us to dismantle them.
Some of these illusions are simple, some of them complex. Some are shallow and some are deep. Regardless, as we practice body and breath, watching the mind, we start to see them for what they are. Some are nearly universal, but are far from impenetrable.
ILLUSION #1: I AM NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE
The modern world has a very real problem with isolation. More and more, people are spending time alone in their homes, away from the people around them. Communities are breaking down and being replaced by digital versions of social interaction. This grows in us the idea that we are different from other people, that somehow something inside of us is ‘off’ or ‘weird’ in a way that cannot be changed. This makes sense, since we spend more and more time on social media and less and less time in face-to-face human contact. Social media presents us formalized, perfected versions of humanity that we ourselves can never be. We begin, perhaps unconsciously, to believe that everyone Out There is not like us. We are imperfect, informal, chaotic, and changing. There is a stark divide between us and our ideas of those around us.
Yoga helps to dispel the myth that we are different. It pulls us out of our ideas and puts us in our bodies, often in rooms filled with other people who share our changing, unpredictable struggles. What’s more, Yoga has been around for thousands of years, benefitting tens or even hundreds of millions of people throughout human history. As part of this tradition, we cannot deny that there is a commonality between us an the rest of humanity. We share something. Our bodies and minds respond to the practice in similar ways. Our experiences are shared. The more time we spend in the practice the less we feel like we are a different sort of human, because Yoga highlights our similarities. Sure, some people can do more or less than us, but the framework of the practice has common effects across all students.
This is transformative for us. We start to feel a connection beyond ourselves, even beyond our time in history. We gain a broader perspective of humanity across thousands of years and thousands of miles. No longer isolated in our ideas about who and what we are, we start to come alive to the reality of our position in a continuum, a greater whole. We begin to feel connected through the simple act of moving our bodies.
ILLUSION #2: PAIN IS BAD
One of the primary messages of our society is that we should always be happy. Or rather, that pain is in some way “wrong.” Advertisement culture creates an idea of a perfect, stable happiness that feels no pain and can be bought. This is of course a complete load of BS, but it is nearly impossible to avoid the constant assault of messages that say otherwise.
But pain is not bad. Pain is a messenger. Pain signals to us that something is in transition. Sometimes this signal can mean a negative transition, like an injury, but sometimes it signals the opposite. Yoga, with its emphasis on mindful engagement of the body, encourages us to look clearly at our experiences of pain and find their source. Instead of automatically panicking at the first sign of discomfort, we learn to slow down and engage the message of pain. What does it mean? How am I changing? Where do I go from here?
This process first arises in the body, but in a dedicated practice it very soon grows to include the mind. We begin to address our felt, emotional experience with the same level of introspection and patience as we did the body. When we feel sadness or loss, despair or heartbreak, we learn to recognize that these emotions and feelings are not themselves ‘wrong’ they are simply a message that something is changing. Just like a physical injury, there is potential for emotional change to be a sign of mental distress, a negative change, but we will never know the truth if we do not engage our suffering and pain with compassion and honesty. Yoga, unlike anything else, teaches us to do just this. First with the body, then with the mind.
ILLUSION #3: I AM INSIGNIFICANT
The universe is huge. Our minds do not have the capacity to fully comprehend the size of the ocean, much less the cosmos. There are more people in Philadelphia alone than one mind can truly understand. Size and scope are terrifying when we look right at them. Think too long about your own place in this vast eternity and it is very easy to start convincing yourself that you don’t matter at all.
But you do. In the practice of Yoga we begin to understand the power of the microscopic. The more we explore the body in the context of familiar poses, the more we realize subtle changes have profound results. Committed students often have stories about a master teacher who gave them a seemingly minor correction in class, only to have that one command revolutionize their pose. This lights our way to a deep truth to the universe; it is holistic. Beyond interconnected, it is unified. Small adjustments within any system reverberate throughout the whole, the key to transformation is almost always small, minuscule, seemingly insignificant.
Yoga shows us our place in this vastness. We may feel insignificant, but when we truly understand our place in the unified whole, we see our own deep power and potential.
ILLUSION #4: EVERYTHING I THINK IS TRUE
The ego is a tricky thing. We are always thinking, always storytelling in our minds, making sense of the world around us. This process is powerful, and essential to survival, but it comes with a glitch; we find it all to easy to believe everything we think. We latch on to ideas that we like, and build our entire concept of reality around these ideas. These concepts can calcify, becoming a rigid and unyielding cage of belief. This is especially true when we are stressed out, and our fear reinforces the cage in self defense. Fear says, “keep everything out” but in the process it locks us in.
This cage of belief is apparent in our bodies. We hold emotional tension throughout our physical systems. Eventually this tension, after years of stress, stiffens around us and holds us in a vice grip. Yoga works to erode this cage, to move it around and slowly, compassionately break it down. Indeed, it is when our cage of ideas opens a bit that we see breakthroughs in the practice. Every student has had a moment when suddenly a pose that felt impossible opens up to them. It feels like a revelation beyond the body, into the spirit. And indeed, it is. These breakthroughs happen when we release ourselves from an aspect of our cage of belief, when something inside us moves beyond our ideas of “can” and “cannot” and steps into awareness of what is, in the moment.
We must remember that thoughts and bodies are constantly shifting. Much of what goes on in the mind is illusion, it will simply fade if you let it. If we grasp onto ideas and beliefs, they will hold us in one place and we may never arrive at the transformation we seek. Instead of gripping and trying to know what is and isn’t true, yoga gives us a place to humble the ego and explore our deeper potential in the moment, as it is. We learn how to do this through the body in the poses. We have our ideas about what we are, and one day at a time the practice will prove us mistaken.
ILLUSION #5: IT IS ALL ABOUT GAIN
Many people think that physical activity is about gaining something. We want to gain strength or flexibility or well being. Even weight loss is spoken about like something to get, a goal to attain. Yoga shows us this is only half the story.
The truth is that life is a zero sum game. You cannot add or subtract from the system of your life, you can only transform it. In order to gain something, something of equal size and value must be let go. All of life is transactional. Like buying an apple, you have to pay the corresponding price for nourishment.
If you want to gain strength, you will often have to let flexibility go. If you want to gain abs you will probably have to let sugar and alcohol go. If you want to gain peace, you will have to let passion go. These are the simple equations, and yoga teaches them to us.
Many times in the practice we feel stuck or unable to develop a pose, and we don’t know why. We grip and struggle and work for depth in the poses for a long time, and we become frustrated with our lack of progress. We don’t feel intense pain or anything specifically in the way of the pose, it just won’t move. And then one day we relax. Or we inhale. Or we think about some great sadness within us while we are in the pose, and suddenly it grows before our eyes. In my own experience, these moments usually make you cry. Because, as my brother once told me, “when you cry you let something go.” Once we get beyond the idea of gaining something all the time, we discover that much of the journey is about stripping off layers.
THE PRACTICE IS YOUR OWN
Of course this list is incomplete. It could go on infinitely, every student’s experience is different, but there is a shared direction. The practice of yoga - done with humility and awareness - shows us our own illusions, and where and how to let go of them. The amazing thing is that the more you strip yourself of your ideas about yourself and your body, the more the body begins to respond. It grows beautifully into this space you create for it. It becomes strong and healthy on its own, without the burden of responding to stories and stresses that are made up in the mind.
If we are to let our inner power grow, it must have light and air to breathe. In time, we will be asked to let go of things that we thought were important or even essential to our us. And in those moments we will have a choice, to release or to hold. Neither option is right, but the choice will be yours.