by Inez Baranay
1. Introduction: Practice, body and self
The writer needs a body to perform writing. The body is a text upon which yoga writes. The body is a text written by thought, experience, genetics, culture, performance, fashion, personality. The body is the self, the self is an illusion, the personality is one of its illusions. The writer creates a body of work, writings written by a person whose idea of a cohesive self is demonstrably illusory, whose conscious mind plays only a small part in what she herself does.
As I began to write about the process of writing - observing my own methods and approaches, the influences on my practice, the origins and history of writing a novel, the ways these matters can be written of, I would find myself thinking of all this while doing yoga. Well, strictly speaking, yoga requires the total absorption of mind in the pose, so I should say I was thinking of all this while attempting to do yoga.
For a long time I had thought of yoga and writing as two entirely different practices, belonging to two entirely different selves. I am used to considering my self to be a divided self. My natal horoscope shows sun square moon. Think of the sun as the outward self, the moon as the hidden self. The ninety-degree angle between them suggests tension or conflict. That's my self, always wanting also the opposite of what I want. To write or do yoga, to live the life of a writer or of a yoga practitioner: this at times has seemed to be an essential conflict.
But writing and yoga emerge as related practices. Yoga, a text written on herself, has a discipline that a writer might employ to inquire into writing practice, a language that a writer might employ to inquire into the writing of texts written by her self.
Once people know you have practiced Iyengar yoga since 1981, taught yoga since 1993, they usually make assumptions. That you're especially fond of crystals, dolphins, natural fibres, Indian handicrafts and angels. That you're vegetarian, that you're vegan, that you go on fasts, that you'd always say no to a beer or an eccie. That you don't swear, aspire to celibacy, and like a story to have a moral. That you read self-help books, and read them for self help. That you believe you create your own reality and that this means everyone chooses the conditions of their lives. That you think western medicine, science and technology are wrong-headed disasters. That you believe in re-incarnation, and might have an idea who you used to be. That you think a display of a figurine of the Buddha, of Tara, of a Shiva Nataraj is an indication of something spiritual. That the word 'spiritual' refers to a real and good quality that some people have and some places have and some objects have and some practices have, and the rest have less of it or none. That chanting is spiritual. That tribal people are more spiritual than others. That eastern religions are more spiritual than others. That you go to India because it is spiritual. That you really need to use the word 'spiritual'.
So yoga is seen as a homogenous sub-culture, part of an anti-intellectual New Ageism. Its aim of inner stillness makes writers anxious that it produces an empty head, from which writing cannot emerge.
There are assumptions made about writers, too, and their own sub-culture. Once people know you are a writer they might assume you can't resist alcohol and adultery. That you must have Inspiration to work. That you base your writing on your life, your narrator on yourself, your characters on your friends. That you live in a garret and suffer for your art; that you must have another job, a 'real' job. That you earn a fortune, frequent television talk-shows and meet celebrities. Or hunger for that.
Still, writing has been part of our larger culture – certainly in the West – far longer and more visibly than yoga practice and so the diversity of its practitioners and their lives and lifestyles is more recognised; fewer assumptions are generally made.
The differences and the congruities of yoga and writing can be located in a territory where practice, body and self meet. That is the theme of this collection of writings.