by Jamie Shane
A little story for you:
Over 5000 years ago, the people of the world cried out for relief. They called to their gods with tales of suffering and woe. They asked to be brought closer to the divine so that their distress would be burnt away in the fires of true love and devotion.
At the bottom of the sea, in their home on the ocean floor, the god Shiva and his wife, Shakti heard these cries and responded. Shakti felt their pain with her woman’s heart and begged her husband to help the poor mortals. To give them something that would allow them to know the peace of god. Shiva agreed and went into a meditative trance where he discovered and laid out all of the rules of yoga. The postures and observances, the disciplines. He doled out this information as it came to him, trusting that his wife would record it all to share with the mortals of the world.
But it took so long. He talked so much. Shakti soon tired and fell asleep, and the science of yoga poured into the water, unheard.
When Shiva came out of his trance and saw that his wife was dozing, he flew into a rage, yelling that she had abandoned her task and now all of that enlightenment was wasted. All of his knowledge was washed away in the water, gone forever. At that moment, a small fish swam over, brave in the face of this fearsome god’s rage. Matsurya had been listening off to the side, memorizing the words, postures and observances of yoga. He assured Shiva that he could teach this to the mortals above water. Matsurya’s generous heart began to expand, floating him up to the surface where he was transformed into a man.
Thus was born the first disciple of yoga.
Not an auspicious beginning, however, for women and yoga. But who could blame her? Husbands do drone on…
This story, however, is a perfect example of the perceived role of women. We are to listen and to observe. We are to heed the wisdom of our men. We are to be filled up with their knowledge and keep it in our hearts. This was appropriate, culturally, to the time. This was India, thousands of years ago. Men were the householders, breadwinners and keepers. Men were responsible for the spiritual management of the family. Men considered themselves the weight-bearers of life and women were part of the weight. Perhaps this kind of discipline fit in with the male psyche and helped them manage all of the tasks they needed to stay sane, peaceful, prosperous, and holy.
But as any woman knows, this is just patently untrue. Today, yesterday, a hundred years ago…it is women who are the water-bearers of the family. We work. We raise children. We manage the household. We cook and bake and see to the nutrition of our families. We have even been known to fix the toilet or the sink, paint, build and generally repair our abodes. Women are the spiritual barometer of the house, mother, father, priestess, goddess. We have the pink ‘S’ on our chests and our capes are made out of dishtowels.
I believe that the very heart of yoga is a woman’s heart. For beneath the discipline and the austerity beats the soul of connection. Yoga, voided of rigidity, teaches you to touch yourself in the most spiritual and intimate of ways. It shows you how to let go of things that are not important and find the very essence of truth.
You are a little piece of god come to earth to discover.
The process of yoga is the true gem. It is not the rules, the yamas (do’s) or the niyamas (don’ts), it is not the strict dietary observances, or the ritualized worships. Saucha, or cleanliness, is a rule of yoga. But I don’t think that whether you showered or not today affects your ability to connect with God. I also don’t believe that the cup of coffee you had with breakfast or the cookie you may eat after dinner will prevent you from hearing the beauty of divine song. Whether you rose this morning before the sun to chant “Hare Rama; Hare Krishna” or slept until noon and said the “Our Father” is critically unimportant.
It is not the guidelines of yoga or religion that take you into peace, it is how you integrate the lessons into your lives.
It is the process of yoga that affects my life. I observe the physical asanas of yoga because they make my body feel better. They void the aches and pains of daily living, erasing the stress points in my body that distract me from finding quiet. The postures are like an old friend or a wubby blanket. They are there for me at any time, and never fail to offer comfort or relief. I firmly, firmly believe that this system of movement keeps me healthy and hale. They draw my mind away from the ridiculous clutter of tasks, grocery lists, phone calls, appointments, demands, things that must be done. For the time that I devote to practice is sacred. It is my time to be alone. To feel the peace within the universe and the greater connection that sustains us all.
Yoga postures are harmony in motion. They allow a mental stillness that brings you to your higher self. To the place from whence wisdom comes. To the voices of all the women who have come before you. It is the place where the piece of god within you speaks.
I have learned now, through this practice, to listen carefully to this voice.
It is truth. And personal truth, be it ugly or kind, is the only way to a peaceful existence. My mother used to tell me that it was always best to speak the truth. For when you start lying you have to keep lying, and you have to remember all the nuances of all the lies. It is a vast energy drain, and one that will always, ultimately, trip you up. This is especially true of self-deception, for in the end, the truth always emerges. It is far, far better to connect with this truth, to make peace with it, so that you can carry it with you like a shield throughout your days. For when you know who you are, when you can hear the higher power and trust it completely, there is nothing that anyone can say or do to rock your foundation.
This is part of what yoga has taught me. And I didn’t have to give up meat to do it. Disciplines did not show me this peace, but a nurturing patience did. This is the feminine heart of yoga.
I observe the breath of yoga because it is the ebb and flow of connection. Everybody--Inhale. Exhale. Inhale again. Now realize that you have all just inhaled a piece of another’s exhalation. You have taken into your lungs a part of another persons breath. How intimate is that? How deep is our connection to one another? Exhale. You have just fed a tree, a plant, the ocean. Inhale. They have just fed you.
You are connected to everything, everybody all of the time. You are not separate. You are not alone. You are a piece of a larger whole and you have the ability to reach this whole at any time. It can support you. It can hold you together. It can heal you. We are a community of the universe, at each others disposal at any time. But you are responsible for plugging yourself in. Only you can open yourself up enough to receive the bounty of this connection. Let it in.
Happiness is not about rising above the nuances of daily life. You are here. It is now. We have come to earth to experience, so why remove yourself from it? The trick is to find the simplest of joys. Connect fully to the breeze, the sun, laughter, and yes, even strife. Dive deeply down into it and be a part of the world. You are here for a reason. And that reason could change every instant of every day. Maybe today I am here to spark one of you. Maybe tomorrow I am here for you to spark me.
Break time down into breaths and be a part of the connected whole for every breath that you take.
Life is not about floating above in a meditative trance concerned only with the beyond. It is about bringing that meditation to earth and rolling it around in the mud. Laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the human experience or weeping with the trembling sadness of its finality. This is the cycle of life, and you can either roll with it or be rolled under it.
But to transcend this experience is to miss out on the vital connection of living. This is the feminine essence of yoga.
I call no man master and take no wisdom wholesale. All teachings must be held up to the mirror and shaken vigorously, even my beloved yoga. And when I shook it, hard and with determination, what fell to the earth was these few things:
Yoga is about looking within to find your connection to Higher Truths.
Yoga is about caring for others as you would care for yourself.
Yoga is
about letting go of the artifice in life and concerning yourself with what really matters;
Love
Joy
Compassion
Peace
Understanding
So, for the love of god. Relax. Let go of everything that binds you, or tries to force you into a neat little peg. Be it your faith, your family, your culture. Images on the TV, or mores from a society obsessed with façade. You are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. Listen instead to the voice of god that speaks to you at all points in time. Respect the wisdom passed down through the ages, but before you swallow it, chime it against your own personal truth. If it resonates, keep it. If it rings false, let it go. No matter who tells you it is right. No matter how many followers there may be.
You are a trailblazer through the world. And only you can lay down your path. I can show you where I laid my feet. I can tell you which branches will swing back and hit you in the face. I can shine the light for you. But I would never presume to say that my way is the only way. All I can do is spread my own truth, open my own feminine heart and say, “This is what I have found. This is what has made me whole.” That is all that any of us can do.
And therein lies a critical difference between men and women. Between masculine and feminine. Between what I call yoga and BKS Iyengar calls yoga. For some there is the goal. For some there is the journey.
Me, I prefer the journey. To laugh and cry my way through life, singing and dancing and eating good food. I have no absolute right and no absolute wrong. I have only truth. And love. And joy. And compassion. And peace. And understanding. I am in my skin and aligned with the greater consciousness. Completely connected.
It has made all the difference in how I live. And I wish that I could zip you into my skin so you can feel for yourself the difference this shift in awareness has made in my perception of life. But all I can do is share with you, and tell you just a little something that will hopefully spur your heart to find movement, and your spirit to seek.
Everything is exactly as it should be. You are exactly where you need to be. Everything is perfect exactly as it is. You are perfect. You are beautiful. You are loved and supported. Expand your awareness beyond the confines of your body, greater than you, larger than me, bigger than all of us put together. It is completely safe. Open yourself up and connect, join the greater consciousness. Breathe it in; breathe doubt out. Trust.
Visualize yourself healthy, happy and fulfilled. And understand that peace is yours at any time.
Om, shanthi, Om, peace. Om.
Section Two
Blessed are the Flexible
55
It would be easy for me to sit here and wax poetic about the nature of yoga. To talk about its many facets, its many unique and wonderful properties, the ways in which it enhances life.
And, I'm certain, at some point during our conversations, I will. But today, as I ponder how best to begin this discussion, only one thought rises to the surface.
Yoga, well: It is what it is.
You can turn the temperature up to a hundred degrees. You can do it fast or do it slow. You can spend an hour practicing the perfect alignment of one posture, or become entranced with flowing movement. You can wrap a hundred names around it and burden it with a thousand trademarks. But, boil all of that down and you still have what you started with.
Yoga—a physical science designed to bring the body and the mind into alignment with spirit.
Whoa, now, don't turn away because I brought out the S word. Spirit is a fact of our lives. It exists within us all, outside of us all, and whether you acknowledge it or deny it, it lives. Some people seek it out. Some people treat it like flaky Aunt Lucy with her hippie-skirts and daisies. But the great thing about spirit is that it doesn't matter which of these people you are because spirit is everyone. Period.
And that makes yoga for everyone.
I can't tell you how often I hear, "I want to do yoga because my doctor says it will be good for me, but I don't like all that weird (chanting, music, crazy) stuff." To which I usually reply, "Then don't go to a class that does that stuff." Not every instructor openly teaches the spiritual aspects of yoga. I am one of them, and this is why.
Spirit exists. Its like the big, blue sky. No matter where you go, or how intently you ignore it, there it is. You can enjoy your day and never once think about the vastness of the sky. But that doesn't mean that it isn't all around you. Spirituality in yoga is much the same.
You can have a greatly successful physical practice. You can very easily ignore the "spiritual aspect" of yoga and still reap the benefits. Greater fitness, flexibility, strength and peace of mind are yours for the taking whether you follow the ideology or not. Chanting has wonderful benefits and I wholly recommend it. The philosophies and teachings of yoga have made my life richer than I can say. My connection to spirit is broadband all the way.
But, if you don't want to pursue that avenue, then don't. For goodness sakes, I'd rather see a student focused on the physical than no student at all. Go to a class that makes you comfortable. Try something within your box if that's what it takes to get you to try it. Don't give another thought to "OM, hare, OM."
Pay no attention to that big, blue sky.
Because the first true breath that you draw is spirit. That first posture found with a silent and still mind is spirit. The blissful calm that settles over you after class is spirit. A healthy and happy body free of aches and pains is spirit. You don't have to kiss the sky in order to be embraced by it. You don't have to be yoga in order to practice yoga.
So, you be who you are. Let yoga be what it is. It might just be the relationship of a lifetime.
56
We often refer to the practice of yoga as the ‘science of yoga’ or ‘yoga technology’. And it is this. Over the course of millennia, millions of souls have taken the hypotheses of their teacher’s teachers and practiced, empirically building proof of yoga’s all-around purpose. These proofs are then cemented by their student’s students until we can safely say that, yes, the practice of yoga is most definitely a science. And, as a science, it can be managed like an experiential formula. Do this, then that, then this, then that, mix this with that and ye shall arrive at this outcome: peace, understanding and whole body health. As a science, yoga is a prescribed tool handed down through the ages. And, in this manner, the science of yoga is perpetuated through time.
This is all well and good and very, very accurate. Yoga science is specific. Asana is done in a certain way to prevent bodily injury. Pranayama is done in a certain way to prevent mental injury. For these reasons, yoga technology must be handled a bit like chemistry.
You can’t just make it up as you go along, fold yourself up willy-nilly and call it ‘yoga’ just as you can’t simply toss a few chemicals in a beaker to see what bubbles up. Doing so can be very dangerous. Something might just go “kaboom!”, and when you are dealing with primal energy forces such as the Kundalini Shakti, you just don’t want to chance it. This is why we call it yoga science. Because it has to be handled in a certain way. But by no means does this indicate that it has to be done only one way.
For as much as yoga is a technology it is also an art. Probably more so.
Yoga is deeply personal. Yoga is intensely beautiful. Yoga is an individual’s expression of the eternal sublime. There is a certain je ne sais quoi to a successful yoga practice that is created wholly by the vibration of the practitioner. This certain something can’t be taught, it can only be experienced, observed and personally explored. From the choice of music or silence, from the poetry of the breath whispering through the nose, from the precise positioning of an individual’s fingers or toes, the pride in the chest, the look in the eyes, the curve of the mouth, everything—simply everything--is a unique design of our cosmic individuality blurring towards unity. No science can teach this. It is just too oblique for anything other than art to manage it.
Art is the vehicle that
drives human consciousness towards the divine. Science may be the nuts and bolts that keep your ride on the ground, but it is the exploration of our art that takes us where we really want to go: farther into the human experience. The art of yoga takes us on a ride to deeper and increasingly profound levels of understanding. The art of living makes us more than just chimpanzees with linguistic aptitude. Give art to your character. Give art to your family, to your job, to your thoughts. Let them be beautiful and creative no matter how mundane they may be. Build on science, but never let it be the end of your search for understanding.
Just like yoga, you are far, far more than science will ever be able to qualify. Just like yoga, you are more than the sum of your parts, or the rules that govern your physical manifestation. You are God’s art, living and breathing and walking and talking. You have millions of breaths of opportunity to embody that--Simply by being.
57
They used to call us gymnosophists. Now that’s a mouthful. Even if it does a have a certain ring.
This is what the Greeks labeled the first yogis they found. Naked ascetics able to manipulate their bodies into complex and unusual postures—they were gymnasts. No, wait. Not only did they posture their bodies, but they taught philosophies about the God-quest through poetic rhetoric—they were sophists. Gymnosophists. Leave it to those Ancient Greeks to find a word that manages to truly swallow a meaning.
I like this. Perhaps I’ll start referring to myself as a gymnosophist in polite conversation to see what happens. It can’t be any stranger than calling myself a yogi. People will still ask me eternally, “Does that mean you can twist like a pretzel?” Oh. Now just hush. For the record, yes, I can twist like a pretzel. My friends think I am strung together like Gumby. I can do a full splits and put my forehead to the floor. I can even stand upright on my shoulders as easily as I can stand on my feet. Yes, I can do all that. But that is not what makes me a yogi—er, gymnosophist.