Yoga is an integral part of my life. I practice pranayama (breath control) and asana (postures) every day, and I sit in meditation as often as my active mind allows. I also strive to live according to the ethical and metaphysical guidelines of yoga (a bit like the ten commandments). However, I didn't used to see myself as a 'yoga type of person' at all. I was inflexible and awkward, I drank heavily and took drugs daily, and I thought \u2018spirituality\u2019 was for suckers. I dismissed yoga as some kind of \u2018new-age nonsense\u2019. So what changed?<\/p>
To be completely honest, I was desperate. I was suffering with back, neck, and joint pain, which was getting worse and stopping me from sleeping. Yoga was growing in popularity, and in spite of my antipathy towards \u2018alternative lifestyles\u2019, a small voice in my head told me to try it. I doubtfully started to follow some videos on YouTube. I surprised myself, it helped my pain, but what\u2019s more, I actually enjoyed it. Exercise had always been something of a chore. I have hypermobility in my joints, especially in my wrists and my ankles, which made me clumsy. My coordination and balance were particularly bad, so I had never been any good at sports. Theoretically I had always understood the importance of keeping fit, but I exercised as a means to an end, and as a result my mind was never really involved. It was my body that pounded the treadmill at the gym, my body that pumped weights, my mind was elsewhere.<\/p>
\u201cYoga is not about touching your toes, it\u2019s about what you learn on the way down.\u201d Jigar Gor<\/h3><\/blockquote>
Over the years, I developed an ever more distant relationship with my body. I didn\u2019t hate my body, or have a bad body image, my body simply felt very separate from my mind. I had a body, I wasn\u2019t my body. And because of this, I had a limited ability to intuit what my body needed. I didn\u2019t know how to listen to what it was telling me. I never stretched, and despite my joint hypermobility, my muscles had become increasingly tight. The more I mindlessly ran and pumped weights, the tighter my muscles had become, and I had come to think of my body as strong but inflexible. I didn\u2019t think it was something I could, or should change. I believe now that the rigidity of my muscles was largely what was causing my pain.<\/p>
As I had hoped, taking up regular yoga asana practice helped me physically. Quite quickly my pain was alleviated. Today I still do have some pain in my neck and joints, but it\u2019s minimal and doesn\u2019t interfere with my life. Asana practice definitely keeps me fit, alongside walking it\u2019s the only exercise I do, and I\u2019ve never felt better. My muscles are now flexible as well as strong. When I walked up Ben Nevis last year, I didn\u2019t have a single aching muscle the next day. There is a Japanese proverb which says \u2018be like bamboo\u2019, because bamboo is strong yet flexible, so it\u2019s hard to break. The same is true of muscle, when it has strength and flexibility, it is far less prone to injury. Asana practice has also improved my coordination, my balance and my proprioception. These days I\u2019m almost graceful! Well, at least I no longer sound like a baby elephant when I\u2019m coming down the stairs!<\/p>
But unexpectedly yoga has given me so much more. It has helped me to free myself in places I didn\u2019t know I was stuck. Being able to touch my toes was a true revelation. It was something I had never been able to do in my adult life. And this really made me think. I realised that the problem wasn\u2019t that my muscles were strong and inflexible, it was that I had made them strong and inflexible through my own action, and then believed that was unchangeable. This was my karma. The real problem was that my mind was inflexible! I wondered what else I believed about myself that wasn\u2019t true. I had discovered yoga as a method for self inquiry.<\/p>
Asana practice showed me that was change needed, and also that it was possible. It taught me that incremental change leads to a profound difference. But more importantly it showed me that experience is more important than results. It is this awareness that has transformed my life. Consciously controlling my breath in coordination with moving my body, helped me to feel viscerally that I am not a mind who possesses a body, my mind and body are not separate. And as I began to more fully inhabit my body, I became conscious of being disconnected from the world around me, of feeling apart from the world, not part of it. I had not even realised there was a way of being in which I could feel at one with the world.<\/p>
\u00a0As the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, \u2018the brain is continuous with the body, and the body is continuous with the rest of the natural world.\u2019 When we are born we talk about \u2018coming into this world\u2019, but we didn\u2019t, we came out of it. We are individuals, but we are part of the world in the same way that a wave is part of the ocean. I had thought of myself as detached from my environment and from other beings. I had thought of my skin as a barrier separating me from an external world. What was inside my skin was \u2018me\u2019, and what was outside my skin was not me. I perceived myself as a separate self in a world of other, and so that is how I experienced reality. But it was just a perception.<\/p>
Ultimately everyone and everything is connected in complex ways, and we cannot act without affecting people around us and the world, often in ways we never see. Everything exists as an inextricable whole. I really believe that this is something that has to felt, to be experienced, it cannot be understood by intellect alone, and asana practice is a way to enter into that awareness. If the body and the mind are experienced as separate, as they commonly are in the West, so much instinctive experience of our place as an integral part in this world is lost. It had never occurred to me that the disconnect between my mind and body had such wide ranging consequences. It\u2019s amazing what you don\u2019t realise even when it\u2019s staring you in the face.<\/p>
\u201cIt's funny how day by day nothing changes. But when you look back, everything is different.\u201d C.S. Lewis<\/h3><\/blockquote>
I am naturally very curious, and posture practice led onto breathing practice (pranayama), and then onto meditation. I found I felt more in control of my mind. And this is the true purpose of yoga. One of the verses from the Yoga Sutras, an ancient text dating to the early centuries of the Common Era, states: \u201cYoga is stilling the fluctuations of the mind\u201d (\u201cYogas chitta vritti nirodhah\u201d)<\/em>. The Bhagavad G\u012bt\u0101<\/em>, an ancient Hindu scripture dating to around 200 BC, describes the mind as \u2018impetuous and stubborn, strong and wilful, as difficult to harness as the wind\u2019.<\/em> I completely resonate with that! My mind has two main modes: it is either (a) hyperactive, circling curiously and quickly from one thing to the next, or it is (b) foggy and out of focus, unable to pull the world together. In either mode it is fragmented, repetitive, impulsive, and prone to pursuing pleasure, and it has often got me into trouble!<\/p>Now, I\u2019m not about to tell you that since I discovered yoga my mind is finally fully focused. Far from it.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not going to claim that I am love and light, and I never drink or take drugs. I do, but much, much less, and the latter IS very rare these days. However, I am definitely calmer, and more conscious of my thought patterns and my emotions, and how they affect my behaviour. And that little bit of extra control makes my life a whole lot better. But much more importantly, I am conscious of myself as a connected being, of being part of the whole, of my intrinsic connection to others, and to the world around me. I experience a deeper and more embodied life, and that has been transformational. I do not like to think of where I would be without yoga.<\/p>
This is why I am so passionate about sharing the practice with others. I can\u2019t tell you what your yoga journey will be, what path it will take, or where it will take you, because everyone\u2019s journey will different. As different as we are different. That\u2019s the great thing about yoga. All I can do is teach you asana (posture practice) and pranayama (breathing techniques), and tell you what I know about the ancient yogic guidelines for living a connected, embodied life. Yoga is not a path of inherited belief, it is a path of experimentation, a path of reflection, and a path of transformation.<\/p>
\u00a0<\/p>
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