Visitations that come in the night

I was lying in bed awake in the middle of the night last Friday night.  As I have to leave the house at 7am in the morning on Saturdays, being awake in the middle of the night on Friday nights is a trifle problematic, but nevertheless, I welcomed it as an opportunity for practice. So I was practising welcoming awakeness and also welcoming the dull ache in my right sacroiliac joint that I felt sure had something to do with my awakeness. There was much to be grateful for here as a real episode of my SIJ instability would have my entire hip and right pelvis, inside and outside, in spasms of pain.  That really can wake you up at night! No, not that, just a dull ache, welcome that.

Showing adjustments I don't think are a great idea

I must have drifted off for awhile as I found myself in a dream. I was teaching. It was as if I just walked into the room, and my students were already doing their practice. I saw that they were straining and efforting to do their postures. They were "helping" each other. In seated wide legged forward folds (uppavistakonasana), the legs were being pushed wider. In seated bound angle pose (baddhakonasana) a friend was sitting on each knee. Students were working hard to bring a leg behind their head. A student doing forward splits (hanumanasana) had friends pressing down on each thigh with a foot.

Bikram Choudhury dancing on student's back

It didn't seem like Yoga Spirit Studios at all and I seemed not to have a voice to call the class to order. Then I realised that I was not the teacher but it was as if I was observing memory. As happens in dreams it was a mash up, and I was aware that I was in the dreaming state, curiously aware of my dream.

Awake again, welcoming the dull ache and a sense of too warm, I tried to think where this idea had come from that bodies need to be forced to do things that they are structurally unsuited to. Writing perhaps around 200CE Patanjali had said that the posture should be steady and easy, or at ease, or spacious, or comfortable (sukha), but he was not referring to uppavistakonasana, baddhakonasana or hanumanasana, but any seated posture taken for pranayama and meditation.

Indeed, in the Yoga Sutras there are 2 sutras that refer to asana, and 89 on concentration, meditation and the states of samadhi.

By the time Hatha Yoga arises from Tantra and Svatmarama writes the Hatha Yoga Pradipika in the fifteenth century (yes folks, that recent) just 15 yogasanas are mentioned. They are described, and several are pointed to as excellent, but we have no idea how the yoga gurus taught them to their disciples.

Even in this text, the first chapter might be called Asana, and it does contain 63 verses, but only 15 postures are described and a lot is discussed that is not asana. There are 124 verses in chapter 4 on meditation and samadhi. Even back then the emphasis was not on doing fancy postures.

Tradition and the wisdom that we are given from a long time ago is a wonderful thing and should be respected. But everything needs to be freshly examined and tested with a curious mind asking "is this true to me, now?" It is a tricky thing, balancing respect of tradition and insights only available to us in modern times.

We can track the evolution of yoga, through different ideas and practices, yet we have no idea how the physical practices of asana were practised. Our knowledge is limited to a few descriptions in old texts and what we know from direct transmission only from the twentieth century on. Most of the postures we now practise in our western yoga classes were not described in those old texts. We really cannot rely upon tradition.

My dream was memory.  I have been in yoga classes where some of these things happen. They probably still do. And it is not confined to yoga. In all kinds of athletic and artistic physical disciplines, this kind of thing is still normal. Such practices are saying that the body should fit into an external concept of what perfect is. This body is not yet perfect. But if we do this perhaps we can make it so.

If that is the tradition, then it is a tradition that needs to be questioned. We now understand the uniqueness of each individual's anatomy. Frankly, not everyone will ever do Hanumanasana, or Padmasana, or Kurmasana  in that externally evaluated "perfect" way. Better by far to let the yoga help you discover and connect with your body and to discover what the pose can teach you, letting go of the thought that you are somehow imperfect for how your body responds.

Sleep came, and when I awoke I felt refreshed. The ache of the night had an excellent message for me. I had been neglecting my morning practices on the mat, cutting them short.  I headed for the studio, landed on the mat and luxuriated in the somatics practices that serve me well before my students arrived for the 8am class.