Strange, I know. It has to do with the word. When I say "yoga", to most people it conveys an idea that has come to dominate the American understanding of the word - a group of people in a class doing crazy things with their body. That is not what I do, not because I can't but because that is not the point. The point is to become more self-realized. To live a life more in harmony with ourselves. Knowing how to get your legs behind your head won't necessarily get you there. But yoga will.
Patanjali's yoga Sutra states: Yoga is the control of the fluctuations of the mind field. (Sutra 1.2)
Have you ever experienced those fluctuations? One day you are absolutely in love with a person, and the next your find them annoying. One moment you're feeling svelt, beautiful, smart and engaging and the next you're unattractive and boring. One moment, you're competent and the next totally incapable. One moment you want to write, dance, photograph, save orphaned children, create a beautiful garden, (insert desire here) and the next it's not even on your radar. Any of this sound familiar?
Yoga helps us learn to see through these fluctuations to something deeper and more consistent.
The key to finding this is something they call nirodhah. We often translate it as "control", this is misleading to a culture bent on control, and kind of making a mess of it. Just look at the some of the unexpected results from trying to control our environment, our partnerships, and our lives.
When we control things, we usually mess it up. Either that or things start to get little funky. Perhaps this is because when we try to control, we take a powerful, beautiful spirit of something - like a horse, mother nature, our partners or our minds - and we unconsciously suppress, cajole, deny or otherwise subtly manipulate it - trying to break it to our will into what we think it should be. But should is not the point. Should is just a form of conditioning that is limited and limiting.
Our minds are so much greater than we could possibly imagine.
Perhaps all of those support groups across the world - from alcohol to codependency - are on to something. One of the first steps in any group is to surrender our control to something greater. Perhaps this groups work because they know that applying control from our limited, ego-based selves ends up making our lives unmanageable. They are unmanageable because we have tried to box in the essential beauty and powerful wildness of the thing that we wanted to connect with in the first place. When we do that, we suffer.
Nirodhah has other translations that are a bit more helpful. It also means mastery, coordination, channeling, integration. We take the fluctuations and instead of breaking them, we learn to join up with them in a way as to be helpful and help us see the bigger picture. We learn to ride the mind like a rider on a mustang, letting the horse have it's own medicine, while we simply direct it in to the place we wish to go.
With this understanding we see that through the practice of yoga we learn to harmonize and work with the tremendous power and capacity of the mind, not changing it or denying it but rather channeling it so that our whole being can be more integrated. We work with yoga so that we can see more of our wholeness, the wholeness that is so much greater and grander than the limited perspective of the ego-driven, controlling aspect of the self. We learn to drive from this bigger Self and let the smaller self take its appropriate place.
As a yoga teacher, this is my purpose. Flexibility, strength and suppleness of the body is secondary. Ut is the flexibility, strength and suppleness of the mind and soul that is the primary goal. Hopefully someday, when I say the word "yoga" this is what it will convey.
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