An anatomy of Yoga......

Everyone, it seems, in the world of Yoga has an opinion on it. We should align ourselves to the medical model; we should be ‘proper’ Yogis and remain esoteric. We should transcend the body, worship it, feed it, starve it. You name it and someone out there proposes it. So it gets very difficult to see through the mists of opinion. What to do? Perhaps the best thing to do is to step outside of the debate. There need not be any contradiction or conflict between the many ways of seeing the body and mind. Each one is, after all, just a concept. As Yogis what must surely interest us most is the ‘experience’ of the practise, on both an experiential and kinetic level.

This is most apparent when we begin to deconstruct the practise. Whilst the integrity of Yoga is in its wholeness we sometimes need to strip away the layers, using the conceptual mind to go beyond the conceptual mind. In specific postures, for example our interest and understanding can be stimulated on a number of different levels. We can look at muscles, from the point of view of their function and physiology. Useful to a point, but then we might like to delve deeper and look at the mechanics, intentions and symbolism of a posture. As I often say in class, what we get from Yoga is ‘information’ about our bodies, how they move (or don’t move!), how they feel, how they change with the practise. Beyond the obvious musculature we can also be interested in how the tissues, organs, and nerves are stimulated or affected by a posture. In this deconstruction we’re not trying to be amateur anatomists, we’re just building pictures in the consciousness, inviting different ways of seeing, playing with forms.

At the same time we can, as Yogis, step away from the medical model completely and view our practise from a more esoteric perspective. The very same postures can be explored from their subtle aspect. Here we might be interested in an elemental understanding; we work with concepts of heat, or texture or space in a pose. Similarly we might relate to it from a chakra perspective, using imagery, intuition or symbolism. Likewise, Ayurveda can give us a different view; the way it feels, the quality of movement and the associated mental reactions can all inform us.

We are free to do all this as Yogis because we are not interested in diagnosing a problem and fixing it. If we really want to do this we find a doctor or an alternative practitioner. That’s they’re job. Our interest in this context is to develop understanding. That’s what Yoga seems to do best. It gives us insight, information and sensitivity. Sometime sits enough for us to work through problems (on any level) patiently on our own. At other times we turn to others. Yoga gives us the instinct for what’s right at the time.

As a child I had little or no working knowledge of my own body. I managed to by-pass Biology at school and in adopting a mainly cerebral view of the world I spend my young adulthood living at some distance from my body. This is not an uncommon experience because we are I believe, fundamentally a cerebral culture. Thinking is our default way of being. It was through Yoga that I took my first real interest in my body and mind, how they interacted, and how what I did affected them. It’s a slow process sometimes but eventually it gives us a new lexicon, an expanded way of seeing ourselves outside of the mechanistic. The power of awareness, the immediacy of imagery and feeling, and all the other subtle arts and crafts of Yoga are now accessible to me.

This is the crux of our excursion into Yoga. Not to cure or fix or even force change on ourselves, but to ‘understand’. This understanding eventually begins to break down the clear boundaries between the body and the mind that are often inherent in our childhood learning. The deeper into the Yogic view of the world we go, the more this boundary disintegrates. Thoughts and emotions become tissues and muscles; likewise how we treat muscles and tissues affects how we think and feel. Somewhere betwixt and between the mind/body axis is the breath with all its subtle currents and vectors. And it’s not like it felt at school. There’s no tests, there’s not even much that can be called right or wrong. There’s just a slow unstoppable movement towards a sense of fullness.