Perspective Shift
One way yoga encourages transformation is by helping you to shift patterns that may be unhealthy. When you put your body into pose that is foreign and you stick with it, you learn how to take a new shape. Taking this new shape with the body can lead you to learn how to take a new shape with the mind.
Access All Areas
As the internal heat goes up, not only do the toxins begin to exit the system, but another amazing thing happens; the body begins to bend and move. As Pattabhi Jois says “even iron will bend with heat.” With this freedom of movement we are able to open up areas of the body that had been previously restricted or blocked. There is a release, a feeling of lightness. It is in these places that we can discover what yoga truly is. Yoga is not just a physical exercise or some new way to pass the time or fill the emptiness, but a method of bringing life and vitality back into those areas, awareness of the deeper, inner parts of ourselves. It is a reunion with that innate wisdom that we all posess, but seem to have lost touch with. Yoga was developed as a means of acknowledging or returning to the source of life.
Progression : Stages of understanding
All I’m saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process ‘blueprinting’ because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world.~ Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
In order to reach a state of complete understanding, we must go through a process that progresses from a superficial understanding to increasingly greater refinement and subtlety of comprehension, until our understanding becomes fully integrated and total.
Patanjali explains that to learn anything, whether it’s the practice of yoga, fluency in a language, or proficiency at a craft, everyone has to progress through certain stages of understanding. Depending on the task at hand, your innate ability, and the level of effort you incline to put into it, the process can be swift and easeful, or it can be long, hard struggle. Regardless, Patanjali makes it clear that you must progress through each of these stages in order to come to a place of total complete understanding.
Of course, while it can be helpful to apply this to just about anything you undertake in your life, from improving your communication skills to learning to play an instrument, what Pantanjali is ultimately talking about here is the process of refining the mind as you progress to higher states of yoga.
We know that yoga is about refining the mind and cultivating clear perception so that we can connect with, and act from, the place of true Self. An important step in this process is changing our habits: replacing old ways of acting and reacting with new habits that serves us better.
Pantajali reminds us that this process of personal growth and development, of refining the mind and changing our habits, is something that happens gradually, over a long period of time. There is a flash of clarity, followed by a period of nonclarity. Then you might have another flash of clarity, followed by another period of nonclarity. Even as flash of clarity get more frequent, you can still feel as though you’re taking one step back for every two steps forward.
The more I realized the cause of what coaching has brought to me, the more confident I’m that yoga practice can offer me more understanding on my nature and how to put into action the forces and beliefs for my growth and development by synchronizing my inner and outer rhythms. In this modern world, there are really not that many tools that allow us to consistently exercise our body but at the same breath, training our mind to be fully presence, mindful and create non attachment and judgment for a better physical and mental health.
The brain is the hardest part of the body to adjust in asanas. – BKS Iyengar
The Practice – Asana
Asana is not a particular posture, but a state. Within the word asana itself are the connotations of strength and firmness, as well as the connotations of pleasantness and comfort. This is the balance we are trying to achieve, strength and flexibility, not only in the physical postures, but also in our mental state. Everybody is unique and their progression in yoga is going to look differently than the person next to them. It is important to allow the asanas to arise out of an internal place rather than some
externally imposed idea of what the posture should look like. As long as you are working at your peak, combining breath, bandhas, and movement, and you are gaining that internal sense of stretching and strengthening, you are exactly where you need to be. In the beginning, the physical aspects of the postures will affect you the most. In time, and as you progress, you will become more aware of the flow of prana, life force, moving through your body. As your practice evolves, these subtle, but deep movements will reawaken your awareness and control.
Here are some useful tips for yoga practitioners which is similar to the tools applied in coaching:
The Breathing – Pranayama
Live As You Breathe; Take In and Let Go
Swami Rama used to say a person has one thought on inhalation and another on exhalation, so that the rate of breath determines the number of thoughts a person has. Greater number of thoughts (a faster breathing rate) decreases concentration because there are so many thoughts going on.
The breath, body and mind are so closely linked, a change in one brings about a change in the other two. By developing control of your breath in certain ways, you can bring beneficial changes to your body and mind. Pranayama acts as a key, it opens the mind, freeing the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and habits. By breathing from the upper third of the respiratory system, pranayama can move blocked pathways to the brain and the nervous system, creating new patterns, roadways to the superhighway of the superconscious.
Pranayama revitalizes the body, steadies the emotions, and creates great clarity of mind.
Helpful Hints
- Listen to your body. Only through your own internal awareness will you come to understand when to work harder or deeper and when to move more slowly.
- The breath should always be louder than your internal dialogue.
- Never force yourself into a pose, no posture is worth injury.
- Take the ambition out of it. You are competing with no one.
- Less is more with yoga. Take your time and build your practice slowly, there is nowhere to “get” to.
- Set up a regular practice for yourself. Practice is the key to the entire science of yoga.
- Enjoy your practice. Acknowledge and receive the gift you are giving yourself.
Integration – The Challenge
The true challenge is not can you do a handstand, but can you apply yoga to your life?
Yoga truly begins when you leave the classroom. Yoga is a way of living. Every posture reflects something about our internal state. Some days you may have trouble with the balancing postures and notice you are having trouble juggling all the different things in your life. Another day you may discover you’re not as flexible as the day
before, perhaps you’ve become a bit less fluid in your thinking or actions, resistant to stretching yourself a bit further.
These are all directly applicable, translatable to our daily lives. Nothing is separate. The path of least effort is one of union, yoga. Take the lessons of yoga and apply them to your life.
Ashtanga Yoga is 99% practice, 1% theory. – Pattabhi Jois
Resources
Books
Ashtanga Yoga Manual – Larry Schultz
Ashtanga Yoga – John Scott
Light on Yoga – B.K.S Iyengar
Articles
Yoga Journal – Stepping Up – Kate Holcome
Yoga Journal – Me and My Shadow – Sally Kempton
Yoga Journal – Soul’s Desire – Rod Stryker
Yoga Journal – What is Yoga – Judith Hanson Lasater
Yoga Journal – Begin Again – Mirka Scalco Kraftsow
Yoga Journal – A Beautiful Mind – Nora Isaacs