If you just had a flu shot and I asked you how it went, what would you answer?
I saw a friend at the grocery store the other day and I stopped to say “hi”. He was helping one of his elderly neighbors with their shopping. As I was leaving them, I overhead him tell his friend that he had a flu shot the other day. His friend asked him how it was and he said it was “great!”
What does this have to do with yoga?
Just about everything.
This friend has pretty severe scoliosis but despite his hunched posture, he carries himself with confidence and enthusiasm. When he looks at you, you have his full attention and there is such a sparkle in his eye. He has a great gusto for life.
In one of my anatomy books there is this interesting observation:
“We sit and walk as we think. Watch any man as he walks down the avenue, and you can determine his status in life. With practice, a finer discernment will have him placed socially and economically, and with a fair idea of his outlook on life. We judge our fellow man more by the arrangement and movement of his skeletal parts than is evident at once.”
– Mabel Todd, The Thinking Body.
Our mind, via the nerves, is in every cell of our body. Therefore, the state of our mind shapes our physical selves.
Yoga, through the practice of asana is about shaping, or transforming our physical body. However, our physical body is but one layer, or kosha, that makes up the totality of our being.
The Koshas are:
Annamaya Kosha – physical layer
Pranamaya Kosha – energetic layer
Manomaya Kosha – mental layer
Vijnamaya Kosha – intellectual layer
Anandamaya Kosha – bliss layer
To be able to arrive at the state where a flu shot can be seen as being “great”, a lot of work has to have been done.
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali asks a question:
“What reality would we see if the minds of people could still their restless waves for just an instant?” Y.S. I.3
Would we be unconscious or would we be super-conscious?
In his book Light on Life, B.K.S. Iyengar says:
“The answer to that is unknowable except by personal experience. Which is why you can prepare for meditation, but ultimately you cannot teach it. You cannot force the human mind to be still
This is why yoga spends so much time and effort identifying the negative, the unwanted, the subversive, before they disturb the tranquil equilibrium of the mind.”
How do we identify the negative?
Through the practice of the Eight Limbs of Yoga:
Yama – How we treat others
Niyama – Practices for ourselves
Asana – Physical practices
Pranayama – Breath work
Pratyhara – Withdrawal of the senses from the shiny objects
Dharana - Concentration
Dhyana - Meditation
Samadhi - Emancipation