The Passing of a Great Being

I have never met B.K.S. Iyengar and I am not an Iyengar trained teacher.  The stories of this great being and his way of teaching and practicing are, however, the oxygen that my own teaching and practice breathes.  His life has nourished the world in the way that our veins and capillaries nourish our bodies out to the far edges.   When I go to Durango, Colorado every year to study with Patricia Walden, I am surrounded by Iyengar teachers who have been studying at his school in Puna, for many years.  I find myself alternately sorry that I have not been able to experience him and relieved.

The days following his death, I set up a small altar at the front of the class to honor his life.  On the Thursday class, I “accidently” left a mat out on the floor beside mine.  As I began the class, I suddenly noticed the mat and laughed at myself.  Someone in the class thought I had done it intentionally for Mr. Iyengar.  I moved the altar onto the mat.  A short time into the class I suddenly felt nervous, as if he was on the mat observing me teach.  This feeling lasted about 5-10 minutes and then was gone.  I choose to assume he paid us the honor of a visit on his journey. 

B.K.S. stands for Bellur Krishamachar Sundararaja Iyengar.  I have to confess, it is only now that I learned his full name. He was born on December 14, 1918 and died at the age of 95 on August 20, 2014. His impact on the world is huge and as far as I can tell from a distance, he was a man of great integrity. His rather sickly childhood where he struggled with malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and general malnutrition, changed when, at 16 years old, he lived with the teacher who brought to India a practice that synthesized ancient hatha practices and modern gymnastics, Krishnamacharya.  Patricia Walden told us that on his 80^th birthday he did 108 drop-backs – dropping into urdhva dhanurasana (wheel) from standing.  In his 90s however, he practiced more supported backbends. 

The well-known childhood story of his regaining his health through his yoga practice and then giving this learning to his teaching, speaks of taking the circumstances of one’s life and turning them into something great – not so much great because he has become so famous but great because his learning has become meaningful and something of beauty.  I don’t know that I am as tireless in his process of transforming life events into greatness but I take inspiration from it.

The Iyengar system of teaching yoga is famous for its use of props that are meant to help us attain the benefit of a pose when our bodies are not quite able to find the necessary alignment.  According to an article in the New Yorker, he developed his use of props as a result of being asked by Krishnamacharya to travel and demonstrate yoga and experiencing first hand the dangers of pushing oneself into poses prematurely.  Consequently, he developed a slower, more systematic way of practicing including the use of props.

One of the stories about him that make up my yoga world is of him asking his assistants to put someone into a pose using props in a particular way. When he turned to look at that person he said no, that is not right, we must try another way.  This capacity to see so clearly and make adjustments according to that clarity of seeing is a metaphor for how to live. 

Last July in Durango, Patricia quoted Mr. Iyengar as saying, “God is in the precision.”  I have thought about this again and again.  As I now begin learning Manual Lymphatic Drainage where my hands must be extremely precise and sensitive, I think of it yet again in a different situation.  Mr. Iyengar used great precision in the alignment of poses and he is both highly respected for it and sometimes criticized for it.  He also teaches great precision in the pranayama practice as to how one sits, moves ones skin and places one’s fingers on the nose.  Sometimes I think I feel, rather than understand intellectually, what he means by, “God is in the precision.” 

Thank you,  Bellur Krishamachar Sundararaja Iyengar, for all that you have given to the world. 

Searching for my Core

A few selections from Merriam-Webster for the word core:

-    a central and often foundational part usually distinct from the enveloping part by a difference in nature

-    the usually inedible central part of some fruits

-    a vertical space in a multistory building

-    the internal memory of a computer

-   the central part of a celestial body usually having different properties from the surrounding parts

-    the conducting wire with its insulation in an electric cable

-    a basic, essential, or enduring part

-    the inmost or most intimate part

I keep searching for my core.  In my search I begin to wonder if perhaps I am searching for the core.  Or, maybe I am searching for a core.  It seems it should be easy to find given how much it is talked about in and out of the world of modern postural yoga and other forms of physical practices and therapies.  Instead however, I find it rather elusive. 

I still remember first learning about the four abdominal muscles and the importance of building strength in them.  The long one in the front, the rectus abdominus had its day of popularity when everyone wanted to have six-pack abs.  But the rectus can create problems if it is over strengthened in relationship to the other three, the internal and external obliques and the transverse abdominus. 

The transverse is a bit more popular lately thanks to its relationship to the pelvic floor. When everything is working properly, the transverse and the pelvic floor muscles work together to lift and create stability in the spine. Perhaps this is a bit closer to the elusive core since the pelvic floor is the location of our first chakra, or root chakra, that part of our energetic system in yoga that connects us to the earth and our basic needs:  “a central and often foundational part.”

I am always sure the psoas must be part of this search for the core.  How can it not be? As Ida Rolf points out, the psoas connects the legs to the spine.  The psoas attaches to all the lumbar vertebrae and moves right through the pelvis to the leg, coming very close to the pelvic floor. The psoas, as my dear friend Yoko has said, is like a river of energy in the body. It is also a muscle the sometimes holds our basic fears.  When we contract in fear, the psoas contracts: “the internal memory of a computer.” 

Alas I may still be searching a bit too superficially. Perhaps the core is actually the sushumna, a central energetic channel spoken of particularly in kundalini and hatha yoga, although the chakra system and nadis are referred to quite broadly in many yoga styles:  “a vertices space in a multistory building, the conducting wire with its insulation in an electric cable.”  The spine is an obvious place to look. Not just the spine but inside the spine where one finds the spinal cord. Inside the spinal cord one finds the cerebrospinal fluid.  As it turns out, the same cerebrospinal fluid is found in the billions of fine collagen fibril tubes that are part of our connective tissue: “the inmost or most intimate part.”

The collagen fibril tubes are very small.  And as one looks deeper by looking smaller, we find more and more space.  The nucleus of an atom is very small relative to the space that the electrons use to roam around the nucleus and bond with other atoms.  I imagine that as I search for my core or the core I end up in a world of atoms and subatomic particles that appear much like that of outer space and celestial bodies.  At this point, I always feel I am going deeper and smaller and suddenly find myself looking into some beyond we call outer space, an expansive place.

The celestial bodies, including our earth, all have a core: “the central part of a celestial body usually having different properties from the surrounding parts.”  The core of the earth is believed to be solid.  The core of a star is a region where “the temperature and pressures are sufficient to ignite nuclear fusion, converting atoms of hydrogen into atoms of helium, and releasing a tremendous amount of heat.” (http://www.universetoday.coma). The star we call our sun for example. 

In my search, I lose the sense of my core into a feeling of a core, a core among many cores, a world of mystery and beauty beyond the scope of my imagination and yet tantalizing me to keep imagining. I can understand the attraction of both those who look out into the night sky through powerful lenses and those who look deep into the body or the earth with powerful lenses.   

I continue to work with my physical body as I experience it, amused by my search for a core. I look for that most often quoted sutra of finding ease and steadiness in posture and I suspect it comes from that elusive core but is so clearly not limited to the definitions we give it. 

Our Yoga Ancestors

Yogini, 1000-1050
India; Kannauj
Uttar Pradesh state.

Yoga The Art of Transformation is currently on exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco through May 25.  It is an easy ride on Bart and well worth the time and effort.  Yoko and I made our way there recently.  I came away from the exhibit with the visual experience of the richly diverse history of what we now causally call yoga and often think exercise.  Not to diminish the physically therapeutic value that our modern yoga practices have become.  I partake of them and earn a living from helping others partake of the clear benefits the postures (asana) and breathing practices (pranayama) have to offer. I am also intrigued by the multitude of ancestors, the interesting things they did and the motivations for their practices that this exhibit gives us glimpses of.

Scholars Mark Singleton and Elizabeth De Michelis have raised questions about claiming any continuity between what we practice and call yoga today with the historical practices also called yoga causing some discomfort for those of us who might like to think there is an authenticity to what we do because it is connected to something much older, something that has been practiced and refined for such a long time.  It must be worthwhile if it has endured so long.  I confess to having some of these sentiments myself and to my own squirmy feelings when reading these two authors who have done such clear and careful research.

My Yoga Ancestors: This collage symbolizes for me the bringing
 together of the ancestors and the modern, and the reverance
that can be present in all forms of practice.

And yet…I am drawn to the images and the bits of information we have about the lives of this variety of people who practiced yoga and I want to claim them as my ancestors.  There is a lovely series of paintings from the oldest known manual on asana. I do not remember the date. It is, interestingly, written not in Sanskrit but in Arabic.  The author and artist is a Muslim Sufi.  Each image shows a man practicing some kind of asana (seated) on a small platform with a little hut and some mountains behind him.  Each hut is slightly different and each landscape has its own particular mountain and clouds and sky.  I can imagine some small thread running from my own practice on a platform with mountains in the background and my rather larger -- though not enormous by modern standards -- hut. 

Although by the time of Krischamacharya bringing asana into the modern world, women were not initially allowed to practice, I am pleased by the images of yogini’s such as the one above, sword in one hand, sitting on an owl. I am pleased to find women among the images. Much of the symbolism is a mystery to me but I love the multiple arms in many of the images and the magenta mountains and scenes of animals you have to look closely to find.  The magnifying glasses they provide are helpful.  It seems the painters must have used a brush with one hair.   The artist in me is fascinated and the yoga practitioner is inspired.  Here, they are not separate.

It seems to me as I view this exhibit that I am viewing sacred art.  What makes something sacred and something else mundane?  My Iphone dictionary defines sacred as “dedicated or set apart for the worship of a deity; entitled to reverence and respect” and mundane as “dull or ordinary, commonplace.”  Perhaps all art is sacred and yet I am not quite sure.  These depictions of those who were so deeply committed to transforming themselves, whatever we might think of their chosen method, calls to some deep part of my being powerfully.  Is it not possible that these ancient yoga practitioners have somehow gifted our modern world with a vast and varied sacred foundation from which we can draw from, if we choose to, whether or not the connective thread is externally visible? 

The exhibit makes the historical connections through Yoganandra and Krischamacharya, both of whom were instrumental in bringing some form of yoga to the West.  Yogananda interestingly, downplayed asana because of its association with extreme practices such as laying on a bed of nails or standing on one foot for years.  Krischamacharya developed the modern asana practice we are familiar with.

In one large painting that includes many different yogis doing many different practices with mountains and animals in the background, the yogis who are practicing pranayama are levitating.  I am reminded again of the mystery of breath.  It is mundane and it is sacred. 

Breath as Beloved: Pranayama

Breathing is about as intimate as it gets.  Every cell of the body requires breath for what is called cellular respiration – taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide.  We take in air - our atmosphere – into our cells.  The pathway is a bit complex if you stop to notice it:  from the nose to the pharynx to the larynx to the trachea and into the lungs to the pulmonary capillaries to the heart to the aorta and finally to the individual cells.  And of course, it is reversed for the carbon dioxide.  All of this we do all the time without necessarily noticing.  In pranayama we practice noticing. 

A poem by Jane Kenyon:

In and Out

The dog searches until he finds me

upstairs, lies down with a clatter

of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing

saves my life – in and out, in

and out; a pause, a long sigh…

Recently, I shared a room with someone.  At 4:30am as I lay awake I listened to my roommate breathing.  The sound of breath, another’s breath, my own breath, in the quiet of the early morning, felt as if I was listening to the earth breathing, or perhaps the universe.

The yogis have paid a lot of attention to breathing. Breath and consciousness, they said, are two sides of the same coin.  Changing our breath through pranayama will inevitably change who we are.[1] To state the obvious, breath is life.  The yogis however, went farther in their investigations.  Breathing, they suggest, is our vehicle to touching prana, the “subtle energy that pervades every corner of the universe.”[2] The old yoga guides said that: “just as each of us breathes along and so lives in and through prana, so, too, does the entire universe.”[3]  This is undifferentiated cosmic prana or first prana.  This prana is intelligence and creativity.  Cosmic prana is also considered by some of the old guides as the source of everything.  It links us to the essence of our lives. 

After watching a cosmology course with my brain group I have been asking myself how one might tap into the amazing energy that is clearly present in the universe.  Scientists have been attempting this for a long time, of course, with technology and we consequently have nuclear energy and nuclear weapons that could destroy us all.  My musings have been much more modest and low tech.  I have wondered if the yogis might not have been on to something about tapping into the energy of the universe with the practice of pranayama.    

Thanks initially to Rodney Yee, who taught early morning pranayama at all of the five week long teacher trainings I attended very soon after I began practicing asana, I have always included some pranayama in my morning practice.  At times however, it has felt laborious and boring.  Over the last few years as I dropped increasingly into a place of feeling depleted in energy, I have been drawn back to a curiosity around pranayama, like a wounded animal searching for some kind of solace when I could not continue the vigorous asana practice I had been accustomed to.  The two times I have now attended Patricia Walden in Durango, CO, the highlight of the week has been the afternoon pranayama practice.  This last year she told me clearly that it is my energy body rather than my physical body that is depleted and I need to spend more time with pranayama – confirming the direction I was already going.  

And so I have spent more time in this most mysterious of practices – pranayama. 

And so I have fallen in love. 

And so my breath has become my beloved. 

And so my breath has become an opening to what the yogis call cosmic breath.

And so there have been times when I have tasted sweetness of something there are not words for. 

    

Ah but one must be careful:  “Just as lions, elephants and tigers are gradually controlled, so the prana is controlled through practice.  Otherwise the practitioner is destroyed.  By proper practice of pranayama, all diseases are eradicated.  Through improper practice, all diseases can arise.”[4]

Breath is air and air is wind.  There is a grandfather Medicine Man in a movie I quite love, Thunderhart.  The grandfather says, “Listen to the wind.”  I listen to the wind when I remember to do so.  Yesterday I could hear winter in the mountains when the wind was blowing.  It has a distinct sound.  When I hear winter in the mountains riding on the wind I remember sitting beside Pear Lake at 10,000ft in August and I am glad there are places in the mountains that close their doors to humans for part of the year. 

Listen to the wind. 

Listen to your breath. 

“Watch the wind to handle the sail.”[5]

Breathing is about as intimate as it gets.  Breath has the potential to open us to the Beloved.  The Beloved is the mystery in the ordinary – what we do all the time unconsciously.  The ordinary becomes the Sacred when we notice.    

In the name of the air,

The breeze

And the wind,

May our souls

Stay in rhythm

With eternal

Breath.

       -- excerpted from “In Praise of Air” by John O’Donohue

---

[1] Rosen, Richard, The Yoga of Breath, (Shambala: 2002) p. 20.

[2] Ibid p. 18.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Svatmarama, Hatha-Yoga-Pradipika, quoted in Rosen, Richard, p. 1.

[5] Chan Sayings, from Prajna Yoga Immersion at Esalen, 2013 with Tias Little, Brenda Proudfoot and Djuna Mascall.