What is the real value of yoga? Its therapeutic effects are widely known. Its capacity to soothe away stress is not to be underestimated. But where is the stress coming from? Won’t it just rear its ugly head again?
I’m not sure that yoga on its own is much use to be honest. In fact yoga on its own is rubbish. It needs us. The extraordinary growth of yoga, the studios, teachers, practitioners, would all indicate that we need yoga. No we don’t. Yoga needs us. It needs us to show up. And that’s the thing: wherever we are, as long as we don’t keep dodging our Self, there is yoga. How can yoga be confined to the mat?
Following on from this line of reasoning Yoga Off the Mat seems to me just as much a non-sequituur as Yoga On the Mat. We show up and then we dodge ourselves. A waste of sweat indeed. Yoga, this exquisite practice that gains us access to the divine pulse within, is bastardized for the sake of supple muscles and glowing skin. Yoga that shows us the immortal nature of this divine pulse sacrificed to the project of these mortal crumbling altars we worship foolishly.
What’s going on here? I believe there is a difference between self and Self. This body that houses the memory of our miraculous birth, that keeps the score of each action we have taken, that is sailing us one-pointedly towards the other shore. We treat it like an ornament for our mantelpiece.
How easy it is for yoga to become part of this futile project. Yoga On the Mat can be great indeed. Our practice becomes a communion with the Self which dwells not just in this body, but in that body, in that tree, in that city street, in that bird in the sky, in that puddle of water, in the eyes of that street seller, in everything, every beating, pulsating, breathing, living thing. Yoga Off the Mat. When we remember and keep remembering that what seems to be that is actually this also.
Where do we begin? By attending to what is. There is plenty to attend to in this life. As a busy human it is easy to forget to be still. Be still for what? And if we are still we’re not really still are we? Make this your starting point. Relax the physical brain, move away from that hyperactive centre of activity and into the heart space. The pulsation can be felt stronger there. The connection to Self can be felt as the connection to self loosens.
The more we move towards the heart, the more tenderly we treat our pain. Then we can move out into the “external” world and attend to it also. We can attend to the pain of the world as our own, with tenderness.
Watch out, with soft eyes.