HOW YOGA INTEGRATES BODY AND MIND

by Sarah Plumer
photographs by Gary Damsky

As you sit before your computer terminal, what are you aware of in this moment? Is your mind present or is it busy comprising a "to do" list for the afternoon? Does your breath move through your lungs softly with a natural, easy flow? Or are you breathing at a shallow survival level, leaving stale air loitering in your body? Does your ribcage feel light and free and your spine strong and supple? Or are you hunched over, ribs collapsed, shoulders up around your neck? Is your face relaxed and your eyes clear, reflecting a mind free of anxiety? Or is your brow furrowed, jaw clenched, and lips tight with worry and life's barrage of distractions?

If you are looking for a way to improve your overall health, posture and state of mind, hatha yoga is one path that many have chosen to attain these goals. As you learn to use your breath to integrate your body and mind, yoga can help you to become more flexible and relaxed. These benefits come quickly and grow with practice. Practicing yoga guides us to a stable, clear mind and a healthy body: with this foundation, we can refine and achieve our personal goals.

THE ESSENCE OF YOGA IS UNDISTURBED MENTAL CLARITY AND FOCUS

The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali offer valuable insights into the quality and intention of performing yoga asanas (postures) that lead most successfully to these goals. Patanjali is a famous sage of ancient India (circa 200 B.C.) who was instrumental in the development of yoga (a way to a peaceful mind and spiritual growth), Sanskrit (an ancient language used in sacred texts), and ayurveda (the art of healing through holistic medicine). A sutra is an aphorism or a precise statement of truth. There are 195 sutras in this text that explain in depth the goals of yoga; the classic obstacles that stand in our way; how to overcome these obstacles; and, finally, how to maintain the desired state of mind and body integration. Patanjali's approach is psychological, philosophical, spiritual, and practical - offering us many angles to relate to our individual needs. (Note, however, that yoga is not a religion, but a means of bringing harmony into all aspects of our lives.)

Patanjali defines yoga as a particular state of being where the practitioner's mind is clear with undisturbed focus. It is perhaps surprising to realize that this state of being is not arrived at through reading books or imitation but already IS - there is nothing to adjust or change about ourselves in order to BE. At times, though, we lose connection to our essential internal harmony or being, as we are knocked off course by the myriad challenges of life. Yoga can assist us in returning home to our inner sanctuary.

We live in a time of action where we are always doing and thinking many things. Thus our approach to "spiritual" development can be from a perspective of aligning our actions and speech with our moment-to-moment awareness. Like standing on a mountain peak on a clear day where you can see vast depth and distance, as well as the overall patterns of the landscape, when the mind is clear you can see each thought clearly. Matthew Arnold once said he wanted "to see life steadily and see it whole." Each intention, word and action can be observed from this objective vantage point: you can make decisions to act and speak in ways that express clearly your highest state of being. In this way, the practice of yoga opens and creates space both in the body and the mind.


YOGA IS PRACTICE

Often we begin yoga through the practice of asanas, or postures. This helps us to awaken a deeper awareness of our bodies and to observe the ways in which we carry tension. We begin to understand our habits and patterns. We can work through them in order to become free of pain and to move, once more, with native ease in our bodies. In the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali talks about how to bring the benefits of yoga into your life.

The first sutra translated from Sanskrit is: The posture is firm (changeless, stable, resolute) and soft (comfortable, happy). 1

Like a reed that dances in the wind, our intention, both for our body and mind, is to create strength without tension, and flexibility without laxity. Physically we build a foundation from our core, enabling our limbs and spine to move and extend with softness, strength, and control. The idea of "soft but firm" also addresses the interplay of oppositions within the body when one body part physically moves away from another body part, creating directed currents of energy. Just as our lives are filled with opposing forces--such as things we want/don't want, crave or hate--our body can become our instrument for learning how to handle these opposing energies with grace and with gratitude for the opportunity to see the many dimensions of ourselves. As we form the shapes of the asanas, with practice over time, we often find a particular feeling within ourselves of being whole and complete.

Asana Practice: Let's start with the Mountain Pose (Tadasana), or Standing Pose.

Stand with your feet together or hip-width apart, your arms by your sides. Allow your weight to sink into the ground, using gravity as your partner, especially as you exhale. Now, imagine that there is a string connected from the ground and going up the plumb line between your ankles through the center of your body, along the front of your spine and up through the crown of your head. Like a marionette, as you inhale deeply, lengthen the string and draw your body upward, shoulders back and down, lengthening the back of your neck. Maintain this dynamic feeling through your body by simultaneously lengthening downward and upward from your core.

Do you find that these oppositional dynamics give you a feeling of aliveness and energy? While maintaining this firmness--feet rooting into the ground--and this extension--crown of your head reaching upwardÑexpand your chest horizontally into your ribs, lift your thighs and reach down through your arms. Notice how this feels. Now, relax and slump your body forward slightly and soften your knees. Feeling the ground firmly beneath our feet, a sense of rootedness through the floor, slowly "grow" into an upright position arriving once again in the dynamic standing pose of Tadasana. Stand without any extra exertion and breath deeply and freely. Stand with firmness and softness of body, breath and mind.

Developing a physical sense of both groundedness and solidity, as well as lightness and fluidity, can help us deal with tension and conflict. Yoga helps to provide a "home base" of physical and mental balance, an inner calm sanctuary, from which to address these issues.

The second translated sutra is: "Perfection in an asana is achieved when the effort to perform it becomes effortless and the infinite being within is reached." 2

How much energy and effort you put into each asana certainly affects your overall yoga experience. Listen to your body to seek the middle ground between not enough effort and too much. You want to reach that point of challenge and possible discomfort, but not cross over into pain. Notice the areas of your body that tighten, preventing you from feeling your body as a whole. Also notice the areas that seem asleep. You become sensitive to these things by practicing with your full attention to the moment, and by surrendering your breath to the active flow of the, seemingly still, asana. In this sutra, Patanjali guides us toward how to experience an intelligence that lies deeper than our thinking. In this silence and stillness, insights and intuitions often arise, and deep feelings of peace and harmony bring you back to yoga practice again and again.

The third sutra is "As a result, one is invulnerable to dualism." 3

Looking back to the first chapter, Patanjali defines yoga as "the ability to direct your mind exclusively toward an object and sustain that direction without any distraction." 4 We see that the goal of yoga is unity or oneness. The body places demands on the mind; the mind can decide how best to guide the body; and the breath is the intermediary between the two. In practicing asanas, we can use the breath to directly integrate our body to our mind, and to find our own unique point of balance.

Notes:
1) Chapter 2, Sutra 46: sthira sukham asanam-translation from The Essence of Yoga by Bernard Bouanchaud.
2) Chapter 2, Sutra 47: pratyatna saithilya ananta samapattibham-translation from Light on the Yoga Sutras by B.K.S. Iyengar.
3) Chapter 2, Sutra 48: tatah dvandvah anabhighatah-translation from The Essence of Yoga by Bernard Bouanchaud.
4) Chapter 1, Sutra 2: translation from The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar.

INTRODUCTION TO YOGA

WHAT CAN YOGA DO FOR ME?

TRIP TO KRIPALU

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