Category Archives: Yoga Teacher Training

Quiet That Monkey Mind!

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Learning To Let Go: An Exploration of Moving From the Outside In

“Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you have to choose to embark on the Inward Journey to discover it.” (B.K.S.Iyengar)

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I have been practicing yoga off and on for about eight and a half years now and have explored a range of styles. Anusara, Ashtanga, Bikram, Hatha, Iyengar, Kundalini, Para-Yoga, Power Yoga, and Vinyasa are all familiar to me to varied extents. The mat became my friend soon after moving in with my now husband, then boyfriend, Jeremy. He had suffered a few minor injuries and was looking for something to help ease pain in his neck and back. We took our first class together while visiting his father on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State.

Though I could not pinpoint the exact reason why, something kept me coming back to my mat over and over and over again. When I found myself straying from one yogic path, another path would make itself known to me. Unlike other activities I have taken up in the past, yoga has been a mainstay. About two years ago, I started taking classes in the Iyengar tradition in San Francisco. Through this particular form of practice I found a community that started to help me understand why I was so deeply drawn to yoga. I began to gravitate toward certain teachers, to push myself to take a 200-hour Teacher Training at a local studio, then to commit myself to the two year, 500-hour Advanced Studies program at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco (IYISF) – the first of its kind in the United States, established in 1974.

For our final project in Asana I at IYISF, our teacher asked us to write a piece reflecting on a moment when we caught a glimpse of what Patanjali, the compiler of the Yoga Sutras (aphorisms on the practice of yoga), called citta vritti nirodhah. This sutra is often translated as the cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness. Through this practice of yoga, we are seeking to still the thoughts and patterns created by our mind, our ego and our intellect. For a beginner, this may seem like a thankless task.

Personally, my most recent moments of inward movement within my asana practice have come during Salamba Sirsasana (supported headstand). It is a challenging pose for me for so many reasons – not the least is balancing on my head! But it is also a pose for quiet reflection and using the body to still the mind. When I fold my mat in the middle of the room and set up my forearms parallel to each other, taking care to keep my shoulders up the entire time, I find myself letting go of the to-do lists I have been writing in my head, my worries over whether or not I will make my bonus this year, my pestering thoughts about the extra five or ten pounds I would always like to shed, because as soon as I take those trains of thought back up, I lose my pose.

This leads right into her second question of how I would share this experience with a beginner. Obviously a true beginner to yoga is not going to be lifting into headstand in the middle of the room; indeed they may not even be able to kick up to the wall. But I think the experience is truly there in all the poses, even ones that some people would consider to be less advanced. If I am standing in Prasarita Padottonasana (wide-legged forward fold), a pose taught to beginning students before headstand, I have to maintain many actions to keep my balance. I must keep my legs straight and strong without locking my knees, maintaining balance between the two sides of my body and my place in space. I also have to be patient, taking care to extend my spine, lift my chest and sternum and lengthen my neck without straining to do so. If I practice svadhyaya, study that leads to knowledge of the self, I know that I must continue to assess and reassess my pose, because if I falter I will no longer be in the pose, I will be off dancing with my vritti.

In all honesty, I still consider myself a beginner at this yoga practice. Although I head with burning zeal into more advanced classes, workshops and other trainings, I will likely remain a beginner in this lifetime.  I have to constantly remind myself to remain present, to be patient, yet reflective, and to continue to do the donkey work. If I ever take up the task of teaching beginning yogis, I will gently remind them that it is a constant struggle, but a worthy one. I take solace in the fact that I now have my community and my teachers to help lead me along this inward path (and with that pesky headstand, too).

Practicing Yoga: On and Off the Mat (Part II)

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Patanjali’s Golden Rules:
A Yogi’s Guide to the Universal

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Human societies have long laid out rules of moral and ethical conduct in order to maintain harmony within and among social groups. For a modern day yogi, this is important not only because most of us still reside within society, but also because our behavior toward ourselves and others is critical to following the eight-limbed path Patanjali lays out in the Yoga Sutras. In B.K.S Iyengar’s Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the yama are translated as “the great, mighty, universal vows, unconditioned by place, time and class.”

The five yama are as often translated as follows:

  • Ahimsa – non-harming, non-violence
  • Satya – honesty, truth
  • Asteya – non-stealing, non-misappropriating
  • Brahmacharya – continence, chastity, religious studentship
  • Aparigraha – non-attachment, non-grasping, non-possessiveness

These precepts are multi-layered, applicable to all dimensions of our lives; from everyday interactions with each other, to how we support and maintain our mental, physical and spiritual health. There are so many questions to ask in relation to the yama: Am I kind to strangers? Am I truthful to my friends? Have I taken what is not truly mine? Am I faithful to my spouse? Do I hoard or covet possessions?

From a yogic perspective, the yama are as critical out in the world as they are on the mat. Growing up, I heard the concept of the Golden Rule often – do unto others as you would have done to you is an oft-quoted phrase in a family with four children – but rarely was it applied on a more individual level. Through feminism and yoga, I have come to more fully embrace the fact that, in myriad ways, how you nourish yourself every day is as important as how you treat others. In my yoga practice I have learned to question whether or not I am truly applying the yama on the mat and, quite frankly, it is more difficult than one would imagine.

To illustrate how the yama can be applied to life on and off the mat, I will use the example of the fifth yama, aparigraha (non-grasping, non-possessiveness). I am typically a very focused, goal-oriented person. I like to win and can be very competitive in certain arenas. Though this personality trait has served me well in certain parts of my life, my drive also stems from a desire to possess the fruits of my labor. I worked very hard in school so that I could get good grades and be accepted to graduate school. I strive for promotion in order to get a raise in pay or more esteem in my company.

On the mat, I also find myself working toward goals. Two years ago, I could not lift up into Urdhva Dhanurasana (upward bow pose). I needed to work on my strength, as well as flexibility to finally be able to get off of the ground. Initially, I used props to help me work my way into the pose, practiced different ways of lifting up and dropping back, finally finding the ability to straighten my arms and leave only hands and feet on the mat. Similarly, in Sirsasana (headstand) I could not balance in the middle of the room. Being relegated to the wall was frustrating to me. In the Yoga Garden Teacher Training last year, I was finally forced to attempt standing on my head in the middle of the room and discovered I had already been able to do so, but was holding myself back out of fear.

While striving toward degrees, getting promotions at work and advancing my asana practice may seem like worthy objectives (and in and of themselves are not inherently problematic), these examples provide an insight into how I have been taught to reach for the end product, rather than staying present. There is a value judgment latent in certain goals: Am I a “true yogi” if I practice handstand against the wall? Have I grown in my career if I do not get a pay raise or promotion every year?

What observing aparigraha means to me in this context is that I should continue to do what I have been doing all along, but without expectation that I will get some sort of reward when all is said and done. Instead of attaching importance to the results of my actions, I am trying to practice for the sake of my practice and work for the sake of my work. The effort is what is important; it alone will lead me to freedom.

In so many ways this thread leads back to the other yama, one of those lovely tricks of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. By not grasping for the end result, I am also not harming myself through self-reproach or physical injury; I am being honest in my practice by working at the level I am at now instead of coveting the practice of others; I am following in the steps of my teachers, rather than taking their teachings and utilizing or branding them in my own way; and I am being faithful to my practice, to my teachers and to my community. There is reward in following the values set out in the eight-limbed path. Results will come, but the journey is even more important and (dare I say?) more fascinating.