"Going Through Something" · 10 May 2007

“So I’m going through something with my back…”

This is what we say in yoga. Not: “I’m injured.”

What does this language hide; and in what ways is it more true than using the language of injury?”

For months I’ve been keeping notes on the subject of injury and astanga yoga, and noting the variations in experienced teachers' takes on the subject. [Since many in the second generation of teachers in the SKPJ lineage are online, the web catalogues some of this variation, e.g. Anne Finstad (scroll to 8.26.06), Steve Dwelley, and Matthew Sweeney (see #3, "Easy Practice").]

I’m not ready to write about this topic, but wanted to archive for posterity the wise comments of an adored mentor of mine (at least until he clicks over here and asks me, in his modesty, to take these down). Below are outtakes from our exchange today. His third paragraph from the bottom is like a well-polished stone— burnished with experience, and one you’ll take home from tonight’s walk while you toss others you’ve picked up back into the sea.
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IO: …Meh. It goes, but whatever is happening in my back has been... interesting. As mentioned on the blog, I took five whole days off Mysore practice and instead practiced in the afternoons in my kitchen. It was an experiment and gave me the chance to tailor. I got a better understanding of what's holding in my back (and how it keeps changing) but it's not like it made it all clear up….

Anyway, I seem to be inhabiting a whole different body for the past month--a delicate one. This thing is definitely maturing me, but some days I could care less about maturity if it meant I could have my kapotasana endorphins back.
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CZ: Sounds like you're in the territory that yoga was 'invented' to get you through.  Mumbo-jumbo aside, look around you and you'll see that you have plenty of company.

Rejoice. You're in juicy territory. A place with an easily identifiable obstacle. 
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IO: This is an amazing email. Good luck with your crazy workday and thank you.

P.S. Are you saying that I'm only just now glimpsing what the practice is all about? That this is the name of the game? God help me I want to go back to my twenties and flow class!
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CZ: Oops. Sorry it's too late to go back:)  Don't you just love this quote?

"You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.   < Morpheus"

Yep, it's too late (lol) you took the red pill so start working on your super powers :)
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IO: (Phhhhhhttt….)
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CZ: It's the old "press on or back off" fork in the road that you've come to. I could recount volumes about the advice I've heard and been given, but I'm afraid it will all sound like yoga mumbo-jumbo or new-age drivel. But here is some of it anyway:

For the first six months of Ashtanga Yoga, my hamstrings were in agony and I could hardly walk. I remember thinking "if I had to run for my life, I'd sit down and give up." My hamstrings were screaming all hours of the day. I met C and asked him if this pain was 'good' and he told me something like "I can't tell you because I'm not in your body. Maybe you're a wimp and just complaining or maybe you have an incredible tolerance for pain. Either way only you can know for sure."

There was another student that started practicing at the same time. His knees often bothered him and he asked M about it and talked of his knees often. In the end he concluded "it's like the stock market, everyone has an opinion but no one knows for sure." And yet another teacher told me when Supta Kurmasana was wreaking havoc on me "it might hurt for a week, it might hurt for ten years, who knows?"

Working with asana is a two-way dialogue with your body. You ask your body to open and to be strong and the body speaks back. When you ask in the right way and listen carefully, the body opens and floats into arm balances. Pain is the body shouting to get your attention. Stress your knee and the body shouts back "HEY BACK OFF THIS IS THE WRONG DIRECTION, OPEN YOUR HIPS YOU IDIOT!!". But it also hurts to remove a band-aid after a cut has healed. "OK DO IT QUICK AND GET IT OVER WITH!" The former is 'back off' and the latter is 'press on.' It takes discrimination to know which is which.

Pain visits ashtangis often. I've heard that Guruji often doesn't back off and says "opening, very good" even when students hobble around in pain. But I think Guruji is highly adept at knowing whether a limitation is real or imagined. And when a student is ready for more.

It seems that the Ashtanga series are progressively more difficult (or impossible), and designed to take every student to their threshold sooner or later. There you develop the discrimination to know whether to press on or back off. Because only you know for sure.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , evolution , having a body , self-deception , spirituality

Comment

1. Excerpted from my reply to CZ:

   This is such a simple way to put it. You’re right that there is a lot of new age drivel out there—most of it following the narrative of “this is what I am supposed to experience” or “this is just what is meant to be.” That kind of fatalism gets in the way of taking reasonable, intelligently reflective measures to be healthy and safe. (It also obscures the fact that it was our own actions that brought us to where we are.) We have choices. And as you say, only I can know for sure how to proceed. It’s not “the universe” sending me a message: it’s me. And it’s my responsibility to figure out what’s that’s about on a deep level, and work with it honestly. Maybe that means tuning in to some kind of general or “universal” wisdom, but I still have to do the work myself. Just like in the rest of practice.

   Summoning the honesty and acceptance (a.k.a. “surrender”) to do that is hard. I think I’m pulling it off for now, though, in that I’m learning how not to be greedy. Ultimately, though, some people really do come upon the question of whether to quit or press on. For you and me, it would take a lot to stop practicing. I love being able to take practice for granted—-having something in my life whose worth and goodness I never doubt. Does this reveal that I’m faithfully committed to practice, or just totally attached? And for those who choose to stop (and there are many—-we’ve just forgotten them because they aren’t around): is it that they are lazy, or that they are honestly accepting their limitations? Like you said, only the practitioner can know for sure.

   This is such an interesting topic, when it comes to the things I think about in my spare time: reflection, spirituality (whatever that is), self-deception, and yoga asanas. Thanks for helping me through this difficult, but interesting, time. I’m sure we’ll come back around to the subject again, in sickness and in health.

   Posted by: (0v0) · May 11, 09:47 AM · #

2. I often think that everything – the whole practice, philosophy and trappings – is a metaphor for mind control. Sutra 1.2 contains the entire teaching of Yoga – everything else is just a mix of symbols, practices and techniques.

   But, I was a card-carrying secular humanist in my day too, so I’m just trying to improve everything for the here and now.

   Posted by: cody pomeray · May 12, 05:55 AM · #

3. Hear that. (1.2 is “Yogascittavrittinirodaha” — yoga is the quieting of fluctuations of the mind.) And agree.

   That can be mind control — an effort of will and practice. Yet… rather than “control” as modern westerners might understand it, nirodaha could involve a deep vibe of surrender. I remember Desikachar’s discussion of “nirodaha” as a state of “total absorbtion.” (Heart of Yoga, chapter on Qualities of the Mind.)

   So (Oneness alert), I’d like to suggest that nirodaha could signal something deeper than what Americans think of as “self-control,” which could be seen as a dualistic kind of a thing.

   Posted by: (0v0) · May 12, 11:18 PM · #

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