Clear Yoga, Iyengar Yoga

Today is Guru Purnima

Here are excerpts from Prashant Iyengar’s address in 2023 on Guru Purnima.

“ We have gathered here for guru purnima. A Guru is not a teacher. We can be mistaken about this these days.

Guru is an institution and a principle. Why do we require a guru?

For any animal, cattle, bird, insect, worm. They don’t have to get trained to be what they are. They don’t have to go to any academy to learn what they are. But human beings need to know what is a human being. By just being a human being we don’t remain human beings. We have to become human beings. We all think we are human beings but our species has a lot to become - to become is not a natural or spontaneous process.

Like a cockroach is born, it will become a cockroach, full fledged - it is a natural process. If they are born they become, when we are born, we have to become. Just by taking birth as human beings we are not always human beings. We can be in body form human, but a human being can be worse than subhuman. A human being can be more venomous than a cobra - we can put cobras to shame. Human beings can also put to shame divinities and gods.

To be a human being we have certain rights, responsibilities, duties. Humans say - this is our right, that is our right. So we need someone to tell us about our responsibilities and duties.

What does a mosquito owe to our planet, our solar system, our galaxy? Nothing. But when it is a human being, it is a lot. We owe a lot.

Human beings need to identify this - we don’t just owe just to those around us, to humanity, our family, we owe something at large to the entire life on the planet, life forms in the ocean, to life forms beyond this planet. If you are a human being you OWE.

Many of us take pride - I don't owe anything to anyone. The whole world owes to me. This is fiscal dimension. So when we are born as human beings we need to be told about “ what is a human being”. Not just make aware of our rights, but our duties and responsibilities. Basically, we owe.

The moment we are born, we become debtors. Who will tell you what you owe?

This is why there is the institution of Guru to tell us who we are, Where we are, and from whence we came.

For us it is a matter of inquiry. We have to become responsible from within.

For us to know that we owe something, we need a guru. You have a sense of responsibility and you want to clear out your debts. The Guru is part of the archetypal scheme and a principle embedded in us - adhyatma - all that is within you. That cannot be sighted by a body scan or radiological insight.

We owe a lot to the whole universe. We owe nature to our ancestors.
We owe to our previous life creditors. We are indebted to so many for so many reasons. Who is going to tell you?

The Guru principle - will tell you your ancestors in your life, in your previous lives, who has looked at your journeys, what you have done and what you have to do.

The Guru will show you your dharma.

A Guru is not a teacher but someone who tells you about your reality. Guru tells you what you are. We need a perceptor and it is provided by the archetypal plan - selfology.

Your Guru had a guru - we owe something to all Gurus going back ad infinitum.

So we have responsibility to the entire universe - the guru will tell you, guide you, help you, help you clear the debts - this is a guru. It’s inevitable that we have a guru and if we don’t have a mortal guru, the guru principle is embedded and provided within us - it is a principle within us - Isvara.

That is why guru purnima has such significance. Don’t mistake it for father’s day, mother’s day, teachers day. It is not such a day.

Dispelling the darkness with light.

If you are once shown the mirror - the moment you see a mirror you look at your form, your reflection. But suppose you were given an x-ray or an MRI - are you obsessed with looking at the MRI day after day? How many times will you look at your face in the mirror- we are never tired of it . From when we are 16-17 now we are 86 and 96 - nobody looks at you but you look at the mirror.

That is the outermost gate of knowing oneself, There are so many layers where the glass mirrors won’t work. There are so many forms of you - who is going to tell you there is something beyond this? Who is going to tell you that there is something beyond that ? We have responsibility to “Know thyself ‘.

There is no thyself for a buffalo or a bedbug but there is a responsibility to know thyself as a human being. The human being will become human through the wisdom of the guru, the touch and principle. The Guru is indispensable.

Aim at “know thyself” This is why we need a guru.”

An amazing weekend at the Iyengar Yoga retreat in Axbridge Somerset. Thank you to an inspiring hardworking group. 🪷🙏🪷 I’m already looking forward to next year.

Thank you Barry Cawston for the photos.

Our subject for the retreat: Svadhyaya - the study of the self

Earlier in my practice, I understood svadhyaya in terms of quantity of practice. Now I understand it as simply the study of the self, of what is actually going on, right now- with no expectations, judgements, or comparisons. Attempting to notice the story I tell and slip under my own narrative.

Iyengar writes in Light on Life that svadhyaya shows the “truths reflected in one’s own life”. He goes on to say that our self study “cultures and refines our intelligence...so we can witness ourselves”. But:

“ What intelligence does not do well is pick up on its own motivations that are quietly infiltrating from ego. To see impurities of intelligence, just buy six different newspapers on the same day or watch several different TV news stations. Notice how the same events come to be reported so differently. This may be simple misperception, but more likely there is a slant or twist of interpretation that serves the agenda of the newspaper….This is not because the journalists’ minds do not work well. They do. It is because there is subversion in their intelligence. These are called impurities, and they are very difficult to detect in ourselves.”

Svadhyaya is to study our story, our motivations, what pulls us, what pushes us, where we draw our lines. This is the actual study of the self, and of why we do what we do. Svadhyaya does not come from something outside of us, neither it is imposed upon us, nor projected into an imagined future of being a better person than before. It is simply studying where you are right now.

We all tend to read the newspaper or listen to the news that spins the story the way we like to hear it. Even when we seek out a different perspective, it is always as a comparison. We do the same thing in our bodies, and in our asanas. The stories spin to tell us what we want to hear, to do what we’ve always done, even if it’s fake news. When you move the body from the front to the back, what do you actually do?
Yoga makes us look again and again at what happens. Svadhyaya is studying that moment, it’s about figuring out what’s fake from what’s actually happening.

Self study “ is the way we occupy this frontier between the known and the unknown, the way we hold the conversation of life, the sense of the way our body occupies that edge, but a detailed audit of the self is not possible and diminishes us in the attempt to establish it; we are made on a grander scale, half afraid of ourselves, half in love with the dance of immensities beyond any name we can give.”David Whyte

A joy and honor to work with such amazing teachers at the annual teaching intensive with Doerte and I in Zurich Switzerland … 🙏

“ Teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see I have a chance to gain self knowledge and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject. In fact, knowing my students and my subject depends heavily on self knowledge.” Parker J Palmer. The courage to Teach

A beautiful space at Sheffield Yoga, Sheffield MA and a hard working inspiring group, to work on pelvic floor strength.

“ Heyam dukham anagatam" sutra 2.16
“Future suffering is to be avoided

The fact of suffering cannot be denied…(it) is the First Nobel Truth of the Buddha. For Patanjali , the source of suffering is the mismatch between the way it actually is… and what the mind thinks and expects.

Patanjali is not simply saying that future suffering can be avoided, but exhorts us to take up the challenge, to undertake the practice of yoga so that avidya ( the gap between the way it actually is and the way we think it is) can be removed and therefore all the klesas ( afflictions of the ego self from avidya; desires, aversions, and fears) and therefore suffering arising from them can be overcome”

Commentary by Ravi Ravindra

Looking forward to offering this on Saturday at the Iyengar Institute of New York.

Join me in person or online

https://www.facebook.com/share/1CP8mddJhD/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Halstead Hill Yoga weekend - discovering our legs all the way to the roots of the psoas.

" What is interesting with this twisting work is to wonder, what does it touch? What is very very peculiar to this twisting work is that the nerves on the periphery of the spine move back to the spine itself. There is a kind of return journey of these nerves. They find their link to join the spine again, and this is very particular to this twisting work. So the movement, this peculiar movement creates what we call "nirodha" - a kind of self control which is different from other controls we get through other poses. I mean that this special position of the nerves creates a special absorption of yourself within.” Corine Biria

Thank you Karuna Yoga in Northampton Massachusetts for hosting me this weekend for “Meeting at the hip joint”. Thank you to everyone who came.

Guruji states that asana is meditation in movement. Meditation (Dhyana) , he says, along with Dharana (focus) and Samadhi ( total absorption) “are experiencing states not susceptible to tuition”( Light on Life: BKS Iyengar).

Through given actions we connect the words to parts of the body. This is Dharana: concentration “ the warrior of sadhana; struggle, determination, will and effort are all relevant. It is like bringing a flashlight into a dark room and pointing to one particular object in order to bring it into focus.”

Then we witness:
Dhyana: meditation. “ more like a general illumination in a room rather than a flashlight focused on one object. It involves knowing the relationships between parts ( discovered by the flashlight of dharana) and the whole, and the relationship of one thing with respect to another…a surrendering to something subtler.”

Experiencing my place in space” ( BKS Iyengar).

Then:
Samadhi: light of total absorption. “ freedom from myself to actualize the real “ and experiencing “ space in space”. ( BKS Iyengar)

Commentary in quotations unless otherwise noted are from The Wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga sutras by Ravi Ravindra.

This workshop was to shine the flashlight of dharana onto the adductors; by drawing the inner knees to the inner thighs to roots of the upper inner legs as the ankles extend to the inner heels. To Witness what happens - the integration of parts - (dhyana) for this action both compacts the outer legs and allows the legs to “ meet “ and integrate into the pelvis/lower abdomen to give lift, stability, and space for the body, mind and breath to be actualized.

These experienced states are not continuous ie: a glimpse of samadhi cannot be held onto, but only experienced. But the flashlight of dharana can be constantly revisited weaving to states of dhyana and samadhi in a process called “Samyama”.