Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Is it possible to be totally present with the body while doing the practice?

I'm guessing that some of you out there might be getting a little sick of reading my quotes from Eckhart Tolle in my posts over the last two weeks. Well, if you are... I'm sorry that you are. But I blog about what I am thinking about, and what I am thinking about at any given moment is often informed by what I am reading at the time. But I don't just randomly quote what I am reading either. I try to pick quotes that are more or less yoga-related, or can be related to the practice in one way or another.

But anyhow, I read something in A New Earth yesterday that really pertains very directly to the practice. Tolle talks about cultivating inner body awareness as a way of moving beyond identification with the body. Through cultivating inner body awareness, you can gradually shift your attention "from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body--beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, too fat, too thin--to the feeling of aliveness inside it. No matter what your body's appearance is on the outer level, beyond the outer form it is an intensely alive energy field."

Tolle continues:

'If you are not familiar with "inner body" awareness, close your eyes for a moment and find out if there is life inside your hands. Don't ask your mind. It will say, "I can't feel anything." Probably it will also say, "Give me something more interesting to think about." So instead of asking your mind, go to the hands directly. By this I mean become aware of the subtle feeling of aliveness inside them. It is there. You just have to go there with your attention to notice it. You may get a slight tingling sensation at first, then a feeling of energy or aliveness. If you hold your attention in your hands for a while, the sense of aliveness will intensify... Then go to your feet, keep your attention there for a minute or so, and begin to feel your hands and feet at the same time. Then incorporate other parts of the body--legs, arms, abdomen, chest, and so on--into that feeling until you are aware of the inner body as a global sense of aliveness.'

Lying in bed last night, I tried this exercise in inner body awareness, starting with the hands and feet and then moving into the rest of the body, as Tolle suggests. It felt really good to be so aware of the entire body. Actually, the feeling is a bit similar to the kind of calm feeling that I get during my acupuncture sessions. I'm starting to think that this inner body awareness may be what Taichi practitioners are trying to cultivate when they work on cultivating chi or life energy during their Taichi exercises. Very interesting.

This morning, I also tried to see if I can bring the same level of inner body awareness to the practice. Starting from Ekam position in Surya A, I brought my attention to the hands as I raised them over my head. And then to the hands and the feet as I went into downward dog in Shad position. I was able to maintain a reasonably high level of body awareness throughout Suryas A and B. And then, without quite knowing it, I lost this awareness as I went into more challenging postures. I realized that, without knowing it, as I got further into the practice and encountered more challenging postures, my focus had shifted from simply being aware of the body to using the body to do this or that posture. In other words, I had shifted from a state of simply being to a state of doing; in so doing, I was no longer so aware of the body as it simply is. Or, to put it in slightly more fancy terms, I was no longer with the is-ness of the body in the present moment.

Herein lies the dilemma: For most of us, the practice consists of postures of varying degrees of physical difficulty. Thus it seems that for most of us, the only way to be totally aware of the body as it is in the present moment without asking or expecting anything of it would be to stop the practice at the precise moment when it becomes physically challenging. But that would mean that most of us would have to do practices that are way shorter than what they are right now. For me, I might have to stop practicing somewhere around Utthita or Parivrtta Parsvakonasana! I mean, I'm not sure if it would ever be possible for me to do, say, Kapotasana while being totally present in every part of the body as it is without asking or expecting anything of it. Then again, isn't this what Sthira Sukha Asanam ("Asana is effort without tension, relaxation without dullness") mean? Maybe it will come one day. Dirgha Kala...

Do you have any thoughts on this? How do you balance (i) being with the body in the present moment and (ii) getting the body to do this or that challenging posture in the practice?    

10 comments:

  1. Taiji, qigong, yoga asana are all good examples of traditional tantric practices that develop this inner body awareness. Both the qigong lineages I have trained in stress this awareness as the goal of the practice, and that the practices are like power tools, dangerous if you don't know how to use them. The danger being that if the focus is not on developing this inner awareness then the practices will actually have the effect of reinforcing attachment to the body and to the mind, which is antithetical to tantric spiritual practices.

    Richard Freeman stressed this point a lot in the workshop i did with him recently - the focus must be on developing the inner forms of the postures, bringing awareness from the gross movements of the body inwards until all awareness resides in the central channel. This is done via the breath, according to Freeman, and my qigong masters. At some point the outer form becomes irrelevant.

    Richard Freeman said something interesting along these regards, that he felt there was not enough focus on the inner forms and awareness in the yoga world, including the ashtanga world. He made a lot of cracks about the overly orthodox approach many teachers and students take to the practice, both in the Iyengar and Ashtanga traditions, an orthodoxy that puts too much emphasis on external form and not enough on internal, or at the least does not teach the importance of the internal forms early enough, sending too many practitioners down the wrong path.

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    1. Hello Tom,
      I like your power tools image: I think it very aptly describes Ashtanga, and also all the Chi-centered Chinese practices, from what little I know of them.

      "the focus must be on developing the inner forms of the postures, bringing awareness from the gross movements of the body inwards until all awareness resides in the central channel."

      Nicely said. I will do my best to cultivate such a focus in my daily practice from now on.

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  2. I find I have the same experience. When I am doing an "old" asana, I can feel the inner body as a whole quite easily, but when I reach the "newer" asanas, my attention is drawn to the specific physical challenges of the pose.

    I think there has to be a certain period of outer physical body awareness before we know the posture well enough to move our attention to the inner body. As much as I'd love to feel the inner body throughout my practice, it is still quite calming to at least have my attention on the physical aspects of a pose rather than on the racing thoughts in my mind.

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    1. "I think there has to be a certain period of outer physical body awareness before we know the posture well enough to move our attention to the inner body."

      I'm inclined to agree with you here, Mark. But if what Richard Freeman says is correct (see Tom's comment above), then it may be that the more productive way to practice is to begin by developing the inner forms of the posture from the beginning, so that whatever outer form the posture takes is a natural expression of the inner form, and not the other way around. I'm trying to work on this myself.

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  3. I think doing this would be impractical for any extended duration while practicing ashtanga where you are constantly jumping around. I have been listening to Oprah - Tolle discussions of New Earth chapters recently and I believe the experiment you are referring to with the hand is suggested when you are sitting still or lying down. Although ashtanga is supposed to be a moving meditation, it is really hard to be in the moment when so much is going on. After 10 years of ashtanga practice, I still can't focus on just the breathing for more than a few minutes. May be if you practice Vinyasakrama or other Hata yoga traditions where you are not constantly moving, it is possible. I have given up trying to achieve this during ashtanga and started a separate meditation practice where I can just focus on that aspect.

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    1. Yes, Savim, I agree with you, given where I am now in the practice. I also think that by and large, trying to maintain full inner body awareness while moving and jumping around is impractical (I don't want to say "impossible", because isn't yoga ultimately about making the impossible possible?).

      Having said this, however, I still have hope: Maybe if I get to Richard Freeman's level (whatever that actually means in concrete terms), then that which now seems impossible may well become possible.

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  4. The simplest answer - the breath. Bring attention to the quality of the breath vs. attention to the form of the posture. Catch yourself when you are paying more attention to form in the more challenging postures, and remind yourself to just breath. Even if it's difficult.

    Nancy Gilgoff says to just get into the posture as best you can in one breath, and then... breath. No futzing around or trying to perfect the pose. Let it be as it is, today, and breath your five breaths.

    It's an interesting way of practicing. Certainly, less linear or goal-oriented. More vertically aligned with present moment - the Now - that Eckhart (whom I really love, btw) espouses.

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    1. I like Nancy's approach--in theory. In practice... well, I still find myself "cheating" by giving myself an extra breath or two to get into challenging postures like Mari D, Pasasana and Kapotasana. Well, I'm sure that if I had made it to Mysore this summer (sigh...), Sharath would have corrected this "cheating" tendency on my part: I hear he's very strict about the vinyasa count in led primary...

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  5. I think Michelle hit it right on with the breath - long breaths in postures gives plenty of time to bring the focus within. And by training to extend the breaths in posture, I find my breath almost as long when moving/doing vinyasa, which also makes it very possible to keep the focus within even then. Actually, when you take 10 seconds for an inhale, and you work to match your movements, such as raising your arms over your head, to the length of that inhale, you are moving at the same or even slower speed than practitioners of most forms of taiji. I tmakes the practice more internal.

    As to Savim's comment in particular, while I think it is very possible to bring this type of awareness into the practice, maybe it does require more a a flexible approach than the orthodox ashtanga. I know for myself that after attending Richard Freeman's workshop my practice structure changed dramatically, he used longer holds in postures, a vinyasa krama approach to postures, talked about the importance of some of the early 2nd series postures even for beginners (all about the psoas). He never had us do a whole series, and he added some extra postures he thought were important, had us play around with small retentions here and there. I've kept this approach, i find it brings out the meditative and therapeutic aspects of the practice. Works for me, and it helps bring me closer to that awareness Tolle talks about.

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    1. Freeman's approach sounds very interesting. I would like to take a workshop with him one day. I think he is onto something about the psoas; very few (if any) of the postures in primary do much for the psoas, and many people in the west have tight psoases from sitting in front of computers, driving, etc.

      I try to lengthen my inhalation whenever I can remember during practice as well. And yes, as you said, it does have a more "internal" quality to it when you lengthen the inhalation.

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