Practicing Calmness We hope you are all doing well and finding the support you need in these times of upheaval and insecurity. At times many of us feel helpless as we confront the pandemics of Covid-19 and racism. While there is hopeful progress—potent vaccines, justice for George Floyd—we still have a long journey ahead. I often turn to Guruji’s writing for inspiration and guidance to help my practice and touch my heart. It is in these difficult times that I am ever more grateful for Guruji’s teaching. At the end of the foreword in Volume 7 of Aṣṭadala Yogamālā, Guruji writes, “Similarly, if at all I have to answer in short everything that is in this book, I will say; Do practice with calmness!—Sādhanā, Śāntiḥ, Sādhanā, Śāntiḥ!!!” As yoga practitioners, we are aware of how much there is to learn and how steadfast we must be in our practice. We may feel overwhelmed as we wonder when understanding will come, or how we will ever be able to overcome our afflictions. It is with this backdrop of social unrest, coupled with our longing for knowledge and truth, that Guruji’s words, “Do practice with calmness!”, are a beacon for us, like a lighthouse that shines to ships at sea. With a steady approach, we have the potential to cultivate transcendent calmness in our practice and in our lives to face the challenges that lie ahead. Sādhanā, Śāntiḥ, Sādhanā, Śāntiḥ!!! Bethany Valentini, Membership Chair IYAUM |
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Terese Pritschet Home: Minneapolis, Minnesota Years with Iyengar Yoga: 40 Fun fact: When B.K.S. Iyengar visited Minneapolis in 1987, he watched me teach. After observing for a few minutes, he made a joke about us both being teachers, and taught the rest of the class himself. |
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It was 1981 in a South Minneapolis dining room empty of furniture, and full of other students. We were all in a pose called Trikoṇāsana, led by my first Iyengar Yoga teacher, William Prottengeier. Prior to that class, I had explored various movement styles, including dance, tai chi, aikido, even an occasional yoga class. This was different. The demand for precision, concentration, strength, balance, and flexibility anchored me in that room, and has continued to anchor my practice for the 40 years since that day. Minneapolis was fortunate to have two local Iyengar teachers, and senior Iyengar teachers were beginning to travel here for workshops. I was hungry to study with as many of these teachers as I could. I worked to establish a daily practice, one that was both physically and emotionally grounding, while yoga philosophy, particularly the Yamas and Niyamas, became the guiding principles of my adult life. Yoga so enriched my life, I felt compelled to share it, and within a few years I began teaching. Teacher’s training eventually arrived here in the late 80s, when the newly formed BKS Iyengar Association of Minnesota sponsored Mary Dunn to lead a series of teacher training workshops. For a decade I taught at various locations, then in 1995 landed at the Saint Paul Yoga Center, my current yoga home. In retrospect, becoming a teacher has been a potent motivator for me to maintain my own practice. It was clear early on that teaching from my head was very different than teaching from an understanding honed through personal practice. The depth of my practice comes not from simply doing āsanas in a class. Rather, it is the meeting of tapas, discipline and svādhyāya, self study, in an ongoing, deepening relationship with body, mind, and s/Self. It includes grappling with all the wily ways of avoidance and escape that I conjure up when it is just me on the mat, deciding what comes next. Aging brings an interesting play between loss and gain. The landscape of what’s overdoing and underdoing keeps shifting. More than ever, I am unwilling to “sacrifice my body for the glory of the pose,” and am more accepting of certain limitations, watching my struggle to drop the ego and detach from what I used to do, while trusting my body’s wisdom to intelligently navigate my structural problems and occasional injuries. At age 65, there are some things I no longer strive for, choosing instead to work on a more basic aspect of certain poses. Even within that letting go, there are still moments when a pose surprises me by being better than ever before. I am deeply grateful to all of my teachers for the lessons in non-attachment, commitment, and devotion. These are the lessons that feel ever more poignant in guiding my years to come. Terese teaches classes at the Saint Paul Yoga Center. |
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Prasārita Pādottānāsana 1 (Extended Foot Pose or Expanded Leg Pose) By Molly Gallagher, CIYT |
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Thank goodness for this pose! Although it isn't the fanciest āsana, it is a pillar for us as yoga practitioners, and we can return to it often as we go through our life stages. Prasārita Pādottānāsana can be adapted to accommodate our individual needs, and through the use of props, is accessible to everyone. Pregnant, menstruating, and stiff people unite! Regular practice of this hidden gem of a yoga pose develops flexibility and strength in the hamstrings and abductor muscles—the ones that help us extend our legs as we jump. And, as stated in Light on Yoga, it “increases digestive powers.” Wowza! Eventually, we want to develop the pose to the point where we can rest the crown of the head on the floor. It is worth the effort to get the head down, as it promotes recovery by soothing the nerves. Who doesn't want that? There are days when I like to move slowly through the concave back position, walking my hands back toward my feet a little at a time while thanking my wrists for all they do for me, and then hold my ankles, which gives me the confidence to extend my trunk down. Once my head comes down, I lift my shoulders up and feel the reward of an elongated neck, similar to Sīrsāsana. When I did this pose as a beginner, my outer shins really burned and my ankles started to hurt too. Now 12 years later, that is not my experience. In fact, sometimes just for a few breaths, it is a deep recovery for my nerves. Instructions - Stand in Tādāsana, jump or step apart about 4 to 4.5 feet wide, toes pointing straight ahead.
- Extend forward from the hips.
- Place your hands on the floor (or another support, like bricks or a chair), initially with your hands directly under your shoulders.
- Extend the trunk forward in the concave back position. Stay here if you are very stiff or pregnant, and feel free to rest your forehead on a chair seat or stool.
- When ready, walk your hands back so the fingertips line up with your toes.
- Lengthen your trunk, chest, and breastbone forward and look up.
- Finally, bend your elbows and keep the chest open while you take the crown of your head to the floor or support, your elbows bent directly over your wrists. Once your head is down, lift your shoulders away from the floor.
- Come out the way you came in: straighten your arms, walk your hands forward, heel-toe your feet closer and step them together.
Molly teaches online yoga from her home in Decorah, Iowa. Her full class schedule can be found at Decorah Yoga Room (.com)
References: - Iyengar, B.K.S. Light on Yoga (Schocken, 1979)
- Iyengar, Geeta. Yoga a Gem for Women (Timeless Books, 2002)
- Iyengar, Geeta. Yoga in Action: Preliminary Course (YOG Mumbai. (2000)
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All Is Suffering By Joy Laine, CIYT |
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pariṇāma-tāpa-saṁskāra-duhkhair guṇa-vṛtti-virodhāc ca duḥkham eva sarvaṁ vivekinaḥ (II.15) For a person with discrimination (vivekin), everything is unsatisfactory indeed, on account of the suffering produced by change, by pain itself, and by the past, in addition to the suffering arising from the intrinsic turmoil of the natural world. In response to her own experience with cancer, Susan Sontag wrote, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”[1] There are other kingdoms in addition to that of the sick that will claim us as citizens, other kingdoms that we would prefer not to visit, but inevitably do so. Bereavement is one such kingdom. It too is a passport to a place that, like illness, can make us feel disengaged from everyday life, throwing us into its own particular vivid and awful reality. Sontag is right that these are kingdoms we would prefer not to visit, but inevitably do so. Yet there is a tendency to create a wall of separation between ourselves and those whose lives bear obvious marks of suffering. Consequently, although suffering is a condition of living (sarvam duḥkham), our reaction to its intrusion into our lives is often one of surprise. “Why me?” we may ask, especially in the face of suffering that seems particularly unfair or untimely. We may, for a while, successfully cocoon ourselves in the distractions and comforts of contemporary life, coming to believe in our own immunity and exceptionalism. But why should any of us think that we are an exception to this universal human predicament, that life will inevitably take us in and out of the kingdoms of suffering? I had a colleague who, rather than ask the “Why me?” question, took the opposite stance. “Why not me?” he would stoically respond in the face of personal suffering. Given the ubiquity and inevitability of suffering, this would seem to be the more reasonable response. Yet we live as though determined to enjoy life for as long as we can continue to occupy the lands of wellness and happiness, choosing to punt our suffering off to some future horizon, to some distant land, for as long as we can. As a strategy to fortify ourselves against suffering, this inevitably has limited success because, as Patañjali observes in II.15, suffering is intrinsic to human existence. In viewing suffering as a disruption to existence, rather than as an inevitable part of it, we may be denying ourselves a way of coming to a deeper understanding of our lives. Patañjali’s claim that, for the discerning individual, all of life is somehow unsatisfactory, tinged with suffering, invites us to explore this claim and hence arrive at a deeper understanding of our lives. In II.15, Patañjali provides us with an overview of the land of suffering, laying out its four key landmarks, four types of suffering, for us to reflect on and grasp the full meaning of sarvam duḥkham and its relevance for all of us, in good times and bad. Pariṇāma (change) The first type of duḥkha arises because of the impermanence of the natural world—the idea that people and things are all, without exception, subject to change (pariṇāma). Pariṇāma in its most poignant sense has an existential dimension in that disease, old age and death will afflict not just ourselves, but also those whom we love. This then gives us a first way to understand the statement “sarvam duḥkham.” All of us live in the shadow cast by our material impermanence, and we can either run from it, cure it, or seek a way to make life meaningful in the face of it. Within the joy I felt as I looked at my newborn child in my arms lurked the reality that this baby’s life will unfold according to a common narrative, inexorably moving towards a common final act, death—and unless we have the misfortune to die young, towards a penultimate act of frailty and decline. Human beings are unique in the sense that we live our lives with this acute awareness of our own mortality, and we are afraid of death (abhiniveṣa). We may argue that just because we die, this does not in itself show that all of our experiences are thereby eroded and tinged with duḥkha. Many of us are adept at forgetting our mortality and enjoying the present moment, believing that it is morbid not to do so. Given the certainty of our own death, the idea here is that we must live our lives with a recognition of our mortality, otherwise, our lives may be inauthentic. As contemporary philosopher Simon Critchley says, “If we want to understand what it means to be an authentic human being, then it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our death.”[2] Until we have come to terms with the certitude of our own mortality, any pleasure that we derive from transitory things is inauthentic. We are living lives of self-deception if we are using pleasurable experiences as a buffer to ward off fearful thoughts about death. At some point in our lives, we need not only to come to terms with our mortality but see it as an opportunity to explore questions about our ultimate destiny, to ensure that we live lives that are meaningful. We do not want to arrive at our death bed, and only then realize how much time we wasted on trivial worries. In the absence of coming to grips with our frailty and mortality, how we choose to live life can be compromised. Death is just one aspect of parināma, however. Everything that exists in the natural world is subject to change, nothing endures. This creates a dynamic ripe for disappointment if we invest our happiness in that which is ephemeral or use our possessions to avoid facing the realities of life. There is no doubt that surrounding ourselves with possessions is endemic to what Cornel West labels as our “death dodging society.”[3] American garages are testaments to the ephemeral nature of the pleasure provided by our possessions—bright new toys that once brought so much happiness, now broken and bereft of their original charm. The psychology of object desire is such that it is difficult to tame and is rarely satisfied by accruing the object of desire. In his commentary, Vyāsa looks at the ways in which desire entangles us in further suffering. A temporary quenching of desire is soon followed by the flaring up of an ever-stronger desire for something better, something newer. “Desire is never extinguished by the enjoyment of what is desired; it just grows stronger, like a fire that flares up with the oblation of butter.”[4] Our lives leave a trail of discarded things that have failed to find a permanent place with us or give permanent satisfaction in our quest for happiness and meaning. Tāpa (pain) Patañjali lists pain (tāpa) as the second type of duḥkha. Tāpa signifies the more dire and distressing episodes of life. Pain (tāpa) is what we usually think of when we think of suffering—headaches, illness, broken limbs, etc., along with emotional pain—grief, rejection, depression, etc. What this shows, however, is that pain, though paradigmatic of duḥkha, is not the same as duḥkha but a subspecies of it. Patañjali’s claim that “sarvam duḥḵham” is not, therefore, a claim that everything is tāpa, that we are always undergoing painful experiences. Some lives contain more pain than others, and we have already seen that during times of relative well-being, many of us create a wall of separation between ourselves and those whose lives bear obvious marks of extreme or persistent suffering. Just as Sontag observed, this is a country we prefer not to visit, and when things are going well, we regard its citizens with a mixture of pity and relief for ourselves that, at least for now, their fate is not ours. We know at some level that this sojourn in the land of happiness is but a temporary reprieve from the inevitable, and the time will come when we too must enter into the land of suffering. Because of this, life’s painful experiences have the potential to play an important role in our lives, allowing each of us to evolve into a person of discrimination (vivekin). The person of discrimination is seen by Vyāsa as an individual awakened to some aspect of human existence that the rest of us are not feeling, one that requires discrimination to see. We don’t know any biographical details of Patañjali’s life, so can only conjecture about the possible source of his awakening to the omnipresence of duḥkha in human experience. Many of us, however, have experienced events in our lives that jolt us out of complacency and make us see life with newfound wisdom. These are often painful events—the death of a loved one or a diagnosis of cancer, for example, can shake us up. In the midst of grief, a sense of clarity can emerge, a realization of what is and isn’t important in our life. It is a common experience among those emerging from a tragedy to understand the pettiness of many of our previous worries, to see them as small and insignificant. A painful event is often a prompt to look for a deeper meaning for our lives, leading us to pursue a spiritual path such as yoga. We need not wait until something bad happens in our lives, however, before confronting life’s realities. Assume that suffering will be part of life, and begin to think about what this means for how you are living your present life. In the absence of viewing life from this larger perspective, the quality of our present life can be compromised by constantly “sweating the small stuff” and by futilely attempting to insulate ourselves from what is in store for us. This suggestion, to allow suffering to be a presence in our lives, in good times and bad, gives us a further entry point into Patañjali’s assertion that everything is suffering. We can read it as an exhortation to allow the reality of suffering into our lives, even if things seem to be going well. Saṁskāra The third type of duḥkha arises because of the continuing impact of the past on the present. Patañjali understood that past experiences leave behind material traces (saṁskāra) within the psyche of the individual. Saṁskāras are the means by which the past can be resurrected in present experience. When these saṃskāras are activated by events occurring in the present, they become conscious memories. It is through such activation of saṁskāras that we get caught up in cycles of addiction and unhealthy emotions like revenge, guilt, desire, aversion, etc. Because of the activation of saṁskāras, traumatic experiences from the past can be experienced, again and again, magnifying the suffering associated with the original trauma. Even when dormant, saṁskāras can continue to impact the quality of present experiences, continuing to haunt the present in the form of moods of foreboding and fear. As Resmaa Menaken observes in his book, My Grandmother’s Hands, unhealed trauma can crystallize until it becomes part of our very personality, rippling beyond the individual into family norms and culture.[5] Guṇavṛtti virodha The last type of duḥkha is intrinsic to the mind itself. You may remember Patañjali’s definition of yoga as quelling (nirodha) the constant turnings of the mind (cittavṛtti). In the metaphysics of yoga, the mind is itself material in nature and as such, bears all of the characteristics of the material world. Since the material world, made up of the three guṇas, is in a constant state of movement (gunavṛtti) so too is the mind. Citta-vṛttis are but one from of guṇa-vṛtti. This means that there is an inherent restlessness in the mind, just as there is an inherent restlessness in the material world. For many people, for example, sitting alone in a room with no books at hand, no phone, nothing to distract or entertain us would be a challenge. Our minds would soon become restless, even anxious, seeking distraction and entertainment. This fourth and last type of suffering is digging deep into the very nature of the mind itself, that it is a restless and unsettled place. Summary It might seem initially that Patañjali’s claim that all experience is duḥkha gives an overly pessimistic view of life. Once we understand the different layers within his conception of duḥkha, however, not only does his claim become more plausible, but it gives us a clear and unflinching vision of the human predicament. We should also remember this statement is but a first step in the fourfold Ayurvedic model of healing that Patañjali is implementing. Like a good doctor, Patañjali is taking a thorough accounting of the patient’s symptoms in II.15 before recommending a treatment plan. II.15 is also intended to bring us to the realization that we are in need of healing, a prerequisite to being open to Patañjali’s teachings. Patañjali’s approach is ultimately an optimistic one, for in the very next sutra (II.16), he informs us that we can avoid future suffering. His next step then will be to ascertain the root cause of all of our suffering before recommending a treatment plan. This will be our topic next time. Joy Laine teaches philosophy at Macalester College and Iyengar Yoga around the Twin Cities. References: [1] Susan Sontag, “Illness as Metaphor” New York Review of Books January 26, 1978 [2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/13/heidegger-being-time [3] https://grandgather.com/2014/03/28/cornel-west-and-bks-iyengar-joy-suffering-and-moral-constipation/ [4] Mānava Dharma Śastra in Bryant, Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (North Point Press, p. 209) p. 206 [5] Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands (CRP, 2017) p. 54 |
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2021 IYAUM Board of Directors President: Nancy Marcy Vice President: Nancy Footner Treasurer: Julie Sybrant Secretary: Katharine Wood Membership: Bethany Valentini Media & Communications: Shannyn Joy Potter IYAUM Liaison to IYNAUS: Susan Johnson IYAUM Committee Newsletter Editor: Irene Alderson Graphics: Shannyn Joy Potter Contact: news@iyaum.org Iyengar Yoga Association of the Upper Midwest P.O. Box 582381 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55458 |
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