People in the United States ask me if I have been doing hatha yoga since I was little. The question comes out of the assumption that since yoga is an ancient Indian practice, most Indians must be familiar with it as part of their daily life. I wish this were so, but the reality is quite different. When I was growing up in India, I never saw anyone practice hatha yoga. I used to occasionally see one of my uncles stand on his head whenever I peeped into his room early in the morning during my visits. But I put that down to his weirdness.
Years later, when I had my first baby, I came upon a friend who was offering yoga lessons and I thought it might be a good idea for me to practice with her and get my body back into shape. I enjoyed the body-mind connection that is so intrinsic to yoga, for it helped me with any postpartum depression I might have had. Now that I look back on my childhood and adoloscent years, I realize that my family instilled yoga in us--a yoga that is central to Hinduism, called bhakti yoga. Bhakti translates as devotion. But the English word does not capture all of what bhakti means. Bhakti is a devotion to the divine that involves surrender and transcendence of self. It aims toward a total embrace of the divine other.
Now as I practice yoga everyday, I realize how essential bhakti is in hatha yoga. Without bhakti, hatha yoga is simply a set of physical exercises (as we see some teachers teach yoga in the West). For example, if I am doing an asana and I feel after a while that my limbs and my breathing and my mind are so coordinated that I make no effort but the asana does me rather than me doing the asana, then that is the experience of bhakti. The body and the mind have surrendered to this other. We usually get a glimmer of this experience. Imagine if this glimmer got brighter and longer and stayed with us, we would reach nirvana /bliss.
"As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of a divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon the earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound. So many seek this greater Truth in the heavens but it lies much closer than the clouds. It is within us and can be found by anyone on the Inward Journey."
ReplyDeleteLight on Life B.K.S. Iyengar
One of my favorite quotes from B.K.S Iyengar,
and how beautifuly, Pramila, you translated how it feels to make that connection to the divine thru your asana practice. The Divine is within all of us and in all that surrounds us. Sometimes in our busy lives we forget to make that connection.
Today in my 8:00 am class we worked on hip-openers and splits - both forward and side; upavisakonasa, and hanamunasana, and incorporating the awareness of both strengthening and opening the hips. Our Sacral Chakra corresponds to the hips and also with our moving fluidly. After class I went for my walk, and enjoyed the fluidity of my movement and the connection to the earth with each step. Because I was outside I also breathed deeply the wonderful coolness to the air. Therefore, I would say that I connected to the divine within and without.
I also asked my students to pay attention to how they moved, and felt after class.