Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

Yoga Journal

; January, 1977

by Joel Kramer

What is Yoga? There are as many an-swers to that question as there are people

who do Yoga. This at ﬁrst might appear

confusing, for Yoga is often presented

as if there were a true and ﬁxed path to

follow leading to a desired end. Enlight-enment, samadhi, bliss, peace, higherrealms of consciousness – these are thecoins of the spiritual market place we aretold we can collect with the proper prac-

tice and dedication. To ﬁnd the proper

practice it is common to go back to thepast, to tradition and authority. Perusingthe past, however, there doesn’t appear tobe any consensus for there were schoolsand counter-schools with recommenda-tions running the gamut from demand-ing severe self-denial and austerities to

others that held that only in experiencing

life and sensuality to the fullest couldtrue realization be achieved. The teach-ings of today are just as varied. Oneschool says that all types of Yoga arecontained within perfection of asanas,while others say that too much empha-sis on the body keeps you limited to thegross material plane.Tradition is important just as historyis important – not as a vice to squeezethe present into, but rather as a steppingstone to grow from. It is necessary forall serious practitioners of Yoga to take

from other people’s experience that

which can be helpful to create a personal

expression of Yoga. In the years that Ihave been exploring Yoga, an approach

has taken form that has been continually

revealing, renewing and exciting. The

movement of Yoga involves among otherthings the continual living recreation of the question, ‘What is Yoga?’ What fol-lows is a brief introduction to the way Ianswer this question.Yoga is a living process. The heart of Yoga does not lie in visible attainments;

it lies in learning and exploring. Learn

-ing is a process, a movement, while at-tainments are static. One is internally

learning about the whole ﬁeld of life us

-ing the energy systems of one’s mind and

body to ﬁnd out how one works and howuniversal patterns express themselves

through individuals. Yoga also involvesthe process of freeing one’s energy,moving out of the blocks and binds thatlimit one both physically and mentally.Freeing oneself is part of the process of self-knowledge for one’s binds limit the

nature of the exploration, just as releas

-ing them permits learning to occur.The way freedom is usually talkedabout is freedom from something: free-dom from pain, fear, death, aging, dis-ease, from sorrow, attachment, and of course, from the ego or self which isviewed as the source of all problems.

The bondage of ﬂesh and the tyranny of

mind as they endlessly create desire, areto be overcome through discipline. Yetanyone who tries to do this necessar-

ily confronts the basic paradox that is a

part of the spiritual quest: trying to freeoneself from anything contains withinit the seeds of the very bondage one istrying to escape. The desire to be desire-less is another desire. The push to con-quer one’s ego in the belief that ego loss

will be the ultimate experience bring

-ing perfection is self-centered activity.The desire for ego loss and perfectioncomes from the ego as does all desire.Thought then creates ideas of perfectionfrom second-handed sources or frommemory’s projections and strives towardtheir accomplishment which is more ego

activity. This is another example of whatI call the spiritual paradox.

If freedom is looked at as a dimensionof action rather than as an escape fromsomething, as a living process instead of

a goal, the spiritual paradox dissolves.

The only real freedom is freedom in ac-tion. Freedom is responding totally to thechallenges of the living moment. The truespiritual quest is not ‘How do I becomefree?’ but rather, ‘What is it that bindsme?’ The most important thing aboutquesting or questioning is the nature of the quest or question. Asking ‘How do Ibecome free?’ automatically places you

in the spiritual paradox, and even more

important, is not answerable. For quest-ing after freedom always involves ideasabout what freedom consists of. Theideas I have, come from the state of notbeing free, and therefore involve projec-tions of what it would be like not to havethe problems that I have. Freedom hereagain is freedom from something – fear, jealousy, competitiveness whatever. Thevery ideas I have of freedom are limitedby the state of my consciousness and asI try to force myself into the mold of theidea or ideal, I am limiting freedom right

at the start. So I can never ﬁnd out how

to be free by seeking freedom. I can,

however, ﬁnd out the nature of what it is

that limits my awareness and the scopeof my responsiveness because that canbe directly perceived.

A New Look at Yoga:

Playing the Edge of Mind & Body

“A New Look”

presents yoga as an evolutionary process and introduces the Yoga

of Mind as a powerful approach to self-exploration. Mental yoga reveals themind’s nature and its ﬁlters, and is an important part of physical yoga practice.

The body’s potential responsivenessis limited by stiffness, lack of strengthand endurance. The mind’s responsive-ness is limited by the way it thinks aboutthings. The ideas and beliefs throughwhich you view the world necessarily

keep you within the ﬁeld of these thought

structures. The way that you think about

things totally inﬂuences not only the

way you act, but the way you perceive.

If, for example, you think that thoughtis the villain preventing you from expe

-riencing the ‘now’ and therefore mustbe conquered through meditation, that

mind-set inﬂuences everything you do.

In intellectual circles there is the ten-dency to greatly value thought; in spiri-tual circles there is a tendency to judgethought negatively. The interesting thingis that both evaluations are just thought judging itself.

Yoga is the process by which I ﬁnd

out the nature of my binds and keep intouch with those aspects of life that limitfreedom. I have found that a synthesisof two traditional approaches of Yoga is

the most direct route to this exploration.

Hatha, the physical Yoga, and Jnana, themental Yoga, both deal with discover-ing the limits that conditioning imposes.No conditioning is just physical or justmental. How we think is a part of howwe feel and, of course, how we feel in-

ﬂuences the thought process. The term

‘conditioning’ here refers to habits of themind and body which are programmed

in through experience. This includes

genetic conditioning which is also pro-

grammed in through experience, al

though the experience is of a different

order.

Yoga then is the exploration of one’s

total conditioning, Hatha Yoga using thebody as the doorway, and Jnana Yoga us-ing the mind. I am not presenting condi-tioning as a new villain to be conquered.Conditioning is part of the organization-al principal of universal energy whichbuilds patterns and systems that are thestuff of life. Conditioning is a fact whichactually aids the movement of life, forwithout it there would be no life. At thesame time conditioning is a hindranceto freedom since habits also constrict bychanneling the new into old patterns, bycreating and reinforcing the tendency togo on automatic which limits awareness,and by creating attachments to familiarpleasures and securities which blockreal change. Freedom does not lie innegating or overcoming the fact of con-ditioning which is impossible, but ratherin springing, in the living moment, from

those patterns that limit the ﬁeld of what

is possible.In Hatha Yoga what is possible in anyposture is a function of your condition-ing (including what you ate yesterday).If instead of trying to force yourself

into the idealized ﬁnal position, you usethe posture to explore the limitations

imposed by conditioning, there is auto-

matically a relaxation in mind and body.The postures then become highly reﬁned

tools to approach the edge or limit thatbinds you. Awarely playing at the edge

of conditioning changes the ﬁeld of what

is possible.Yoga is a process of opening, of mov-ing beyond the physical and conceptual

limits of conditioning. Experience by its

nature conditions, so that moving out of it is an endless process. There is no mas-tery of yoga since one can only masterthat which has an end. The concept of opening, however, can slyly become justanother idealized goal to be achieved.Actually, awareness of the tendency of the very nature of thought to stop processis part of what Jnana Yoga is about.A key to the process of opening thatkeeps you truly opened is what I call‘playing the edge.’ The body’s edge inYoga is the place just before pain, butnot pain itself. Pain tells you where thelimits of physical conditioning lie. Sincethe edge moves from day to day andfrom breath to breath (not always for-ward), in order to be right there, movingwith its often subtle changes, you mustbe very alert. This quality of alertnesswhich is a meditative state is at the heartof Yoga. A great danger in Hatha Yoga isgoing on automatic so that the postures

become mechanical exercises, bringing

with them dullness, fatigue, and resis-tance to doing Yoga at all.Just as the mind is more elusive thanthe body, so the edge in Jnana Yoga isnot as obvious as in Hatha. The habitsof mind that have accumulated over timecontinually reinforce themselves. Habitsof mind are repetitive ways of thinkingabout things and of structuring the worldin such mental patterns as beliefs, val-ues, fears, hopes, ambitions, self imag-es, images of others and of the universeitself. For instance, whether I view theuniverse as either basically benign, ma-

Yoga Journal

; January, 1977

Joel Kramer playing the edge in asana.

P h o t o b y : B e n T h o m p s o n

P h o t o b y : M a r k W e x l e r

levolent or neutral (indifferent) seems tobe an abstraction far removed from dailyliving that I might seldom overtly thinkabout. These world views, however, arethe basis of common attitudes (idealism,cynicism, skepticism) which are patternsthat color all perceptions by monitoringwhat comes in, and directly affect dayto day life.How does one play the edge of thought?In Hatha Yoga, the Yoga is in the qualityof attention to the physical system so thatone learns to listen to what the messagesof the body are saying. The muscles,tendons, nerves, glands, and organ sys-tems have their own intelligence and in-formation processing networks that canbe tuned into and learned from. Playingon the edge physically sharpens the abil-ity of the total organism to interpret andintegrate this information. Thought alsomanifests in systems which are set waysof thinking about a particular segment of one’s life. These systems are sometimesin harmony with each other but oftennot. Each role or pattern in one’s life hasa thought structure or system that giveslife to and perpetuates the behavior.Hatha Yoga stretches and strengthensone physically so that one has a stronger

and more ﬂexible body. Similarly Jnana

Yoga stretches and strengthens one men-tally so that one can use the structuresthat thought builds creatively and har-moniously, and yet not be bound by thelimits that thought places on life.Mental edges are similar to physicaledges in that they are marked by resis-tance to movement and opening. In themind, fear is the indicator of resistanceas pain is in the body. Fear circum-scribes the structure of personality orego. The ways you think about yourself or the world are the basic building blocksof personality and they are very rigid.When these structures are challenged,

fear arises. Fear often expresses itself

through attack and defense as a meansof alleviating the pain that fear brings.Attack and defense are a way of shoringup (protecting) the challenged structureand burying fear in what is called theunconscious, giving you the illusion of not being afraid. Fear is a great teacher

since it is a key to ﬁnding out the nature,

depth, and degree of your attachment tovarious thought structures.In Hatha Yoga, as you awarely playthe edge of what is physically possible,your edge moves. What is possible haschanged - you have changed. There is

more ﬂexibility, more openness in the

tissue, and correspondingly more en-ergy. As Jnana Yoga plays the edges of mental resistance, the very doing of thismoves the edge, enlarging the limits of

what is possible. This is really what ex

-panding consciousness is all about.

A major difﬁculty in Jnana Yoga isthat since your mental edges deﬁne the

way you perceive, the very perception of where your edges or conditionings areis limited by your present perception:if I try to look at the way that I look atthings, the way I do it is the way that Ilook at things. How I look at things atany given moment is me. Another prob-lem of Jnana Yoga is that there is no setbody of techniques corresponding toasanas to use to play your mental edges.In Hatha Yoga the asanas are necessarybecause in living you rarely challenge oreven reach your physical edges. You are,however, confronting your mental edgeson a day to day basis whether you wantto or not, so that mechanical techniqueis not necessary.In Hatha Yoga the demands of a givenposture, the immediacy of the feedbackof physical pain, the possibility of inju-ry through carelessness, the proper useof breath, can aid in bringing forth thenecessary attention. In Jnana Yoga, at-

tention is also the key. To ﬁnd out how

thought works, it is necessary to pay at-tention to the forms it takes: words, sen-tences, images. It is also very importantto be aware of where your attention is atany given moment. Your attention at anymoment is what you are at that momentand this directly reveals your condition-ing.Being aware of the movement of at-tention is actually a meditative processthat shifts consciousness. The resultingsense of distance and quality of detach-ment permit an objectivity that is notbound by the structures of thought. Thisobjectivity is the source of newness andcreativity, bringing a sense of awe thattranscends the merely personal. It canalso bring fear. Since we hold the worldand ourselves together with thought,real objectivity can challenge the fab-ric of our lives bringing resistance andfear. This very fear is an indication of

the existence of mental conditioning and

paying attention to it (playing the edgeof it) ‘stretches’ it in a somewhat similarway as awarely playing the edge of painstretches the body.Although Jnana Yoga cannot be prac-ticed in the ordinary sense, (‘practice’usually means repetition toward the ac-cumulation of desired habits), one may‘practice’ Jnana Yoga by simply sittingquietly, observing the inner panorama.An advantage of sitting quietly is tem-

porary removal from external reac

-tions that permits more ready accessto thought. Sitting also allows what hasbeen repressed by thought or inattentionto bubble up. Since one’s mental edgesdisplay themselves in the relationshipsof daily life, with people, ideas, thephysical environment, so the ‘practice’of Jnana Yoga can and does occur notonly during formal sitting, but in all as-pects of life.One might mistake attention for con-

tinually trying to ﬁgure out what’s going

on inside which can end up in paralysisor in removal from living. Attention isnot an analytical process involving brainactivity. It is a simple registering of what

is happening so that there is no ‘ﬁguring

Yoga Journal

; January, 1977