Lessons from Iyengar Yoga

There are three ways to correct your posture: 1) by using your eyes; 2) by feeling with your skin; and 3) by feeling with your mind.

Use your eyes. Look at yourself. That will also keep you from looking at others.

The only way to see your legs is to look at them while in seated pose. Now, look at your legs. You may not like what you see but look at your legs.

Move your muscles to the bones, not the bones to the muscles.

God gave you two legs; use both of them. God gave you two arms; use both of them. You are the reason why there are people who are born with only one arm and one leg. God must have thought that since you are not using both, maybe people don’t need a pair after all.

Yoga is union. How can there be union if you cannot coordinate your arms and legs? And your arms and legs with your mind?

Do you feel the pain this morning after yesterday’s workshop? Now that you know how pain feels, why would you like to inflict pain to others? That’s the essence of ahimsa.

Pain may be there but you just ignore it. Pain may also be hidden. Pain may also come and go. And there’s a pain that just does not go away. The goal of yoga is to show you what needs to be adjusted. Even if you have neck pains, you can still do sirsasana—there are adjustments for it. What you need to do is to find that which needs adjustment. Inside.

These are but some of the lessons I learned from Jawahar Bangera, a senior teacher based in Mumbai and has been a student of BKS Iyengar since 1969. He is now conducting a series of workshops at the Iyengar Yoga Center Manila (www.iyengaryogamanila.com) which will run until this Sunday, September 20, 2009. I am so privileged to have attended even at least two of his sessions. So happy that I did (thanks YT for pushing me…both in asanas and other yogic matters ). Do catch him.

Next time you see me in the shala don’t be surprised if I would take three hours to finish my sequence.

My skin is facing there and it should face here…and I have to coordinate this movement with my limbs…hmmm, I need to feel my bones now…where is the pull? Oh there, so I need to balance it with this…activate my legs…activate my arms…there…concave my spine…relax my tummy…my navel should be here…now breathe.

That’s just getting into a pose. One pose. One side.

SMS Exchange #2

X: …creating an adamantine body through hatha yoga.

Me: (after looking up the thesaurus) I thought the goal of yoga is enlightenment?

X: Well, that’s the initial goal of hatha yogins so that the body becomes strong and able to withstand the onslaught of the rising kundalini. When the kundalini reaches sahasrara chakra, enlightenment comes.

Me: Duh…. (to the tune of om)

Never ask a question if you’re not sure you’re ready to hear the answer.

E|X

I believe in giving back a portion of whatever I receive to whoever…we’re all connected after all so it does not really matter who gets it. This habit started in tithing in Church, and young that I was, my attitude then was quite legalistic. Eventually, the habit took different forms.

My partner in crime, er, at work and I, for instance, have a ritual—we treat our team to meals whenever we get unexpected, unbudgeted income. In a meeting where I know I would be picking the brains of people, I make sure I give them what makes them happy (a cup of coffee works wonders, believe me) and I don’t charge it to office expense. My thinking is that, since I would be drawing from their resources, I should draw from my own, too, to fill (refill?) them.

Even my Chinese friends believe in a concept similar to this. They say that unless you empty your cup, the universe would not be able to fill it. I guess in some ways this is also what my late father meant whenever he reminded me that my excess is an indication that another is in need. Thus before I buy a new pair of shoes, I would give away first those that I have already gone tired of using. I also do a regular check of my closet—those stuffs, which I would not be able to use in a month from the time of my inventory and therefore would likely not use any time in the future, normally find their way out of the house.  Same thing is true with my bookshelf. No accumulation of things, no expansion of “capacity” allowed. 

Then my life coach brought this idea to another level. My life coach practices yoga and has had gurus as well. Once he shared to me, “it is the responsibility of the students to sustain the guru because if the guru goes away…. Besides, the guru gives his own energy to the students so it is only but proper to give back to him.” And this is the same person who, when I resigned from work two years ago, commented “(the boss) needs your energy but your work relationship proves unsustainable because it is a one-way thing. He does not share his energy with you.” He was correct. The result of that work relationship was a burnt-out me.

One cannot give all the time the same way that one cannot just receive all the time. There has to be a give-and-take, symbiotic relationship in practically everything to keep the system in balance. Yup, that’s what my life coach calls energy exchange. And I subscribe to that very much.

Go Green!

“Preparing meals with a small carbon footprint is good for the climate…” so goes Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine (click here for his full article). I have been reading and writing about carbon footprint for some time now for a company that wants to check its environment-friendliness, what with its fuel consumption and gas emission…but meals with carbon footprints?

Read on: “Foods that require a lot of energy to produce–like beef–leave bigger carbon footprints. It may be hard to believe that a meal at McDonald’s produce more carbon than your trip to the drive-through.” The author says that while a 4-oz. steamed vegetables leave only 0.18 lb. of carbon footprint and pasta of the same serving size, 0.39 lb., an equivalent size grilled steak contributes 10.5 lb. of carbon.

And with the swine flu causing global concern these days, it makes more sense to go green, eat greens.

On a personal note, eating greens has also simplified my life in a way. As a Christian, I am supposed to observe fasting and abstinence (F&A) during Lent and Advent. Once I was bothering a yogin-friend, who is also a Christian, about the technicalities of F&A (until what age, how it translates into food servings, etc.). Although she graciously answered all my questions, she said in the end “What’s your problem? You’re a vegetarian. You do abstinence all the time. And if you were to follow Jon’s suggestion that a yogin must eat only a handful and a half of food a day, that will very well fit into the definition of fasting.” Yup! That is, if I do F&A only for compliance, but that’s another issue. 

Ok, so I plead guilty. I had my carbon footprint calculated based on my lifestyle (click here for calculator) and here’s the result:

Hmm…I think I should cut down on my air travel…(Rose, ferry na lang tayo going to Coron?)

Real People Do Asanas

I cut and paste from Linda’s blog, the entire entry is a must-read:

She remembers what Kausthub (Desikachar’s son) had taught in his class: 

“Today asana has been made into a photograph. There is no difference between this and gymnastics. We see calendars with photographs of someone balancing on a rock in a headstand…even naked yoga. But asana is not a performance, asana is what happens in the posture and afterwards.”

Was blessed to have been invited where real people do real asanas.