Sthira Sukham Asanam

While in savasana today, there was a thought about how balance is not about balance but balancing. Sort of like homeostasis. It is a set of moments of steadiness which makes it a balance. What we seek or should seek is not balance but a steadiness, a comfort with the act of being steady, moment after moment. Sthira. Sukha. Asanam. Asana is a shaping of space in time, until it is free from the constraints of both.

I miss the hall at RIMYI

I’ve been observing classes this week since getting the Covid bug. I watch tiny squares with bodies in different stages of entering, staying and exiting the poses. And I see fatigue in many students, the fatigue of an isolated practice. It must be hard for the teachers too. Everyone doesn’t enter the pose at the same time, camera angles are different, internet glitches etc mean that even the teaching is mostly a one way street. How much harder it is to unify energy that is dissipated across so many homes? And yet, there has been progress for many thanks to the class coming home. 

This evening, I watched the class I demonstrate for and was reminded again of why we spend so much time in ‘straightening’ the hands and legs, ‘extending’ the spine, ‘lifting’ the chest. I remember my early struggles especially in Adho Mukha Svanasana. Recently in one of the classes, my teacher gave an interesting analogy of a 4 wheel drive in the pose. It made for an experiencing of the actions in each of the 4 limbs differently and to see how they all come together in one unified movement, despite their differences. Fine tuning like the old radios, again an analogy by the same teacher.

Back to balance, for example ardha chandrasana was always a tricky pose to maintain. The minute I thought I had it, I would lose balance. It was not a matter of practice, it was a matter of approach to understand how ‘sthira‘ and ‘sukha‘ were not just characteristics of asana but also a mind and breath space to inhabit them. And in the process, control came, balance was established and the joy of the asana was experienced. ‘Imagine a vast ardha chandrasana‘ like my teacher mentioned in one of the classes a couple of months ago. 

Observing classes is so different for me now from what it was even a couple of years ago. Back then, it was an intellectual understanding, now I’m able to tap into memory to remember sensations of the different actions. But that was a necessary stage, to learn to look and hear. It allowed me to see and listen beyond just the shapes and observe quietness, activity, dullness, luminosity, etc. The sutras 46 to 48 in sadhana pada talk about this at a more exalted level of the soul, which is light years away for the likes of me. But even at the level of body, breath and mind, it is joyous. 

Sometimes forced breaks are good. The pandemic gave me 5 classes a week plus time on the mat. A lot of input, doing and experiencing but not as much time devoted to articulating it. That too is necessary as one creates a lexicon of asana through one’s own understanding. We each do this differently, through the lens of our passions and interests whether music, art, literature, science, nature, etc. This period of doing nothing but observing in savasana has been good to allow the cream of various lessons to come to the surface. As always, I feel incredibly lucky to have come across this system of study which is at once so simple and so deep in its enquiry. There is something for everyone.

Word of the year

It has been long since I wrote a blog post. Correction. I wrote many but shifted it into my notes instead. Perhaps, it was a sense of sharing that happened within a physically virtual world rather than reflections broadcast to an invisible world. But when I go back to the reasons for beginning this web notebook, I feel the need to document the ongoing unfolding.

Every year, I have a word. 2021’s word was Guruji. At the beginning of the year, I read a lot about his life, experiences of other people etc. and it was evident that most of them had covered his life from sickly teenager to yogacharya extensively. I thought I could make my own notes and as the year progressed found myself pivoting time and time again to what Prashantji mentions, ‘Iyengar’s yoga’. At year’s end, I see how that word shaped a lot of my everyday living. The word ‘Guruji’ became my reference point of responses to life situations.

2021 continued to be a pandemic year and one of many unexpected changes in my personal life. There was travel, closures and new beginnings and an overall ease even in stressful situations. If there has to be one significant discovery, it was that I found how to make time elastic. I have my teachers to thank for this change. Asanas are wonderful props to make acquaintance with oneself. I learned to stay in uncomfortable situations and watch thoughts and emotions rise and respond with ease. There was space for decisions to be made without reacting. This was possible as the ‘softness and firmness’ one of my teachers speaks about seeped into my day off the mat. And that translated to being able to make time.

One of the lovely things that happened to me through the year was the opportunity to demonstrate for one of the teachers in the online classes for beginners. These twice-a-week sessions have been such an immersion. Without fail, I log in 20 minutes before to set up and chat with P. She is a generous teacher, loved to bits by all her students. The regulars show up class after class and in the odd moments that I see them do their asanas, I see how there is joy, vigour and eagerness. I’ve loved beginner classes all along and participating in one like this has been a gift.

It was a full year of online classes and through the course of the months, I found myself at ease in asanas I had never attempted before while I lost some asanas to physical conditions. Both were simply observations. This freedom happened as I learned to soften the belly and brain. I got glimpses of the vast spaces inside as well as the darkness that exists in much of my body and mind. I was able to experience the energy that my teachers spoke about. I received glimpses of the touch of breath in pranayama. It remains very much a rudimentary learning of the alphabet. But, it is progress nevertheless and endlessly fascinating.

One of the unexpected gifts of 2021- Niño who came into our lives one November evening.

Over the years, I see how it appears that this system is all about sequence, asanas as solutions to problems, precision etc. but that is missing the forest for the trees. As the pandemic continues, I see how Iyengar yoga is many fruits, many fruitings according to the inherent tendencies of its practitioners and teachers. As for me, I remain a devoted student of the subject but find that perhaps calling it Iyengar yoga is limiting. It is yog, as Guruji says. Staying with his thought and reading about him, his works, listening to his family and students through the year that passed taught me patience. In situations of distress or doubt, it was easier to pause and consider how he may have made his choices. More often than not, the answer sprung from Sutra 1.33, one of my favourites.

Despite the pandemic making life more virtual, mine became less so. The first year of pandemic saw a lot of connection via technology while the second one saw more time spent in the company of trees and a few people. I am grateful to have this space to share and receive even if it has been an erratic presence. It’s been about 7 years since the beginning of this blog and in some sense, it is probably no longer a space that answers some of the questions that I had as a beginner. But, it remains a space to put markers like a reminder that the word for this year is ‘slow’.