THE BANDHAS: FINDING THE FORM OF A YOGA POSTURE
Obviously each yoga posture has its own shape, its own form. Even though some of the postures have similar forms. Nevertheless, for them to be the different postures that they are, they have to have different forms, different shapes. The shape making aspect of yoga practice is important. It is very powerful: but its importance and power rest to a great extent on the integrity of that form. It’s not enough to vaguely make a rough approximation of the shape. You may get a bit of exercise, you may stretch this muscle, you may strengthen that muscle, you may get intensity here and work there: but this is not yoga. You may feel like you’ve had a bit of a workout but this is still not yoga.
The pragmatic purpose of yoga, according to Patanjali, is to release tension (YSii.47) and establish sthiram sukham (ii.46:) or tranquil stability. Tranquil stability, or joyful steadiness, obviously means no tension. So, in order to arrive at sthiram sukham the body must be free from tension relative to that shape. Each one of those hundreds of yogaposture, each one of those shapes, addresses itself to the potentiality of tension in the body in a unique and different way. So each one of those shapes is a unique opportunity to release tension from the bodimind.
Most of these shapes are to one degree or another abnormal. This does not mean impossible or unnatural. They are not outside the capacity of the human body. They are just not usual: not used by most people in their lives. Gymnasts, athletes, dancers, acrobats may know some of them. Even so, there’s a huge range of shapes amongst the yoga postures that bear very little relationship to the way that you normally use the body. Therefore they can be a direct and successful invitation for tension to enter the body if they’re not approached with care, integrity and understanding.
Take Warrior pose for example where you turn the trunk forward, bend the front leg, stretch the arms up and look upwards. If this is not done with care and understanding it will develop tension in the inter-vertebral spaces in the lower back, and neck, and tension in the shoulders. Then rather than the yoga posture being good for you it becomes bad for you. Even if it’s developing your stamina. Even if it’s developing your concentration. Even if it’s developing your determination. It’s still being bad for your back, bad for your neck, bad for your shoulders.
So precision in the articulation of the body into the shapes becomes your fundamental way of securing not only the safety of the yoga postures, but also their effectiveness. This is precision in the expression of form. You could look at the body in a posture and consider relationships between planes, lines and aangles as if the body were a geometrical arrangement of form. But this is not the case. We are not geometrical obects, but living organisms subject to many more stresses than gravity and structural forces. Every person’s body has a unique pattern of tension resulting from their life. This pattern is an given limitation. A limitation that constitutes a unique pattern of potential or capability. Even though each posture can be given gemoetrical lines, the precision of those lines only exist for a body free from tension. A freedom from tension relative to that shape. If your body is not free from tension then the inherent line is not available. Then trying to impose that line or the idealised shape on your body is an invitation to accumulate, and not relase, tension.
This means that looking for the line, or establishing the form of a posture, has to be an enquiry. It has to be a self enquiry, svadhyaya. It has to be an investigation of your potentiality: what your capability is right now. Without regard to what your capability was yesterday. Without regard to what you would like your capability to be. So this means that, to a certain extent, everybody lines themselves up slightly differently. But in order for it to be that posture the basic shape must still be there.
In Virabhadrasana nobody should be bending the back leg, even if that means you can only bend the front leg one degree. The bending of the front leg is not the point of Virabhadrasana. The point of Virabhadrasana is what’s happening in the whole body. If the back leg is bending the lower back is being compromised and weakened or damaged. The damage doesn’t become obvious until a few years later perhaps. But then it’s obvious that it wasn’t from Virabhadrasana: it was because somebody pushed you over or you fell off your bicycle or whatever. This is not necessarily the case. Perhaps you fell over because you damaged your back in Virabhadrasana and the integrity of the spinal muscles had been lost.
So even though the description of the movements taken to enter a posture refers to a shape, or a geometrical pattern, exactly where you go, exactly how you express that, exactly how you accommodate your limitations to that, depends on you. Patanjali has given you a compass to guide you in this which is not geometrical That compass is sthiram sukham. That compass is steadiness, stability, groundedness: facilitating comfort, ease, release.
That steadiness and ease applies to the body as a whole, to the shape as a whole, to the form as a whole, as well as to every single part of it. So if one part is not stable, the whole cannot be comfortable. If one part is not comfortable, the whole cannot be stable. So sthiram sukham has to be applied throughout your awareness of the whole of the body, within the form of that posture. Even though the postures are many the form of the body, in the form of each one of the postures, is always exactly the same. You always have two legs, you always have two arms, hands, et cetera. This doesn’t change no matter what the shape is. Within diversity of form, is unity of the parts making that particular expression of form. The form is unique, but within that there is a universal dynamic.
This dynamic is always exactly the same. It is one in which each and every joint is as stable and free as all of the others. This requires that all the supporting muscles are particpating equally and together: not one is overworking, not one is underworking. This is not defined by any abstract quantification, but by the actual capacity of each body in the moment. A capacity in each muscle, each joint that determines the exact form and genoetry of the posture in that moment. This dynamic which activates muscles and articulates joints to the best of their ability depends on awareness. Awareness must extend equally into each part of the body. The balanced integration of action depends entirely on this.
So you’re looking for a similar internal activation and awareness in each externally different posture: within diversity, unity. So, how far apart should your feet be in Virabhadrasana? This is not determined by any geometrical criteria. This is determined in your own practice by the presence or absence of sthiram sukham. Which is itself determined not by geometry but muscular availability. An availablity that is given to stability to invite comfort. This always depends entirely on the manner in which you’re grounding your foundation. Any builder will tell you this is obvious. There is no point in bothering yourself with the roof if the foundations have not been correctly laid: then the roof will be off. There is no way out. This is the same in a yoga posture.
However the laying of the foundation of the yoga posture happens breath by breath, second by second, moment by moment. It is not like building a house where once you’ve laid the foundation you can forget about it. You have to lay the foundation breath by breath, moment by moment. That means you ground whichever parts of the body are supposed to be in contact with the floor as fully, evenly and actively as necessary: and as consistently as possible. Recognising that this contact, this grounding is by necessity constantly fluctuating. All you’re trying to do is to minimise and stabilise that fluctuation. So it’s not about being aggressive. It’s not about imposing stillness or forcing stability. It’s, again, an enquiry. Is it possible to keep my front foot and my back foot as grounded as possible? As the answer starts to become, “no”, then the question has to be asked, “have I not gone far enough?” or, “have I gone too far? “ and if the answer is yes, then you change.
So what that means for many people in Virabhadrasana, is that the bending of the front leg which is the most obvious thing, and the forward movement of your body and your attention, which is the most obvious and natural result, must rest upon and come from the grounding of your back foot. The keeping of your attention, your awareness to the back.
The grounding of the back foot, especially of the heel and the inner edge of the foot depends upon the activity of the leg, as always. The grounding of the foot depends always on what the leg is doing. If the back leg is not doing fully, then the back leg is going to bend. Even if the back heel does not come off the floor, it loses full contact with the floor, and then the spine is no longer being fully supported. Then going deeper into the bending of the front leg is punishing the spine. You can’t feel it because you are thinking about how difficult it is. How difficult it is is a distraction. Bending the leg doesn’t require any thought about how hard or easy it is. Thought isn’t really necessary. Feeling is enough. Feeling is what tells you if your foot is grounded enough. Not thought. Thought might ask the question, but thought cannot answer the question, though it can recognise the answer.
If the back foot becomes ungrounded, stability is compromised and lost. Sthiram is not present and therefore sukham cannot be present. No matter how easy you are taking it. No matter how much you are giving yourself a break from effort. Effort is not the point. Ease does not mean no effort. Ease means no tension. There is a significant difference. Sukham refers to that. It doesn’t refer to doing the posture in the way of least resistance. This is not yoga. This is stretching to relax without regard to damage being done to the body. So your effort is directed primarily to sthiram. To stability: to stabilising, grounding, securing your foundation. Then action is going on elsewhere to create freedom and ease. But the effectiveness of this depends upon the effectiveness of generating stability through your foundation.
So in all the double plane postures, postures in which you turn the pelvis along with the front foot, the challenges are the same. How much you turn the back foot depends on the capacity of your body. Or how much you have to turn your back foot depends on the restrictions in your pelvis. Likewise, whether or not you move the front foot to its side or not. If you move the front foot a lot to the side to become more stable, you may go too far and become unable to release: you become stagnant, you drop downwards and there is no lift. But if you don’t move your front foot enough you can’t turn, you can’t release either.
So the foot is moved not according to a geometrical measurement. The foot is moved according to sthiram sukham, to give you sthiram sukham. And this is always the case, with every adjustment in every posture. You thereby refine the shape of the posture into its true form. The true form of the posture is that wherein your body is being most deeply released by the posture, on the basis of an effortless stability. So you establish that true form, which is always individual and always changing, with the compass of sthiram sukham.
Mospf you are not yet ready for the classical postures. You don’t have the body awareness, you don’t have the training in the muscles to safely do them. When you do do them with the limited sensitivity and awareness you have now, you will be hurting yourself. But if you go step by step you will know when you are ready for any action. When your body is actually ready for any action it’s being taken can only be beneficial. The taking of an action when you are not ready is bound to be harmful, especially in the weird strangeness of a yoga posture. No matter how much it may develop your strength, or your pride. It is still nevertheless going to be harmful if you’re not ready for it: its gping to cpompromise your integrity, your ability to deeply enjoy being human . So little by little, step by step, yoga unfolds gradually and intelligently. Life also.
Yoga practice is not physical exercise. Yoga is not a form of athleticism. Yoga practice is an invitation to an awareness of that which is actually happening. Then you can live your life as it is, instead of pretending to be something or someone that you’re not. That your life is something that it isn’t. Despite the popular belief otherwise, you only live once. Then when you’re dead, you’re dead. The genetic code which gives you your unique existence will never, ever exist again. So you only have one chance to live your life and it’s now. It’s not tomorrow. It’s right now. And yoga is simply an invitation to that. To honour the life that you’ve been given. And by living it according to the capacity that it has. Not trying to make your body be like John Scott or Richard Freeman. This is an invitation to despair and dissatisfaction. Subtle perhaps, unadmitted maybe. But dissatisfaction nevertheless.
The form of the yoga posture is fundamentally a lense. A lense through which you can find out what is actually happening in your body. The body that is the basis of your life. Patanjali has given us another lense, through which to most effectively clarify that which is actually happening. A lense that has ten facets: the lense of yama and niyama. So within the form of the postures you are being invited to recognise the presence or absence of sensitivity, honesty, openness, presence, generosity, integrity, trust, passion, self awareness and spontaneity.
When your body is more challenged by the shape, when your body has less capacity to make that shape, those factors will be compromised more than when your body has the capacity to do the shape of that posture. The amount those factors are compromised is an indication of how you are doing.
The application of the principle compass of sthiram sukham is within the context of yamaniyama. Within the context of sensitivity, openness, honesty, presence, generosity, integrity, trust, passion, self awareness and spontaneity. These twelve factors: sthiram sukham, ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha, suaca, santosa, tapas, svadhyaya and isvarapranidhana are the lenses through which you are invited to become aware of what is actually happening. To become aware of what is actually possible.
In other words they are the tools of your enquiry. You are not an engineer. Life is your engineer. Life has determined what you can do. All you can do is see is how you are doing it. Your physical capacity in the moment, right now, any moment, is pre-determined: gy genetics and prior use. It is what it is. And the purpose of yoga is to just find out what it is. To use it as it is. To let the shape of the posture, the form of the posture be an invitation to your capacity as it actually is to express itself as freely and fully as possible.
So the form, or the appearance, of what you are doing is not the point. The point is what’s happening inside. Sthiram or not. Sukham or not. Ahimsa or not. Satya or not. Et cetera. Are you actually awakening to your capacity? Are you actually alive to your life? Or are you trying to pretend to be something else, to be someone else? No matter if there are two identical twins, they would still not be two identical bodies, not two identical forms. Each one is unique. Each one of the postures is unique and each one of our bodies is unique.
Nevertheless each posture and each body is guided and articulated in the same way. By the application of these twelve principles: sthiram sukham and yamaniyama. But just bear in mind when you’re practicing that you are never likely to be as stable, as relaxed as you would like, and that’s ok. Just enquire into how stable and how relaxed you can be. As that becomes ok, you will relax more. As you relax more you will be able to become more stable: if you are able to honour your restrictions, if you are able to accept your limitations, if you are able to honour your capacity as it is. Then your capacity will increase naturally just by using it honestly and fully.
This pragmatic goal to which, according to Patanjali, the yoga method is directed, is simply to free the body from tension. What it feels like when the body is free from tension is what the word asana means. Asana is not a shape, asana is what is being invited to happen within the shape. Pascimottan means to intensely stretch the back of the body, that’s the shape. Asana may come. May not come. It’s present according to Patanjali when the body is manifesting the infinite beyond its structural dualities. He defines asana completely as “joyful steadiness free from tension manifesting the infinite beyond duality”. But because Patanjali is talking pragmatically about the body being free from tension, the duality that he is talking about is the dualities that occur within the body. Which of course are many: but most directly, most immediately, their structural dualities are front back, left right, top bottom, inside outside, centre and periphery.
The significance of the words “manifesting the infinite beyond duality” is quite simply that you don’t feel your body any more. You don’t label sensations that would be telling you that you have a left side of something. You don’t recognise sensations that would be telling you that you have a front of the body or a front of the knee or a front of the arm or a front of the head. You don’t label sensations arising: you’re not perceiving any specific thing. What’s happening relative to left right, front back, top bottom, inside outside, centre periphery in the nervous system, is not happening in your conscious mind. You are not conscious of the structural dualities of the bod’s form. You are aware of the the being presence of your life in a totally different way. An awareness that is satisfying to the point of being able to release you completely from identification with the body.
Now you all know what I am talking about. You all know that, you are not really relating to your body as an object in the postures, except when I am annoying you by telling you what to do. You’re just in the flow of action in the body, in the flow of awareness. This is what Patanjali means by manifesting the infinite beyond duality. He doesn’t mean anything weird, esoteric or beyond your capability.
When you lie down in a hammock in the shade or the sun, for a moment, you may experience that state. Your backache won’t bother you. Your left hip being tight won’t talk to you. The lack of mobility in your right shoulder will not be impinging itself on your consciousness. So asana is this state of freedom from the body as an object while within the body and conscious of the difference.
In yoga posture the possibility of this is highly developed. They allow that transformation to happen in the midst of action. In the midst of complicated action. Using each part of the body in a specific way but no longer feeling those parts of the body as separate entities. No longer feeling those actions as separated actions. This is what the articulation of the body in space, or form in yoga, is for. To free you from objectifying the body. To release you from making your body into an object. Not meaning that it never happens again, but just to show you that there is another possibility. To show you that within that possibility there is an incredible spaciousness, lightness, ease and satisfaction.
If you are doing something inactive that interests you a lot, like watching the sunset or listening to Mozart, or whatever it is, you are only likely to perceive your body if there is something wrong with it. If you’ve got a stomach ache or a backache or a toothache you will notice it. Otherwise you will not. Your body is not there as an object of your perception. Of course it’s there as an object in space: but not as an object in your perception. Even the parts of it that you are using, your ears are not there as objects of perception when you are hearing Mozart. Of course, this is not yet asana. It is the everyday groujnd, with which we are all very familiar.
Neverthless almost all yoga practitioners know what asana is. We are familiar with it without necessarily recognising it. Without recognising it as being anything special. It is not anything special. Not in the sense of hard to get. It’s specialness becomes apparent when you recognise it’s happening. When you become conscious of a transformation in your sense of your body and your self. This happens a lot in practice. In fact it is one of the most potent motivating forces that brings us back to the mat: it is such a delight to no longer feel restricted to finite dimensionality yet still be very alert, clear and present.
In this way the structural dualities of the body are transcended in yoga postures. Most effectively this is coming from the bandhas because the body has an infinite potentiality for objectness. You can make an object out of any aspect of the body. And the more refined your perception, the more objects you can make. Mr Iyengar has made objects in the body that he didn’t even know in advance existed. He has felt actions that have been occurring in your body but that you could never feel. This can go on forever. You can carry on making objects and making actions forever as you refine your perception. Just like the scientist, you never get to the fundamental particle. You never get to the fundamental part of the body because perception can go on and on refining itself
The beauty of the bandhas is you don’t have to go in that direction. You can do what yoga implies; you can unify instead of fragment. You can allow the bandhas to move out of the core of your body equally into the left upper, right lower, front centre and back periphery all at the same time. Going equally and instantaneously into the left arm left hand, right leg right foot, etcetera.
In order to express the bandhas freely in the right arm, the right arm has to be free of tension. You don’t have to address yourself to the particularities of tension. You don’t have to say, “is there tension in my shoulder?”. You just try and express the bandhas. You let the left hand expression of the bandhas speak to the right; the left foot to the left leg, etcetera. They speak to each other all the time, and encourage each other in their doing. By being sensitive to the flow of sensation we can support and enhance that intrinsic process of communication. We do this by feeling, not by geometry. By balancing sensations, feelings, qualities. This natural feedback between the body parts guides you into more fully expressing it. When you express it everywhere you are expressing the same quality of openness, lightness, infiniteness everywhere.
This comes from grounding what needs to be grounded while making space wherever possible. This process naturally organises itself into spirallic lines of force throughout the whole body. The integration of broadening what can be broadened, and lengthening what can be lengthened takes place naturally: through the inherent integrity of the body. An integrity that expresses itself, that functions through the agency of the pain-pleasure mechanism. The more fully expresses itself the more the body loses its objectness, and manifests its infiniteness.
So that eventually the actions that could be analysed into separate actions by an anatomist, just generate each other. You don’t think about them, you just think I’m going to open. That’s all, I’m going to open. I’m going to open and release. I’m going to open and relax. In order to open and relax which is sukham, I must stabilise. The process that I’m using is the bandhas. Mulabandha gives you sthiram: stability and Uddiyanabandha gives you sukham: opening. So when you activate the internal feet spirals in Uttanasana, forward bend feet apart, then you can feel that releasing the pelvic floor, the buttock bones coming apart. But if you carry on that too much you start to fall forwards. So if you then use the external feet spirals that action grounds you. It limits the opening of the buttock bones and compresses inwards from the hip bones. That compression inwards combined with the opening pushes the spine out like toothpaste from a tube and the spine goes down from that stability effortlessly.
So the essential, unifying mechanism for freeing the body from tension so that it manifests the infinite beyond duality, is the bandhas. Which of cousre are not esoteric sacraments, but instrinsic muscular responses to gravity. So that the bandhas are creating an equivalent freedom, left right, front back, top bottom. Rather than just focussing your freedom where your intent goes; hamstrings, lumbar, shoulders or whatever. When you do that you may get a relative freedom but usually it comes at the price of restriction somewhere else. Not always, but very often. But if you prioritise with the bandhas that can’t happen. If you’re radiating the bandhas from the passive core of your body to the periphery then this radiation will equalise, left right, front back, top bottom, inside outside.
So when this is happening, when the bandhas are coming out to the hands and the left hand is more free, more open, it begins speaking to the right arm. Then more opening starts coming through that communication because that means that the left side of the brain controlling these muscles can tell the right side of the brain controlling those muscles something. This is not anything to do with your thinking process. It is just how the body learns, transmitting information through the neurons according to your intent to balance.
As you are doing this, as you activate the feet spirals for example, you feel very clearly what’s happening in the pelvis. Perhaps not so clearly, you can also feel what’s happening in the lungs. And when you combine the impact of the feet spirals, what’s happening from there in the lungs with what’s happening in the lungs because of the arms, then you are deeply in a process that you don’t need to conceptualise. Though conceptualising of it while it still hasn’t matured can be helpful. You are no longer operating as if each part of the body was separate. You are no longer operating as if each action was separate. You can feel that exactly what you do to the ball of the big toe can be felt in the lungs.
So what this shows you is that the distinction between the different parts of the body are just a function of the mind. They are not intrinsic to the body. If you say to yourself, “extend the little finger” you can feel it in the lung. So you have actually done something to the lung, to the shoulder, to the arm, to the elbow, to the forearm, to the wrist, to the hand by applying intent to your finger. So the separate parts of the body turn out to be connected. But they turn out to be connected in a very specific way: which is that they are absolutely and totally interconnected. So you can take any part of your body and if you are sensitive enough you can move any other part of the body and feel it there. Any part.
All the parts of the body are totally interconnected. You can become somatically, functionally comfortable with the interconnectivity of the apparently separable parts of the body. That phrase was said very specifically, very deliberately. When you start to realise that the apparently separable parts of the body are not actually and inherently separate then the significance of the word yoga is being manifest in your experience. You haven’t unified lung and finger. You have discovered that lung and finger are not separate. So yoga is not something that you do to make union happen. Union is here. Unity is here. Non separateness is here. That non separateness can be recognised in any moment. It can be any time, you don’t have to have done yoga to do it, really. Yoga is not about making things happen. The process of yoga is about seeing what happens by itself. So that you can, by that recognition, become free from your false and limiting assumptions about yourself and about life.
When that interconnectivity becomes non separateness that’s when the infinite is manifest. That’s when the body as a whole is no longer an object: because the body as a whole is manifest by its apparent parts. When the apparent parts are not saying “me” then there is a total silence in the body. Then the body disappears as an object of perception.
This the bandhas invite irresistibly. It doesn’t matter how strong you are. It doesn’t matter how flexible you are. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve got tension in the body because the bandhas are inviting you to drop below that level of perception. In that dropping of your perception to a deeper level a relaxation in the body and mind happens. This happens because tension in the body is to a great extent maintained by the habit of objectness in the mind. If I anaesthetise you it goes away: gone because the mind has gone. The habit of objectifying your body has been stopped. Then I can do whatever I like with your body because your mind has gone. So your body has gone soft. Your body no longer has parts, no longer has restrictions
So it’s the mind that’s creating the tension. When the bandhas internalise your attention, perception deepens and tension drops. As you tune in to more subtle levels of the inherently unified field we call the body, the objectness of the body, and its tensions start to dissolve. It doesn’t mean that it won’t come immediately back. Momentarily it can be suspended. So ultimately this is the significance of form. The significance of form is that it is a function of perception.
Perception makes form. This is where the deep gift of the bandhas lies. They take you out of form by changing your perception. By unifying your perception. The bandhas involve the things most close to you, which are the parts of the body. They take the things most close to you which are usually separated, and show you that these things are not separate Simultaneously they show you that they are simply a function of your perception. You don’t have to conceptualise this for the impact to happen. The bandhas are freeing you from objectness.
Objectness in your daily life for example means saying: “she is a bitch”. “She is really sweet”. “I know she is a bitch because she said something bad about me behind my back.” “I know that she is sweet because she said something good about me”. That’s how we make objects. That’s how we objectify people. We define, we fix an object on the basis of a few actions. Normally that we have heard third or second hand. Rumour.
This is where we get caught. Nice person, not nice person. Good person, bad person. Right, wrong. This is where blame comes in. We have made objects where there are not necessarily any actual objects as such. Sometimes of course we need to make objects. If you want to make dinner you have to make an object of the knife or you might cut your finger. You have to make an object of the finger. But you don’t have to make an object of the cook if you don’t like the meal. You can just say I didn’t like the meal. That’s the only thing you can really truly say. I didn´t like the meal. You can’t truly and honestly say it’s a bad cook just because you didn’t like it.
Objectness is where we are all caught. At the root of objectness is what is at the heart of the teaching of the Buddha. Now, he was perhaps the most lucid spiritual teacher that there has ever been. The essence of his teaching is that that special object, the self, does not exist. That doesn’t mean that there is nothing there. My saying that the finger doesn’t exist as something separate from the lung, doesn’t mean there is nothing there. Of course there is something there. If you think I mean there is nothing there then come and try to take it off with a knife and see what I do. There is something there but it is not the object we take it to be. It is not what we think.
The bandhas can be a key, an invitation, to really get to grips with the nature of objectness. It doesn’t mean that objectness in itself disappears. It just means that you see what objectness is. It’s a function of action and a function of perception. A function of the perceptions required of action. You need to make an object. But when you’re lying on a beach really relaxed and there’s nobody there, you don’t need to make an object out of anything. You just relax. That is what all of your hard earned money is for. It is! That’s what all of everybody’s money is for! To relax! Feel safe. Let go. The bandhas can really help you to this let go. Not just in the moment of your practice, but in the flow of your life too. That’s what they’re for really. Not to take you to some better, farout place for a while, but to ground you in the flow of life by allowing you to see the contrived, though helpful, nature of objects and perception.
