YOGA AS, YOGA IS ENQUIRY
The journey of yoga is not about flexibility and it is not about strength. It is not about improvement, or achievement. It is not about making the body different. It is certainly not about self improvement. It is about relaxing. This can be very easy to understand and accept but that does not mean it is easy to apply to practice. Part of the problem is that it is possible to develop flexibility on top of tension. Very often also the development of flexibility rests on the creation of tension elsewhere. Deeper, more subtle tension. In fact flexibility has got almost nothing to do with yoga. It is a minor side effect, but a huge distraction. Strength and stamina also.
To be physically gifted, to have a well developed physical capacity, can be a great dis-service in yoga. This is because you can then take your movement, your actions and their source for granted. Whereas when you’re stiff and limited in your capacity, your limitations bring you into focus on what is actually happening. Because you have to. So that limitation is a gift to yoga practice. When yoga is effectively understood. If yoga is understood to be about maximising strength and flexibility, stamina or whatever: then no. Yoga is not satisfyingly about trying to make things happen. Its power and possibility to satisfy depend on it being an enquiry. Enquiry into what is actually happening in and as the body. This enquiry brings us to the deepest possible relaxation. The deepest possible peace. Not effort. Not skill. Not knowledge.
More important than the techniques of our practice is the experience of our practice. The way that we go about what we are doing is even more important than the technique we are using. This is because the deep power of yoga, and of life, rests on being present to that which is actually being done, that which is actually happening. As being deeply present to that which is actually happening yoga can take place almost anywhere. Except when we are actually being threatened. Except when what is happening is generating tension. All the fruits of yoga derive from being intimate with what is: with what is actually happening.
It is well advertised that yoga brings enlightenment, liberation, self-realisation, freedom. These are all huge, heavy concepts that cause deep, though unacknowledged, anxiety and self deception. These concepts are like food: only of concern to those who can’t get any. They actually have nothing to do with yoga. Except when yoga is abused as a form of self improvement. Why would we want to improve something that obscures our unity with existence, with God, anyway? Is there actually a self that can be improved? Is the self, after all, merely a mirage?
According to the Buddha there is no self: so why invest in something that doesn’t exist. According to Patanjali the self is “citishakti”. Or consciousness in movement, or action. He says that we realise that when are no longer caught by the temporal play of appearances that is the world. This doesn’t mean that the taxman, traffic wardens, children and in-laws disappear. It means that we are no longer uptight about them, caught by them. That we are able to deal with them without friction, without resistance. We are able to take the actions we need to take without being disheartened by any of it.
Yoga does not take your life away. It does not take your obligations away. It does not take your responsibilities away. It does not take your bills away. It does not take your cellulite away. It might take your anxieties away. It may take your regrets away. It will hopefully take your guilt away. But not by becoming more flexible or strong. Not by learning to hold your breath for four minutes. That will just take your spare time away.
Yoga can invite freedom from guilt, regret, shame, anxiety and despair. But not by conquering them. Not by overcoming, overpowering. Yoga is surrender. All this means is that we let go: we relax. This relaxation takes place in the body as an invitation for it to take place also in the mind. We do posture practice only to relax, not to become better. To let go of tension. To let go of our misdirected and misconceived efforts. To let go of our misdirected and misconceived intentions. To find out that, in the end, all our efforts, all our intentions are unnecessary. They are all misconceived and misdirected. You have always been citishakti. You have never been less than that. You do not have to achieve that. You already are that. You just have to relax enough to know that. To know that indubitably and unforgettably.
Knowing indubitably that you are consciousness in movement, that you have no self, that you are not cut off from the indivisible wholeness of existence, is not such a big deal. It doesn’t diminish the power of gravity. It doesn’t recalibrate the weak and strong nuclear force. It doesn’t turn winter into summer. It just means that circumstances no longer have the same power over you that they once did. They no longer determine your attitude to being alive. Yoga is not about establishing or enjoying a special set of circumstances. Not even inner circumstances like flexibility, concentration, knowledge. These really have nothing to do with yoga: except as possible side effects. Yoga as a process is simply enquiry. Enquiry into that which is actually happening. This enquiry, yoga, can only take place when you are not being threatened, you are not under pressure.
The practices of yoga exist only to focus this enquiry because our minds are so easily distracted. Yoga practices are usually both unusual and challenging. This keeps us engaged, focussed, present. If we are unable to stay focussed they are no good. It is the focussing that is important: not what we are focussing on. We are focussing on what is happening in and as the body. This is not because what is happening in the body is so important. It is to establish deeper intimacy with the body. To encounter the true nature of the body. So that perhaps we can find our what we really, most deeply are. Not as an intellectual enquiry: but so that we can let go of all our misbegotten attempts to be what we are not, to become what we can not become. You cannot become free if you are not bound.
Life takes place through, in and as our body. All the time. Yet for this very reason we are actually quite alienated from our body. We take it for granted. And why shouldn’t we? It is always here, always functioning always taking care of business for us. Yoga is about coming back to the body as it is. Becoming intimate with the body. What it is doing is not really the point. Its just the point of focus.
The point about yoga is the nature of the body: not its activity. We use the unusual and challenging activities, or techniques, of yoga to become intimate with our own nature. To find out what we actually are. Maybe we are not who or what we have always thought we are. Maybe we suffer because we think we are something we are not. Like the ugly duckling. Maybe knowing what we really are is what yoga is about. Maybe yoga is not about changing one false idea for another false prison. Maybe it is simply seeing things, knowing things as they actually are.
This is not so hard. It doesn’t rest on us already knowing how things actually are. It doesn’t depend on us making things other than they actually are. We only need to become intimate with the way things already are. The easiest place to begin this is as close to home as possible. With our own body. This is yoga. Becoming intimate with the nature of the body. This is only possible if we give it space to express itself. To be itself. This is not possible if we are setting tasks for it. If we want our body to become flexible or strong. If we want our body to become immune to disease and death. This is imposition. This is self improvement. This is foolishness. This is irrelevant to yoga. What is relevant to yoga is simply that we be enquiring deeply into what is happening in and as the body.
For genuine enquiry even to be possible we have to be free from struggle, free from the tyranny of achievement, ambition. For deep enquiry to take place we need a lens. A lens that takes us deep into our body. Yoga practices, techniques are these lenses. They allow us to look deeply within the body. They allow us to encounter our body more deeply, more fully. This encounter will only be fruitful, satisfying, if it allows us to become genuinely intimate with our body. This can not be so if we are trying to impose anything on it. This can not happen if we are demanding anything of it. This is impossible if we are trying to improve the body or anything else.
When we enquire deeply in to what is happening in and as body we encounter more than the body. We also encounter mind. As our experience of body becomes more deep, more subtle and more clear, so is our experience of mind. We begin to realise that there is no experience of body without mind. That there is no experience of mind without body. That though they can be separated conceptually, in out thinking, they cannot be separated in experience. To experience any aspect of the body is to recognise that aspect. Mind revealing body and body revealing mind.
If we keep enquiring into what is actually happening we soon encounter more than body and mind. We encounter, we recognise the presence of awareness. We realise that there can be no experience of body without the presence of awareness. We realise that there can be no experience of mind without the presence of awareness. We realise that there can be no experience at all without the presence of awareness. We realise that to encounter the body deeply is to experience both mind and awareness. We realise that awareness, mind and body are one.
This is a powerful realisation. One that does not and can not come from effort. It does not come from trying to shape our experience. A realisation that does not and can not come from wishful thinking. It does not come from understanding the logic of it. It comes only from experience. Experience that rests on a deep, intimate encounter with the nature of the body. An encounter that can only take place if we are relaxed. The realisation of our true nature depends on our being relaxed enough to be able to enquire deeply enough into what is happening in and as the body. Nothing else is required. Anything else will prevent enquiry from happening. Anything else will prevent relaxation from becoming deep peace. Anything else will prevent yoga from being fruitful.
