Whole and Complete
Jules Mitchell (a teacher I enjoy and admire) sent a really profound email this week, one that brought tears to my eyes.
She had been asked: What is missing from yoga? Her response: Nothing. She succinctly pointed out how the common criticisms of asana practice (too much passive range, not enough strength building, it’s an incomplete fitness program, etc) discount what yoga actually is, and what it does.
Yoga is vast, but asana cannot be everything to everyone. It’s foolish to chase down one pursuit and to expect the outcomes of another. If you want the strength of a weightlifter, lift some weights.
Yoga, and asana in particular, is central to my life. Asana is my starting point for all my students and clients. Asana does not exclude other aspects of yoga, and it assists the development of other techniques (pranayama, concentration, self-inquiry, and others). I’m not a traditionalist with the asana practice, not by any means. I’m intrigued by a creative take and a novel approach. In my perspective, asana is wide open. But, it’s not incomplete, or lacking anything.
Jules prompted us to consider the moments of transformation that we’ve experienced, and to centralize that in what we communicate. Here’s my reflection.
I’m here for the lifelong, long term development, and I’ve been fortunate to have my decades of practice punctuated by a couple of moments of transformation.
On an impossible day, I found my way to my bed in the afternoon. For about 30 minutes, I lay still, with the word “find” on each inhale and the word “peace” on each exhale. This stillness and breath and mantra practice blunted the impact of a savage darkness, softened the claws of desperation and made tender my panicking heart. Not only was this a one-off experience of peace in the least peaceful heart, it’s a skill that I hold onto on other impossible days.
I also hold dear an experience in sarvangasana, in a week of classes with Kofi Busia at Kripalu. We surely must have been in shoulderstand for nearly 15 minutes, long enough to go through 1,000 psychological reactions (from enthusiasm to fear to anguish to resignation!). This pose puts my limitations of my left shoulder and neck in sharp focus, and I wiggle, fidget and exit and re-enter the pose, to search for a corner of comfort. In the restlessness of my discomfort, I saw my jaw tightening and clenching. With an exhale, I loosened my jaw, felt my inner ear release with a pop. When I got out of the pose and lay on the floor, and felt an unexpected softness in my throat and chest. I took a deeper breath than I ever had, and knew I could approach my most recalcitrant habits with my practice.
On the day that I needed to calm my stormy heart, I turned to stillness and breath, with a simple mantra. In an interminable shoulderstand, I found a little space in the tightest spot. I suppose these are techniques that I could teach, but I could never guarantee that they’d serve the same purpose for you. The outcomes were highly personal, contextualized by my relationship to self and to my practice. I value them because they nudged me along, not because they made for a more scientifically-sound, research-proven fitness routine.
You will see me take creative approaches to teaching and practicing asana, and I’ll include adjacent techniques to highlight how our bodies move. My modern approach to asana is inclusive of many ideas and it’s held by this mantra from the Upanishads:
Om purnamadah purnamidam purnat purnamudachyate
Purnasya purnamadaya purnamevavashisyate
Om shantih shantih shantih
This is whole and complete; that is whole and complete.
The whole and complete comes from the whole and complete.
When the whole and complete is removed from the whole and complete,
The whole and complete remains.
Om, peace, peace, peace.