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Yoga
Posture
In this interview with Georg
Feuerstein published in Yoga World magazine yoga therapy pioneer Gary
Kraftsow examines and challenges the idea that a yoga posture or asana
should "look" a certain, correct way.
Gary also explains how few yoga
postures you really need if you're practicing yoga for
"arogya" (health).
Yoga Posture As Mirrors
by Georg Feuerstein
Yoga
World
1998
Georg: Most people come to Yoga through the
postures (asana),
leapfrogging over the moral disciplines. What is your view on this?
Gary:
Many years ago, when I was studying Sanskrit, I used the metaphor of
'first person, second person, third person,' and I find that most
people try to jump from the first person to the third person.
The third
person approach involves thinking that a given posture should look a
certain way, and when you find that your body cannot actually perform
the posture, you superimpose your will on your structure, which happens
through the medium of muscular contraction.
And so you end up creating
rigidity in the structure, maybe even hyper mobility in the joints,
instead of having a sort of I -Thou, second-person relationship to it
all.
In the I -Thou relationship, as Martin Buber called it,
the posture is a mirror to help you see something about your body, and
then based on what you see, you make some changes.
Yoga Asanas Posture
So people
tend to think of asana as some kind of external thing, but it's not at
all. It's a mirror to help you see something about ourselves, and then
on the basis of that seeing, you take some action to change things.
If
you relate to asana in this way, it actually parallels the whole
process of deepening your self-awareness and transcending some of your
dysfunctions.
Thus, asana is a part of the process of transformation,
and the methodology is the same, as you would use in working through
certain psychological issues in your personality.
Georg:
Otherwise, one strives to realize some idealized archetype instead of
finding out what the archetype, the appropriate posture, is in one's
own case.
Gary: People tend to make icons out of their
asanas, just as they tend to make icons out of their teachers, their
belief systems, and their ideas. Then asana practice becomes something
that you worship, which is completely absurd.
Georg: In
other words, instead of becoming an attitude that is an integral part
of one's life, the asana is turned into postural posing...
Gary:..which means it becomes dead, fixed, rigid.
Georg: Is this the kind of thing you discuss in your forthcoming book
on Yoga therapy?
Gary:
The first part of my book is on the methodology of
practice, so I talk
about how to relate to practice so that it is an authentic process for
yourself rather than an imposition of will.
Yoga Basic Postures
Then I say something about
the art and science of adaptation. According to the Viniyoga tradition
of Shri Krishnamacharya and T.K.V. Desikachar, there is not, for
example, a fixed form for a given posture, but rather there are
multiple forms. Also, you can do the postures in different ways in
order to access different parts of your body.
Georg: This
also means that there may not only be all these variations, but that in
the course of your life you may do the postures differently depending
on your situation.
Gary: Absolutely, in the course of a week
I may use the same posture in different ways, depending upon what I am
trying to achieve.
Beginning Yoga Posture
Georg: Then how does one learn a posture so that it arises naturally?
Gary:
There are two parts to this. First, there is a certain way of using the
breath. For us, the core of asana practice is understanding how to use
the breath.
Working with the breath is not coincidental or something
for which you wait until you are more advanced. Breath is actually the
medium of movement in the posture. Thus it becomes a way of accessing
or feeling internally what's happening in the body.
Second,
you obviously have to have a certain amount of training. In my teacher
training, I go over all the different ways of adapting the form of a
posture in order to emphasize certain parts of the body. Also we need
to learn how to adapt the breath, because ther is not just one way of
using it.
The whole orientation of our practice is not to
create the body in one's own image or someone else's image, but to
discover the body through the process as it unfolds. It doesn't take
long to train people to begin to feel what's actually happening in
their body.
Hatha Yoga Posture
Georg: Do you think a conflict could arise
because some people might think, "If there is no one form for an asana,
I am free to do it in any way I like"?
Gary: Yes, that
happens and people say, "I just follow my intuition." But in our
training, we are educating the intuition, and there also are certain
parameters within which we work. The postures described in such manuals
as the Hatha-Yoga-Pradipika reveal something about our potential as
human begins. But this doesn't mean that everybody should do all the
postures.
What is functional for your body may be quite different for
someone else. What your body needs is likely to be different from what
my body needs.
So, the classical texts were accompanied by
an oral transmission from teacher to student, and I think the written
text simply served as an aid to memory. The texts were never intended
to contain the whole teaching.
Gary: I think people take the
classic idea of a posture too far. You may do the form correctly, but
this doesn't mean you will achieve the function. If you can do the form
correctly, this may because your body has certain release valves. In
our workshop on movement therapy, I often ask, "Who can do upavishta
konasana?"
This posture requires you to sit on the floor with your legs
spread far apart. Well, there are always those who can naturally extend
their legs all the way.
Georg: Because they are 'double-jointed.'
Gary:
Well, what's happening is that they are experiencing the real work of
the posture. So if you are too loose, you can't achieve the function.
If you are too tight and are trying too hard, you will never get there
either.
In my experience, for most people-whether they are too loose or
too tight-we have to adapt the posture so that they can derive benefit
from it.
Georg: Would you say, then, that for a person
wanting to incorporate Hatha-Yoga into a very simple home practice,
very few postures are needed?
Gary: Right. You need very,
very few postures. From a collection of perhaps fifteen different
asanas, you can create a practice that will last you an entire
lifetime. There is no need to go on adding ever more postures.
In
our tradition, the orientation of the practice varies. If the
orientation is to develop what we call sharira-samyama, or mastery of
the body, then of course you need to learn a lot of postures. But if
your goal is arogya, or health, you need very few postures. If you want
to learn postures for prolonged dhyana, or meditation, then it is also
very simple.
Yoga Pose Sequence
Georg: Can you say a little more about adaptation in relation to
sequencing?
Gary:
Many schools have a fixed sequence of postures, but there is a whole
art and science of crating different sequences, of combining various
postures to serve your present needs. For instance, on one day you may
have more or less time, or you may have a back problem, neck pain, or
something wrong with your digestion, or you may be emotionally
distressed.
This sequencing is called vinyasa. People think
that this Sanskrit words means 'flow,' but it actually means 'steps.'
We use the terms vinyasa and pratikriya. Vinyasa stands for
preparation, and `conveys compensation.
The art and science of
combination is one of the most difficult and most important aspects of
the process. As a teacher I find that the quality of a class is
influenced by the types of postures I select.
A lot of other teachers
go by a formula. They may have one sequence or perhaps two or three,
from which they arbitrarily select a sequence whereas the
Krishnamacharya / Desikachar tradition that I am using has a very
highly articulated science of sequencing.
I also introduce
the biomechanics of movement. Here I answer questions like, What is a
forward bend? What are the ways in which the body avoids the effect of
a forward bend?
We may be impressed with someone whose hips flop over
in this posture, but actually loose hips are again something like a
release valve, denying a practitioner the beneficial stretch in the
back.
In my book I go systematically through all the postures,
answering such questions as, what is a backward bend? What is a twist?
What are lateral bends? What is extension, inversion, and so forth?
Then
I discuss therapy for common aches and pains, chronic disease, and
emotional health. There are thirty-one photographed sequences in the
book, which is something like a textbook.
Georg: All five
hundred pages of it! I think it's a wonderful project. One problem you
may encounter is that suddenly there will be a lot of people teaching
this way without the necessary background.
Benefit Yoga Posture
Gary: Well, the
way I handled that somewhat is by including case studies. There are
chapters on the digestive system, the cardiovascular system, and the
respiratory system. I talk about the function of these systems, and
then I categorize illnesses that can impact each system in relation to
conditions of excess or conditions of deficiency.
Then I present a case
study based on people I have actually worked with, which makes my
prescriptions for sequences specific to these individuals.
This
will show my readers that Yoga therapy is a real tradition that is a
very effective way of treating a lot of conditions. It may not be able
to cure all health condition, but by treating the individuals who have
those conditions, it can help them feel better about themselves. In
this way, Yoga therapy can sometimes indirectly improve the condition.
Certainly with structural problems and certain of the chronic diseases,
we can really help. But mainly we can show people who have these
conditions that they can do a lot themselves toward improving their
health.
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