Here’s one man who has impressed me so much. Nobody knows who he was or much details about him. His work is compiled under a pseudonym. His work on Yoga is what I consider the best and many others do. When there is a such brilliant piece of work written by someone, the natural tendency for people many centuries ago was to associate this person with some divine powers. Hence Patañjali was known as reincarnation of Adisesa, the serpent used by Vishnu during meditation. Adisesa provides sthiram and sukham. Vishnu also has Garuda the eagle to take him anywhere he wants. The serpent and the eagle are such opposite forces, but they coexist here for Vishnu. The reasoning why Adisesa was chosen for Vishnu’s support for meditation was that Adisesa was associated with a mature personality who has gone through a lot in life. Adisesa is also supporting the Earth on his head and taking care of Vishnu, who has an important job to perform as the Preserver of the Universe. Vishnu  needs a strong support and wisdom as a guide in Adisesa. A lot of stories are symbolic in Hinduism. Kausthub Desikachar writes Patañjali Unplugged, an interesting article on Patañjali .

Yoga Sutra says Īśvara is the teacher of teachers. Īśvara is a fine object of meditation and how important it is for this object to be flawless. When you constantly meditate on something, it simply has to be perfect. For one imbibes the qualities of the object of meditation. I have searched long and hard to have a guru. But, Patañjali will be my guru and Īśvara. Human beings don’t cut it for me.  Here’s the prayer to Patañjali as taught by KYM.

]]> http://www.yogzilla.com/2010/04/20/my-isvara/feed/ 0 http://www.yogzilla.com/2009/10/18/chaturanga-four-chapters/ http://www.yogzilla.com/2009/10/18/chaturanga-four-chapters/#comments Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:19:37 +0000 Sraddhā http://www.yogzilla.com/?p=1171 This is not about the yoga push up or push down. This is a film that I watched at VIFF and is one of the very few Indian films. The film is based on Rabindranath Tagore’s book. I am not sure if the book also goes by the same title, it was not mentioned. This is an interesting and complex film with many questions for Patanjali. What is spirituality and what really does it lead to? Or is it just escapism from the real world? Is it for the weak who cannot handle the real world? The film deals with these questions and more through the various characters, which are four and hence the title chaturanga, four chapters.

The main character in the film is one confused person. He confidently jumps from one set of ideals to the other one. While he is at it, he strongly believes in it and then leaves it for something else when he reaches the end of the line. The other characters around him question his behavior. Is he really so shallow that he leaves one for the other?

The film starts of with Sachish, the main character being an atheist and studying English literature in what looks like India during the British rule. He is inspired by his uncle who is a strong character who opens a private hospital at his house to treat the plague victims of all religions. After his uncle’s death, our main guy is lost. He turns to religion now, precisely what he did not like before. He follows a guru and is part of some cult. He meets a young widow at her house whose husband had donated the house to the guru. The woman is attracted to Sachish, but he is following the religious advice. So, he cannot accept her. This is where the questions for spirituality come up. What does it solve and where does it lead one to? Sachish’s friend mentions that spiritualism is like fake currency, absolutely useless. It is a flight of the weak from real life. The film ends with Sachish leaving the guru and being lost again.

I enjoyed the film a lot. The movie is made like a play with just a few people in it.

I was always aware that this word has been misused. Then it slowly dawns on me that another important word in Yoga has also been redefined. Either by PJ himself or his followers. I keep hearing conversations like, “I practice hatha yoga, not astanga” or the other way around. I ask the ayogis what is the difference. They tell me astanga is where one moves from one asana to the other with a vinyasa thrown in. Hatha is where one stays in a pose longer. Ok, Patanjali would be quite unhappy to hear the ayogis speak like this. Any physical yoga practice is hatha yoga, as far as I know. Flow, astanga, power, bikram, sivananda, Krishnamacharya KYM style, you name it. All of them are hatha yoga. So, astanga is nothing but a “style” of hatha yoga.

Then the next word incorrectly used is Vinyasa. The word Vinyasa according to Sri Krishnamacharya is coordinating movements with proper breathing and the sequencing of the asanas in an intelligent way with a purpose. Each of the important asana is practiced with vinyasas meaning variations and movements.

According to this definition by Sri K, astanga does contain the vinyasa for important poses like pascimottanasana, janu sirsasana, marichyasana and so on. Of course, it is completely based off of Sri K’s sequences. But, PJ has come up with a new definition.  The actual Vinyasa is called just an asana and the jump thru has been named the Vinyasa. I really have to wonder why.

Vinyasa according to PJ is the part surya namaskar A or the jump thru (chaturanga, upward dog, downward dog and jump thru) performed between each asana. He could have easily come up with new names for all this and not confuse with the classic definitions. For example, chaturangi-jump-like-a-proud-peacock for his vinyasa or chaturangi-fly-like-a-feather.

I am so not happy with PJ for getting three important words or concepts completely wrong. I know most people don’t care about such things, but I do.

I wouldn’t ask for my money back for the class, that’s just about how much I liked the class. I like my teachers lean and inspiring. That way, I know they are practicing their yoga, they are grounded and in touch with yoga and are not just talk. Isn’t the body a telltale of one’s yoga practice?

I would not trust a UI designer whose website looks so bad, who has never bothered to spell check the sample writing or when the links do not work correctly. The website of UI designer or a writer has to be simply good. That is what they do and I expect a high quality product from them.

On similar lines, I think a yoga teacher cannot be fat, essentially because all teachers are students forever. A serious yoga practice needs to be done with mindfulness and the bandhas. Practice with bandhas lead to good muscular control and the body tends to get lean. Unless the teacher is injured or suffering from some health condition, there is no way, a serious student can get fat.

The classic yoga texts are a great help in taking one’s practice from a beginner level to an advanced practice, which an asana teacher must be doing. The astanga yoga in the yoga sutras says clearly that greed is something one must conquer to get serious about yoga. Greed of food and anything else is to be avoided. Moderation is highly recommended. 

Sri Krishnamacharya’s Yoga Rahasya also discusses food and its moderation.

Āhara means food. But the root word har is to kill. You eat food to kill the hunger. If you do not take care, it can kill you in excess. Eat only when you are hungry and always in moderation.

Hatha Yoga Pradipika goes into such details about the diet and how it must be followed to gain a mastery of pranayama and asanas.

What do the readers think? Can a yoga teacher be fat? Or, am I wrong in expecting a teacher to be lean?

Now that I am not working, I have all the time at my disposal. I am not sure if that  is  such a good thing. Having so much free unstructured time does not mean that I am ‘doing’ more yoga. I think I am doing just as much when I was working full time.

Sometimes, when I get on the mat in the mornings, I get this feeling that I should read Sri Krishnamcharya’s books for the thousandth time to see how his practice was in Tibet. I need to figure out the specifics of a Kalari pose, was it 75 degrees or 90 degrees between the spine and the legs? Or how can I get the special powers as described by Patañjali. I think I should learn to levitate.

I hear myself thinking that I can anyway practice at 4 in the afternoon. Then at 4 in the afternoon, I have this big dilemma. Actually, in India nobody practices yoga in the afternoon, it has to be only in the morning. I think this is what I have read. I must skip now and get back to my morning practice. Then I have this strange amnesia in the morning, sort of like the ground hog day. I have missed practicing yoga many days, just getting in this kind of talk with too much time on hand. I finally exit the ground hog day realizing that this break time is so precious and make up for the lost time.

My conclusion is that if I work full time or not, I practice just the same amount. May be I practice just a little less, when I have all the time on earth. Then I hear a few of my yogi friends saying that they are skipping yoga as they are so busy with work. It will be easy to practice when they have a lot of free time. As far as I can see, this really is not an issue of time. If something is important enough, it will be done. This is most likely one of the obstacles, my man Patañjali talks about in his work. Fatigue or lack of time usually is a projection of the confused mind. That is when I get to Patañjali’s work and be so impressed with his thought process and always imbibe clarity.

Can the self guide itself out of its self created misery? To answer that comes Ground hog day. Enjoy!

Sraddha means a deep faith. I heard a different meaning this morning, bull headed determination.

I read about this man Ranulph Fiennes, who made it to the summit of Everest. The first time he tried, he had a heart attack and had to turn back. He could not make it the second time due to exhaustion. He does not give up and he has made it the third time. Way to go, Ran!

I had read about a description of Patanjali’s Yoga in a book (I forget the title)  that says-

Patanjala’s yoga is a gentle method, it requires a tremendous will power, not that ardent effort which men can muster for some short time, as when one is facing martyrdom, but rather an untiring and relentless tenacity of purpose and unflinching determination.

A Raksasa is a demon. A very cruel person is also referred to as a Raksasa. Little did I know that a Raksasa is also a person who accumulates wealth but gives away little. Brahma Raksasa is one that accumulates knowledge but who does not share it with anyone. I read this new meaning of Raksasa in a book related to Yoga.

I also read a short story related to this concept of Raksasa in a book titled “How I taught my grandmother to read and other stories” by Sudha Murthy. She is the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, social worker and a writer. I enjoyed reading this book. It had a few short stories from Sudha Murthy’s life and one such story is about Charity and Giving. Here’s a snippet from this story.

A few years back, I was invited to a reputed company in Bangalore to deliver a lecture on Corporate Social Responsibility. Giving a speech is easy. But I was not sure how many people in the audience would really understand the speech and change themselves.

After my talk was over, I met many young girls and boys. It was an affluent company and the employees were bright, well-off, well-dressed and well travelled. They were all very emotional after the lecture and wanted to help out the victims of earthquake in Gujarat. They said they will send the donation materials to me, so I could co-ordinate this effort.

Within a week, my office was flooded with hundreds of bags. I was proud that my lecture had proven so effective. With the help of my assistants, I opened the bags. What we saw left us amazed and shocked. The bags were brimming over with all kinds of junk! Piles of high heeled slippers (some of them without the pair), torn undergarments, unwashed shirts, transparent cheap saris, toys which had neither shape nor colour, unusable bedsheets, broken cassettes were soon piled in front of us like a mountain. There were only a few good shirts, saris and usable materials.

Patanjali’s Yoga Darshanam aka Yoga Sutras is the first authoritative work on Yoga. Patanjali (Puh-th-anjali) is not the author or the originator of Yoga. He is the one that compiled it in writing for the first time. He assembled the vast knowledge of Yoga from the Vedas, Upanishads and from the teachings of his guru.

The concepts related to Yoga are scattered all over the place in the Vedas and Upanishads. Yoga was taught in the oral tradition and had been in existence for many many years (millenia is the word used in some books). Patanjali did not just compile it from the Vedas. There were some Yoga concepts there and it had evolved to another darshanam (philosophy) called Sankhya and then in to Yoga at the time of Patanjali.

Patanjali wrote this knowledge in the form of Sutra. A Sutra is made up a few words and they are hardly a complete sentence. They are concise but full of meaning. The entire Yoga Sutra is less than two thousand words, but there is enough content in it, to study this over a life time. They are so rich in meaning that so many commentaries have been written about them.

It takes a genius to write Sutras, as they are extremely difficult to write. They are so profound and deep in their meaning. Although Bhagavad Gita mentions Yoga, it is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that talk about how exactly a restless mind can be brought to peace and extraordinary wisdom can be attained. It is so precise in explaining how certain things can be achieved, the Sutras look like algebraic equations. I could always draw a nice flow chart for all the concepts being explained.

There are four chapters with about 50 Sutras in each (in all, there are 195 Sutras). Out of these, there are 2 Sutras that talk about asana, 5 Sutras about pranayama. Pranayama gets a little more respect with 5 Sutras than asanas with just 2. The rest of the 188 Sutras are for the mind. It is simply about understanding the mind, the issues of the mind and getting over them. Of course, if you showed up at a so called yoga class, you would think it is just about asanas. I am sure Patanjali would not approve of any mass produced yoga class with asana being the poster child.

The Sutras are short so it can be memorized, passed on to the students in a simple form as a chant. The meaning is what is so complex and it is intentionally written this way. You can’t give a diamond to a monkey. The student needs to prove that he is worthy first of all to receive such precious teachings. The words are there for everyone to see, but its meaning cannot be grasped so easily.

Sri Krishnamacharya calls Yoga Sutra the heart of Yoga. The heart, hrdya, is that which does not change and Patanjali gave a permanent definition and form to yoga in his Sutra. However the prana to the Sutra is brought in by the teacher that explains it to the student. TKV Desikachar studied Yoga Sutras with Sri Krishnamacharya seven times over thirty years. Every time they studied it, Sri Krishnamacharya could explain it so differently, they were progressively enriching depending on how ready the student is to take in all there is to say. Sri Krishnamacharya says there is an ocean between the atha and iti, the first and the last syllables of the Sutra.

More to follow in the future posts as I am smitten with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

This is the conversation between the author and a Yogi that he meets in Chennai. The Yogi says

an elephant breathes much more slowly than a monkey, yet it lives much longer. Some of the large serpents breathe far more slowly than a dog, yet they live longer. Thus creatures exist which show that slowness of breathing may possibly prolong age. These animals use their organs less, so the wear and tear is less which helps them to live longer.

From a Yogic point of view, breathing is considered supremely important. Not the involuntary breathing, but conscious breathing. There is a close connection between the breath and the blood, breath and the mind, breath and the thoughts. For breathing is linked to how the mind functions and the other way around. Mind is what we are interested in the Yoga philosophy.

When our mind is agitated, we breathe fast and shallow. Or it could also be that when the breath is shallow, the mind loses clarity which gets translated to thoughts going haywire. The lungs are underutilized, which means that the muscles of the heart need to work more to keep the system going as there is not enough oxygen coming by.

Conscious breathing translates to Prana in the body. Pranayama is the yogic term used to breathing correctly and optimally. As there is no way to voluntarily control the brain or the thoughts, Pranayama is used to indirectly control the thoughts. The side effect of Pranayama is to live long and giving the heart a little rest as it slows down the heart rate.

Some yoga texts like Yoga Rahasya by Nathamuni written in 9th Century AD, say that we all have certain number of breaths for a day (21600) and in the lifetime. If we take it really slow, we can live healthy and long. If we breathe swiftly, we borrow too many breaths from the reserve. It means we are in a hurry to the end.

Exhalation is given a lot of importance here. This is prescribed in Yoga Sutras by Patanjali as one of the soultions to control the mind. To figure out how long the exhale is, take a deep inhale and chant Om on an exhale. Chanting is also one of the methods to teach kids and adults the technique of Pranayama. The chant on an exhale is longer than an inhale forcing us to breathe the Yogic way.

Aside from the Pranayama, breathing correctly is important while performing asanas too. On an inhale, when the lungs start to fill up, the spine starts to straighten. This gives more space for the lungs to expand. This movement of the spine is crucial. We always get into a lot of asanas that need the chest expansion or the ones that maintain the length of the body on an inhale using the length of the spine. The asanas that contract the body are done on an exhalation.

Normally, Ujjai breathing is used while performing an asana. This is the style of breathing where the throat is used and we can hear ourselves breathing. This helps us focus on the breath and also tells us how we are performing in an asana. If we cannot hear ourselves, we have gone beyond our capacity and need to backoff a bit. So, the breathing is an indicator of our capacity and we have to respect that. Focussing on the breath prepares our body for Pranayama which is usually followed by Dhyanam.

Take it easy, slow down and breathe like a Yogi, for a happy and long life!

Then there will be many things I cannot anticipate. The places go through so much change that I may not even be able to recognize them. We change so much too. I remember having a discussion with a teacher that teaches Pre natal yoga classes. We were talking about if the women after pregnancy will ever go back to the physical state that they were in before having the child. She said that people who come in for a yoga class will leave the class a changed person. We are constantly changing minute to minute. We will not be the same person, but a changed person, one hour from now. Our thought processes go through changes, our body is changing constantly.

Not all changes are pleasant. Some are good, some are not so good and you wish they didn’t happen at all. How can yoga help understand change that we go through? Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra can be of some help here.

Yoga Sutra talks about Avidya which means incorrect comprehension. Avidya can be understood as the accumulated result of our many unconscious actions without clarity. It is the root cause of the obstacles that prevent us from recognizing things as they really are. The purpose of yoga is to reduce the Avidya. When we learn to observe ourselves (yoga can be very useful here), we can explain why things are turning out certain ways and accept responsibility for the results. When we understand the cause and the effect, it gets easier to accept change.

This post will be incomplete without mentioning Shiva the destroyer, when a topic of change is discussed. The cosmic dance of Shiva has such a beautiful meaning. Shiva’s upper right hand has a drum that symbolizes creation. At the same time his upper left hand has agni or fire which stands for destruction. It does not have to mean destruction; it can also mean change that enables new things to happen, transformation. The dance can also be seen as a balancer of cosmos. Balance is a good thing.

As Thoreau said ‘all change is a miracle to contemplate’. Nataraja’s balance of the cosmic dance and the clarity which Yoga Sutra prescribes come in handy to deal with change.