by Darren Main
According to Hindu mythology, ‘God’ is believed to be a Trinity. Like the Christian Trinity, [Father, Son, Holy Spirit] the Hindu Trinity involves three parts that are really One, and yet seem to be separate. Unlike the Christian Trinity, none of these parts is or was a human being, though some great saints in India were thought to be the incarnation of one or another aspect of the divine. In any event, from a Hindu perspective the three aspects of God are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. There are many other gods in Hindu mythology, but these are the three primary godheads. All the others fall under one of these three.
Brahma is the creator. He brought the whole universe into being and is constantly creating. We can see Brahma at work in the blooming of a flower and in the birth of a child. Brahma is the impetus for all of life. [I use masculine pronouns because these deities have traditionally been depicted as male. There are also many female goddesses in the Hindu faith. God’s truest form, Brahman (not to be confused with Brahma), is believed to be formless and beyond gender.]
Vishnu is the aspect of God that sustains life. He is the harvest and the sunlight. He is the aspect of our being that provides us with all we need to learn our lessons so that we can grow and evolve in this physical universe. He is the air that fills our lungs and the food that fills our bellies. Without Vishnu life could not exist.
Shiva is the aspect of God that transforms. He is often thought of as the destroyer because he breaks down the old, allowing things to be reborn in the next cycle. Shiva is often feared because he is associated with death, but, if it were not for Shiva, birth could not happen.
You have probably seen depictions of these gods. They frequently have many arms and legs and are adorned with a variety of symbols. This can put some people off because they see the myth as being false and outdated in this age of science. However, the Truth that inspired the myth is very real, for in all of life we can see these three forces as they dance together.
In our human life we are created at birth, live, and then die. Our planet has seasons of birth, life and death. Even the cells of our body are continuously being created, living and then dying. All of life follows this dance. It is the most natural thing there is, and yet we resist this flow more often than we realize.
In order to feel truly happy in this world, we must learn to appreciate all aspects of our existence and see how they all work together. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva must work together in our lives, or we will find a lack of balance. Disease is the natural result of this lack of harmony.
Learning to balance these three forces is not easy. We are taught to fear the death that Shiva brings, and not to trust Vishnu’s abundance. It is even easy to fear the new and unexplored territory into which we are urged by Brahma’s wild creativity. It is our egos that doubt and do not trust, and it is this that leads to fear and suffering. Learning to let Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva dance freely in our lives is an essential part of living as an urban mystic. A mindful asana practice can really help with this because each pose is designed to mimic the natural dance of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. By working through the poses in a conscious way, we prepare ourselves to live more fully balanced lives.
When we start each pose, there is a period of Creation. In this stage of the pose we find our alignment and focus on the details of the pose. This alignment is what gives the pose form and distinguishes it from the other poses. This is also where we create a pose that is safe and non-threatening to our physical body. When we ignore or brush over Brahma working in this part of the pose, injury is the likely result. But when we allow the pose to be created in our bodies in a mindful and conscious way, we open up the energy pathways and prepare our mind to sit in the pose. [There are said to be over 72,000 energy pathways or Nadis in the human body.]
I remember once, about a year into my yoga practice, going into kapotasana, the pigeon pose, one I had done many times before, when my teacher, Ellie, came and pressed one of my hips gently down and forward. I felt the pose reach deeply into my other hip, releasing a palpable flow of energy up and down my body. It was truly as if I was doing the pose for the first time. The pose was fresh and new, like nothing I had ever felt. This was my body and mind aligning with the force of Brahma.
Once we have aligned our bodies in the pose, we hold. Some styles of yoga will ask you to hold the pose for five breaths and others for fifteen minutes or more. However, the length of time you wind up holding the pose is not as important as surrendering into the pose. By quieting the mind and looking at the pose from a natural and quiet place we can experience Vishnu sustaining the pose. This is an amazing experience.
During my experience with the pigeon pose, I felt that release of energy lead to a profound perception of support. I could feel the earth beneath me creating a stable foundation, and I could feel Ellie’s firm yet compassionate assist pressing me deeper into the pose. I could even feel the breathing of other students in the room reminding me to breathe deeply myself. This was Vishnu at work.
At last we released the pose. It is my observation that most injuries in yoga occur when people are coming out of a pose. They work hard to come into the details and then give everything they have to holding the pose, but when it comes time to let go, they come out mindlessly. By working Shiva into a pose, we leave it with full awareness. We avoid falling out of the pose or releasing like a snapped rubber band. This brings us to an open and mindful place where we can create the next pose.
After Ellie left me to assist the next person, I pushed back into a child pose. My eyes filled with tears. I was not crying out of sadness or even joy. There was a shift in energy, though. It was physical, emotional and mental in nature, and beyond all three. I could feel something let go within me. I was different. It seemed like I was an etch-a-sketch, and some great force had shaken me forcefully yet lovingly, removing a long outdated pattern or design. This was Shiva.
And so goes our asana practice. Over and over again we seek to dance with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. This opens our body, heart and mind to new possibilities and new ways of being. This is what many call a paradigm shift, or a shift in consciousness because old patterns get erased and new pathways are created that are healthier and more evolved.
Psychology and the Practice of Asana
They find their joy, their rest, and their light completely within themselves. United with the Lord, they attain nirvana in Brahman.
—Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5:24
Several years ago I met a young boy who was very wise. His name was Bodhi, and his mother, Clare, owned a beautiful home just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was hoping to rent her home for the weekend to lead a retreat. I was a bit concerned that she had a six year-old boy, considering that it’s hard enough for an adult to sit still for an entire weekend. Clare assured me that Bodhi would not be in the way, and also that our activities would not infringe on his playtime. She had an almost devilish grin when she said this, which led me to believe there was more to this child than she was telling me.
When the weekend of the retreat came, I met Bodhi for the first time. He seemed like a harmless enough child, but I still found it hard to believe that he could contain his youthful energy for a whole weekend. Bodhi was a very special child, however, and I quickly realized there would be no problem. He came up to me, offered his hand and introduced himself. Then he said, “I have a joke. Wanna hear it?”
Expecting a simplistic ‘knock-knock’ joke, I nodded.
“Why shouldn’t you buy a vacuum cleaner from a Buddhist?”
“I don’t know. Why?” I said smiling, wondering how, at his age, he even knew what a Buddhist was.
“Because they don’t have any attachments!” he said laughing.
I laughed with him, but was amazed that he would even remember a joke like that. He then went on to explain the joke to me. “The Buddha said that when we have attachments, we suffer, so Buddhists don’t want to have attachments. . .not even on their vacuum cleaners.” He giggled and ran off to play.
It took me
a while to remove my jaw from the floor. Bodhi understood in just six years what I had been trying to grasp for ten of my adult years. His cute little joke reminds us all, in a very simple and innocent way, why we suffer in this world. More importantly, it reminds us of how we can escape from that suffering.
I think it is important to define suffering. Pain is sensation created by the body to warn us of danger or to tell us that something has gone wrong. Frequently we view pain as a bad thing, but really pain is a very good thing, as it helps us to grow and warns us when things are out of balance.
Suffering, on the other hand, is of the mind. It is a story told by the ego which cloaks the truth about who we are. This of course leads to a useless form of discomfort. Rather than inspire growth or warn us of danger, suffering holds us back. It is like a deep pool of mud where your tires are spinning. The more you let them spin in it, the deeper you sink.
Asana practice helps us to look at our attachments and to let them go. When we show up in a pose, we most often have expectations about it. Our ego drama has a defined set of stories about each given pose: “This is going to hurt”, or “I can’t do this well enough,” or “I will be happy when I can do this pose perfectly.”
All of these statements are attachments. We can form attachments to both pleasure and pain, and this supports our egos’ overall belief in separation. When we surrender into the pose, we poke holes in the ego’s story and we start to let go of our attachments. The initial result is a more ecstatic experience on the yoga mat. Of course, it’s wonderful to have a great experience on the mat, but the real reward comes when the other psychological attachments in your life also start to fade away. The ego’s thinking is held together in a very shabby and haphazard way. When you start to knock over attachments in the asana practice, there is a domino effect and the rest of your mind starts to become less attached to the way that life unfolds.
This enables us to surrender into the natural flow of life and make our own lives more fulfilling. We still experience pain in our lives, but the suffering begins to drift away, leaving in its wake a quiet mind and an open heart.
Asana practice heals us psychologically in another way by changing our relationship to the body. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the ego is the belief that we are separate from Spirit and separate from our true nature. In order for the ego to maintain this lie, it needs to find lots of evidence to prove its case. There is no better example of our separation than the body. In a sense, the body is the perfect demonstration of our weakness and insignificance. If you believe you are a body, then you are consenting to the belief that you are your ego, which is the root of all your suffering. Bodies age and get sick. They experience aches and pains and have many limitations. Bodies are confined to time and space and, if all that were not proof enough, bodies eventually die.
If you believe you are a body, then you believe you are a temporary being that is weak and subject to age, illness and death. Of course, yoga teaches us that we are not the body, but this is a difficult case to make when it feels so real to be in this body. It is hard to say, “The body is an illusion,” when your head hurts or your stomach is upset.
This is one of the most powerful aspects of asana. Rather than trying to deny the body and all its aches, pains and limitations, the practice of asana brings us fully into the body. It allows us to transcend the limits of the body by causing us to realize that body is not who we are.
In the Bible, Saint Paul declares, “The body is the temple of the Spirit.” This statement is very much in alignment with the principles of asana. Through asana, we take away the ego’s best friend and star witness and we turn it into a vessel through which Spirit can be expressed in this world. The body becomes a temple for us. Where the body was once seen as a dangerous war zone, asana teaches us to see it as sacred space where our Spirit can dwell in peace.
This deflates the ego's case that you are small and insignificant. It is like an old Perry Mason episode where the key witness gets caught in a lie or major contradiction, allowing Perry to win the case by turning the tables and using the opposition’s evidence to prove his own point.
I have often seen this happen in people living with HIV. In the beginning, many feel fearful of the virus. It threatens their health and their life. But as they practice hatha yoga, things shift. They begin to realize that life is more than the simple avoidance of sickness and death, and the very virus that once threatened to take their life now becomes the vehicle through which they can access life’s beauty. After seeing this process over and over again, I have nicknamed HIV “The Gift in Ugly Wrapping Paper.”
There is a third way in which the poses can heal us and promote health on a psychological level. Each of the poses is an archetype or a symbol, which speaks to a deep level of the unconscious mind. In other words, the mere act of entering into a pose changes our minds and opens us up on an extremely deep level.
Swami [The word Swami is a term of respect meaning “one with Self.” It also refers to an ancient monastic order.] Shri Kripalvanandji, was a great yogi from India. [The founder of Kripalu Yoga, Yogi Amrit Desai, named this style of yoga after Swami Shri Kripalvanandji who is his guru.] At the age of nineteen, a series of suicide attempts led him to his Guru who taught him some powerful yoga techniques. Ironically, these techniques did not include the traditional poses associated with hatha yoga. He practiced these techniques for hours each day, and in time became one of the great yogis to come out of India in this century.
One of the most fascinating things about his story is that he would enter into deep states of consciousness through his practice of breathing and meditation, and would oftentimes find himself spontaneously entering into yoga poses and mudras which he had never learned from his guru or any other teacher. These poses seemed to be the natural result of his mind letting go and sinking into a deep state of consciousness. [The literal translation of mudra is “seal.” Mudras are gestures or movements within the yoga practice, such as dhyana mudra, which is the act of resting the hands in the lap, right hand in the left with thumbs touching.]
One of the theories about the origin of some basic yoga poses is that great masters would enter into these deep states of consciousness and find themselves in odd positions. In time, they realized that putting their students into these poses would possibly have the effect of helping them reach the same deep states of awareness. This, of course, turned out to be the case.
Try this basic experiment: Sit upright, lift the chest slightly and drop the shoulders away from the ears. Notice how you feel. Now hunch over a bit, rolling the shoulders forward and caving the chest in a bit. Again notice how you feel.
Most often, we feel uplifted and present when we sit upright, and when we slouch, we tend to find ourselves feeling more depressed and lethargic. Who would have guessed that your second grade teacher was a closet yogi and knew what she was talking about when she told you not to slouch!
This is a simple example of how our mind and mood are affected by the way we hold our body. Each of the hatha poses works the mind in very powerful ways. Similar to the Native American Medicine Animals that work to open the mind at a level not easily accessed by our conscious mind, each pose works to release old patterns—patterns that are buried deeply within the unconscious mind and that mold our lives in ways which seem beyond our control. As we enter into the poses, they help us to release these deeply held patterns. This moves us into a heightened state of awareness, and shifts at the deepest levels of the mind become a more conscious choice.
Take, for instance, the fish pose (matsyasana). To do this pose you lie on your back and arch your spine upward, lifting your heart toward the sky. Like all of the poses, there are many physical benefits associated with the fish, such as increased immune functioning and a more balanced metabolism. And on a psychological level the fish pose opens the heart and helps us replace bitterness and resentment with compassion and love.
At the end of a class one of my students, Lance, was doing the
fish when he started to cry. The tears were soft at first and then fell harder and harder. He continued to cry quietly through deep relaxation as well. When the class finished, I spoke with him, and he told me about his experience. About a year earlier, he and his boyfriend had broken up. He had worked consciously through a lot of his resentment and anger, but on an unconscious level he was still unable to forgive his ex-lover for leaving him. During his experience with the fish pose, he became aware of these hidden feelings and was able to breathe through them. By the time deep relaxation came around, he had moved from anger to compassion for his former partner.
Of course, a major emotional release that ends in compassion won’t happen every time a person does the fish or any other pose. But the poses do open us up on levels that we are often unable to access consciously. This is why hatha yoga works so well in conjunction with psychotherapy and/or spiritual counseling.
By putting ourselves into the asanas and breathing into them, we begin to work on that level of the unconscious mind which great masters such as Swami Shri Kripalvanandji worked on consciously. This allows us to clear our samskaras, or mental impurities, and move to a more complete expression of our true Self, which is what the practice of yoga is all about. [For more about samskaras, see Chapter 12.]
