The Mirror of Yoga

by Richard Freeman

  Whenever we think about the world or others, we do so via sensations that arise in our own bodies. This is not something that is immediately obvious, but if you go into your thoughts as a meditation it becomes clear. Imagine the core of the body as a set of images for a slide show and that the slides appear not just as images of the way we see things, but that they also manifest in the way we move, talk, and behave. Through the power of our awareness, or consciousness, we project onto the world the slides of our various core patterns of perception. The capacity to discover this principle of projection, which is inherently laced with our tendency to be attracted to or repulsed by different physical feelings, is an invaluable tool for understanding that the world is both given to us and created by us through the way we organize our “slides.” For example, if you have watched musicians, you may have noticed that most have unique patterns of holding their body as they go deeply into their music in order to really concentrate on the sound. Some stick their tongue out of their mouth sideways, and others bite their lip, make an odd facial expression, or start tapping their foot wildly. These external physical expressions are fixing a body pattern of sensation to support the focus of the musician’s mind. In a less noticeable manner we all do this much of the time: sauntering down the street when we are nervous, speaking loudly when feeling bold, slumping at work when overwhelmed, or gritting our teeth in the face of an argument.

  When we practice yoga we cultivate the ability to concentrate the mind so that as we move into various physical postures, we begin to notice our habitual patterns of holding within our own body, just as we might observe physical patterns of holding in musicians as they perform. Say, for example, you are doing a twist in your yoga practice. As you deepen into the pose, your attention drops down and you observe the processes going on within your body and your mind. You may also start to explore different movements you always make and theories you have regarding the composition of the particular pose. You churn these thoughts, feelings, and sensations back and forth as you would blend butter with an old-fashioned hand churn, folding them into the pose and drawing them back out with your mind to mix them back in again. As you work the pose you may start to experience unfamiliar sensations, patterns of deep conditioning that are buried deep within your body. You may have sensations of attachment and also of repulsion to whatever is arising. These habitual patterns and sensations are called saṁskāras. Sam means “to collect together” and kara refers to activities, deeds, or in this case it refers to things that are made or patterns. Saṁskāras are the subpatterns that are collected together into universal patterns and then held deep inside the body. Our ego structure is intimately tied in to these unconscious configurations, and any good yoga practice takes us right into the heart of our own saṁskāras; it takes us into our deepest pockets of habit. The initial impulse for most of us when faced with our own saṁskāras is to turn away: “Anything but this!” The urge is to run in the opposite direction as fast as possible rather than to deal with habitual ways of perceiving and reacting, because our chronic ways of responding are familiar and comfortable.

  In a sense our saṁskāras are quite functional because they allow us to process and react to our perceptions without having to exert the energy and presence of mind required to observe and assess whatever is arising anew. We tend to be creatures of habit, and each of us has unique ways of looking at ourselves and at the world, ways that probably long ago settled within us. These patterns of perception are the result of grasping onto certain things we believe we need or we want, and rejecting other things we believe to be of no use to us or things we imagine are going to hurt us. Deep in the core of the body there is often a kind of anxiety that bubbles up right under the surface of our conscious experience because of our preconceptions about what is good or bad, right or wrong, needed or not needed. The anxiety emerges because a genuine perception of what is actually happening in the present moment is arising, but it is colored by our habitual ways of perceiving—our saṁskāras. Consequently much of our life is spent avoiding the undercurrent of anxiety that surfaces as we place a mask of happiness (or tragedy) over what on a deeper level we are actually aware of—the present moment. With practice we learn to observe these brief little moments of anxiety before they are covered up by the avoidance habits of mind. The content of our observation could be wonderful, bright, and happy, or it could be absolutely miserable, but nonetheless we stick with it and watch it with an open mind and an open heart. And this is the foundation of the practice; that we simply train ourselves to observe the presentation of the mind, the vṛtti, whatever it is and whenever it drifts into our conscious awareness.

  Honing this observational skill within āsana, prāṇāyāma, and meditation practice, we eventually discover that there is far more to the practices than we might initially have thought. We find that more important than getting into a remarkably deep back bend, or holding our breath for five minutes, or chanting an entire ancient text from memory, is the power of clear observation. We notice that with practice we become increasingly skilled at noticing the content of our mind before we project its pattern out into our bodies and the world. Most important of all is that we observe our vṛttis as they surface, witnessing what is actually arising through the haze of our saṁskāras of perception. With this type of “in the moment” observation, which is an essential technique in any yoga practice, we slowly begin to break through the most deeply rooted and intimate forms of conditioning that keep us stuck in unhealthy, ineffectual, and unhappy circumstances within our life. The breakthrough happens when we fully comprehend that our conditioned ways of perceiving the world are not only habits of memory, as if we were haunted by dreams, but that they are also physical patterns within the body that over time have rooted themselves in our flesh and in the deepest layers of muscular patterning within our body. When we have a direct experience of this intimate connection between our mind and our physical body, we can then let go and recondition the body, enabling us to be receptive to whatever is arising rather than reacting to it habitually and thereby potentially missing its essence. Clearly observing the vṛtti—the immediate presentation in the mind—as it arises, without accepting or rejecting it, has a profound effect on deep-seated patterns within the body. By shining the light of unobstructed awareness onto whatever we perceive, our saṁskāras gradually become deconditioned and we no longer unconsciously identify whatever feeling we have deep in the core of our being, which habitually has served as the catalyst for that feeling, with the presentation of mind. This process unravels our experience in a way that is exhilarating and joyous, releasing all the accumulated tensions, anxieties, and incomplete experiences that have built up over our lifetime.

  The process works because when we observe something we give it space, meaning we temporarily suspend our incessant desire to know it, package it, or compare it to other things. Momentarily, we release whatever it is that we perceive from the label that we automatically—habitually—give it in order to move on quickly and to avoid experiencing it in its full presence. When we give something space we are practicing the physiology of kindness, and we are offering the structure of compassion. This is a gesture of giving respect to whatever the object is and of honoring the environment that the object has come out of. As we pay attention to what is arising in this way, we create what is called tapas or “heat.” This is not necessarily a physical heat; it is a metaphorical burning, an awakening to what is really happening within the mind or the perceptions. When people first experience tapas, there is often a sense of discomfort, a desire to squirm away from the situation because it is so authentic; it is as if the border of life is being eaten away by fire. But if we stick with the observational practice, if we do not run away when we reach the juncture where tapas first arises, then we can gain an incredible insight into the fact that all things do change. Not only do we understand this conceptually, but we can experience the impression of this principle of transformation within the body; we feel it thro
ugh our deepest physical sensations, right into the core of the body. When we perceive change in this way and then act with conscious awareness in the face of the present circumstances, we can release our saṁskāras without rejecting them, but instead with an appreciation for their essence. In this way we learn to interact with whatever arises in a more integrated and complete way, whether it is an old pattern of thought or sensation, or a brand-new perception. On the other hand, when our actions are unconscious, when they are driven by our saṁskāras, we end up grasping blindly at things in the world and we act rashly or inappropriately, compounding and magnifying (or avoiding) our problems.

  When we practice the yoga of observation and we pay close attention to something, there is a residue of clarity and relief that is discernable in the breath and is actually felt in the body. It is similar to the sensations you might experience when you have been struggling to understand something and then finally “get it,” or the feeling you have when you have been deceiving yourself about something and then at last admit to the truth; it is a feeling of relief, openness, cleanliness, and joy. We experience this when we pay close attention to things as they arise because we are directly perceiving, rather than distorting our observation by imagining that things are the way we expect or want them to be. Simple, clear observation allows us to cut through our own layers of programming, preconception, and habitual perception. When our saṁskāras are suspended, instead of experiencing a sense of anxiety due to tension between our projections and the truth, we may experience a deep sense of physical relief within the body; the glorious feeling of the residue of truth. It is really quite straightforward. As we continue to practice yoga we find that sometimes we are able to observe closely without much influence from our habitual patterns, and we also become aware of those times when we are driven completely by our old habits of mind and body. Gradually we train both body and mind to be awake, and, little by little, we decondition ourselves from the habits that keep us dull and stuck in the routine of our own suffering. We cultivate the ability to observe clearly rather than using an iron hand to squelch the urges driven by our saṁskāras. Having habitual responses to things as they arise is a perfectly natural state of affairs, so the practice and the work become to watch these patterns as they arise and to foster within ourselves the ability to not react, project, or overlay our preconceptions. Our very own body, which is immediately available to us, becomes a laboratory of consciousness, a field of exploration into the truth of our own existence so that, figuratively speaking, our body becomes a temple for open awareness.

  3

  The Process of Haṭha Yoga

  Union of Sun and Moon

  suṣmnāyai kuṇḍalinyai sudhāyai

  candrajanmane

  manonmanyai namastubhyaṁ mahāśaktyai

  cidātmane

  Salutations to the Suṣumnā, to the Kuṇḍalinī,

  and to the nectar originating from the moon.

  Salutations to you, the Unmani mind,

  to the great śakti, to pure Being as contentless awareness.

  —Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, IV. 64

  The epigraph at the beginning of this chapter is a series of salutations, first to the suṣumnā nāḍī, which is the channel that lies along the central axis of the body and is considered itself to be the guru. The verse then offers salutations to the kuṇḍalinī, the sleeping, coiled energy of pure consciousness that when awakened moves through this central channel. Next salutations are offered to sudhā, or the nectar, that flows from the moon at the bottom of the sahasrāra or the thousand-petalled lotus cakra at the crown of the head. The chant offers salutations to the one who erases the mind, facilitating liberation from mental constructs, and finally salutations are given to the mahāśakti, the great power that is the universe and the one who is the pure intelligence of the self, or pure being. The contemplation of the awakening of the suṣumnā nāḍī in this way is the entire purpose of the practice of haṭha yoga.

  When we practice yoga we wake up the body. We concentrate the mind on different fields of sensation, which awakens the core of the body and, in turn, allows us to experience deep feelings. This is the body-mind connection. Whenever we think about something on a profound level, we create a physical pattern or a combination of sensations within the body that allows us to hold the thought. Through this process we associate certain things in the outside world with specific sensations and core feelings within the depths of our body. It is a somewhat arbitrary process in which we happen to have connected together the two in our subconscious mind, and the association sticks. It is kind of like a Pavlovian response—when after years away from home, we walk into our mother’s kitchen and begin to drool. It can happen that gradually the body becomes dull and desensitized because old abstractions and concepts, past desires and fears, or previous experiences have settled into patterns of feeling in our body. We start to believe these patterns to be real rather than recognizing them as associations with earlier experiences or thoughts. When this happens, these stagnant patterns continue to generate stuck thoughts and fixed reactions. We become restricted in our thinking and so contracted in our perception of immediate feelings and sensations that our bodies become shriveled-up forms, not manifesting their true liberated potential.

  Grounded in physical practices, the haṭha yoga system examines the body with a fine-tooth comb—pulling open different internal sensations and feelings, waking up whole fields and entire spectrums of sensation and feeling that may have been lying dormant for years deep within the body. Gradually we are able to separate our saṁskāras (patterns of stagnant feelings and sensations that are associated with the past) from the feelings and sensations that are in response to input we are receiving right here, right now. We learn to differentiate in this way from the tips of our toes, to our fingers, right up our spinal column, and through the crown of the head. We find that when we practice yoga all of these fields of sensitivity—which penetrate the entire body like the tiny filaments inside of a flower—are awakened; every thought, every movement of the mind travels through these fibers of sensitivity in the core of the body.

  The way we hold and move our bodies reflects a history of perception patterns, thoughts about the world, mental maps charting territory inside and outside the body, as well as movement patterns and the reactions we received from them. The flesh has embodied our mental and emotional history, and as long as it is alive it provides lessons and even opportunities to find freedom and understanding from mental confusion. Yoga āsana practice when done mindfully is a minitheater of the mind and heart, teaching both visceral and intellectual truths to the attentive. For example, a beginner first practices the triangle pose by following simple instructions; that is, “Open the legs about one leg length apart. Turn the right foot out and line it up with the front edge of the heel of the back foot. Inhaling, lift the arms, and then exhaling, reach out through the right arm and rotate the pelvis around so that you can place your hand on the floor near the right ankle, or hold the right big toe with the middle and index fingers.” These verbal instructions, though accurate, would function better with a personal demonstration or at least a drawing or some sort of illustration. The difficulty is obvious: even with personal instruction the technique is complicated to transmit, and even more challenging to convey is how the intelligence must work with technique in order to make the āsana a transparent fountain of meditation and insight.

  Every turn, every spiral, every extension eventually has to be tempered by a counterturn, a counterspiral, or a flexion; sometimes strong, sometimes subtle. Each instruction or technique, at the right time, will need a counterinstruction or technique to find openness and balance. Mindful observation, to the extent that samādhi may spontaneously arise, is gradually cultivated in āsana. We practice so that on a mental level, our theories about the techniques, our sectarian and political attachments to them, and even our need to prove a theistic or metaphysical theory, can be observed impartially and recogniz
ed as context dependent. The fine-tooth comb of āsana practice will bring up the knots and tangles of past and present misperceptions and their embodiment in deep holding patterns in the body. What we call alignment is a continuous balancing and interpenetrating of opposites on many levels, starting from muscular movement patterns within the complete wave of a full breath and moving on through the ever more subtle layers of body and mind. Alignment is a steady flame of intelligence.