There is scientific evidence of the therapeutic effects of yoga. It is said to be a healing art. As many of you know anything healing usually involves trusting in something or someone outside of yourself.
The Yoga of Patanjali follows an Astanga or 8-limbed path. Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharna, Dhyana, Samadhi. If you've read my other blogs, you know that Iyengar likens the Yama and Niyama to the two banks along side a river. The banks of the river are what keep the river flowing in the right direction.
These ten precepts like the 10 commandments, the Golden Rule or many other such things are guides to help us conduct ourselves in order to serve ourself and our community for the greater good -- and ultimately lead us to freedom from the pains of the body and mind. The tenth precept is Ishvarapranidhana, which is trusting in a force outside ourselves.
The Yama and Niyama are disciplines for the most part that take sustained effort to uphold at first, but as time goes on they become a part of who we are. You might even say they make up a practice of who we were before our egos took hold.
However, when most of us come into yoga in the West, we start with Asana practice. The words Yama and Niyama might not even come into our vernacular for years of practice. We begin our yoga with our physical body and our ego (usually in high gear). One of my favorite quotes I read from Iyengar is when he talks about just letting the yoga do the yoga. No matter how we come to yoga or what type of yoga we practice, something wonderful still occurs.
We begin to know ourselves. If just to know what is stiff or what won't work like we want it to. We are drawn inwards. No matter who the teacher is or what type of yoga practice. We are put in a position to face ourselves in a unique way. Like with any new endeavor, as time goes on and we continue whatever practice we are doing, we learn to trust ourselves. In yoga, we learn to believe in our ability to connect our mind with our body to move through and heal the pains, while creating a slew of what some might deem crazy pretzel positions.
It is this growing belief in ourself to connect our mind and body that leads to more sustained effort and total focus and absorption…which then leads us to another place: A place of surrender. A place where fragmented directives of how a pose should be performed soon dissolve into a blissful stillness that seems to keep evolving, ultimately connecting to what feels like something outside ourselves. It is in this state where deeper healing and evolution occur. Whether it is a "happening" in the brain or a spiritual phenomena we can debate forever.
It may seem hokey to some to consider a blissful surrender to something other than ourselves; but I figure we all once experienced a oneness like what is being suggested. We didn't even have to believe in it. It just existed: in the womb. If you consider all of the incredible transformations that happened there, it seems worth striving for at least.
Personally, I don't feel debating whether there is or isn't a spiritual force outside ourselves is what matters. What matters is your belief in your own experience. Belief in what that experience does for you. Where that experience leads you. And how you evolve or "heal" as a result.
Namaste.
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