Impressions of India: Geeta Iyengar's Birthday Intensive Day 5

Parvrtta Sthiti is a category of poses that involve twisting of the body.  Day 5 began with the standing preparations for these poses known as Utthita Parvrtta Sthiti. We worked on Parvrtta Trikonasana and Parvrtta Parsvakonasana. 

Challenged by the weather in the room and the sitting between poses as re-demos and discussions took place my body didn’t want to open to these poses.  As is always the case in an Iyengar lesson, there was a new articulation of the Parvrtta Parsvakonasana. Not new in the sense that I’d never heard of it, more that it is an articulation that is not usually demanded of less advanced students.

The back foot had to be down this time, when usually we are given the “leeway” to pull the heel up.  However, as Geeta so brilliantly brought to our attention, when we lift the heel, all our body ‘sleeps’ on the front the leg. When we work that back heel down, there is more evenness in the hips and less dead weight in the front. 

Finding equanimity in our poses is part of the journey. Geeta’s small change made that journey shorter. We learned to fix the front arm then get the heel down. Simply by getting our heel down we shift some weight to the back leg and our body has to equalize on the feet. It is a standing pose after all, she explains. There we can work the actions of the pose with more freedom.

Finding balance. Right side, Left side, Vertical and horizontal. Balancing our efforts between the work of the skin and the muscles, between the work of the brain and the body.  It needs constant awareness. We have to decentralize the body in order to bring attention to each part of it. Abhijata in one of her talks differentiated the difference between attention and awareness. When we bring attention to something awareness follows, but we have to first work to be attentive.

Mr. Iyengar fragmented the body in his lab to research what every part was doing in order to bring attention to these parts to help us be aware. Of course, his body was his lab and his eight-hour-day practices involved analyzing what the skin needed to do, what the muscles needed to do, what the bones needed to do, and what the eyes, ears, tongue, breath, brain, and cells needed to do. I can’t list everything here.  There is a vast world within us and Mr. Iyengar traveled that world in a way no one else has.

Granted, B.K.S. Iyengar may have been born with a yogic mind. Hearing the heartfelt homage from a doctor who had the opportunity to study with Mr. Iyengar and his son, Prashant, it is even more apparent what a yogic mind he had. And it could be argued that his wife, Ramamani had such a mind as well to raise five children on the stipend of a yogi.

It was Mr. Iyengar's yogic mind that impassioned him to live, work, vacation, and sleep his yoga so he could share the amazing gift of his learning.  Learning which he was always challenging and re-observing. Geeta explains we will never understand who her father really was – because it is like a child who does not yet know that 4 + 3 = 7. There is a limit to what we can understand.

Therefore, we have to train ourselves to be attentive with our eyes, our ears, our muscles, bones, and fibers of the skin. We have to be open to learning. Geeta asks us if for just these 10-days can we strive to have a yogic mind.  Can we strive to not allow the challenges of the weather in the room, the growl in our stomach, or other unexpected changes in time or plan deter us from our attention to the lessons she is so fervently determined to teach us?

She could turn a blind eye to the incorrect actions.  She could not take the time to explain what it is to have a yogic mind.  She could just call out poses and various pranayama with no care to share what she knows that will give us more freedom. But she doesn’t turn a blind eye to us. She sees our escape mechanisms – our yawns, our hungers, our thoughts of what can where we can go once this class ends.

Geeta explained how she's never traveled really.  She teaches all the time. She says she never gets bored.  I imagine looking upon the thousand of us day after day she knows her work will never be done. Geeta sees us stuck in our human condition and with unconditional love and respect she still wants to take the time, patience, and effort to show us the doorways out of it.  

I can’t thank you enough, Geeta.

Namaste.