I’ve been working my way through Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by BKS Iyengar, which I bought yesterday when I was intending to buy merely Light on Yoga.
It’s been a fascinating evaluation of where I am in this practice and how much farther I have to go. As the cover of the book says-
“Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is the Bible of Yoga… to practice yoga without the profound and panoramic inner catography of the yoga sutras is to be adrift in a difficult and potentially dangerous ocean.”
There is so much more to yoga than merely holding strange poses! The word yoga itself means “union or integration from the outermost layer to the innermost self- that is, from the skin to the muscles, bone, nerves, mind, intellect, will, consciousness, and self.” (Iyengar) While most gyms combine the ancient art with pilates and focus on merely the physical activity itself, the poses are designed and refined through thousands of years to produce specific physiological effects, to effect the consciousness in specific ways, and to eventually produce such a deep state of meditation that one finds unity with the divine at all times through life.
My own practice is just barely beginning, after 5 years, to move beyond the physical and physiological stages to the consciousness and meditative stages. I’ve been blessed with a neighborhood free/by donation only studio, and the class that I attend is Classical yoga with a Shadow yoga trained teacher. She studied in India, and has met a Guru who helps her continue her own personal growth in yoga. She’s also my primary care physician, which is so convenient for my post surgery recovery. (There’s nothing so awesome as a hand tailored physical therapy class that often consists of only me.)
Some things I’ve learned in the last few months:
It’s been a fascinating evaluation of where I am in this practice and how much farther I have to go. As the cover of the book says-
“Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is the Bible of Yoga… to practice yoga without the profound and panoramic inner catography of the yoga sutras is to be adrift in a difficult and potentially dangerous ocean.”
There is so much more to yoga than merely holding strange poses! The word yoga itself means “union or integration from the outermost layer to the innermost self- that is, from the skin to the muscles, bone, nerves, mind, intellect, will, consciousness, and self.” (Iyengar) While most gyms combine the ancient art with pilates and focus on merely the physical activity itself, the poses are designed and refined through thousands of years to produce specific physiological effects, to effect the consciousness in specific ways, and to eventually produce such a deep state of meditation that one finds unity with the divine at all times through life.
My own practice is just barely beginning, after 5 years, to move beyond the physical and physiological stages to the consciousness and meditative stages. I’ve been blessed with a neighborhood free/by donation only studio, and the class that I attend is Classical yoga with a Shadow yoga trained teacher. She studied in India, and has met a Guru who helps her continue her own personal growth in yoga. She’s also my primary care physician, which is so convenient for my post surgery recovery. (There’s nothing so awesome as a hand tailored physical therapy class that often consists of only me.)
Some things I’ve learned in the last few months:
- Yoga is meant to be practiced 4 hours after food consumption and 1 hour after liquid consumption
- One should not practice yoga during the full moon, the new moon, or the first three days of the menses.
- Because yoga is an internal purification ritual, it is part of the ritual that one bathe before and after the practice of yoga to cleanse the external self.
- In the 8-fold path of yoga, only one of the paths is asana, or body postures.
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