While I have given the practice of asanas
great emphasis in this book, it is not because the perfection of the body or of
yoga postures is the goal of yoga practice. This down-to-earth, flesh-and-bones
practice is simply one of the most direct and expedient ways to meet yourself.
It is a good place to begin. Whether you meet yourself through standing on your
feet or standing on your head is irrelevant. It's important, therefore, not to
make the mistake of thinking that the perfection of the yoga asanas is the goal, or that you'll be good at
yoga only once you've mastered the more difficult postures. The asanas
are useful maps to explore yourself, but they are not the territory. The
goal of asana practice is to live in your body and to learn to perceive
clearly through it. If you can master the Four Noble Acts, as I like to call
them, of sitting, standing, walking, and lying down with ease, you will have
mastered the basics of living an embodied spiritual life. This book gives you
the tools to do this and to go further if you wish.
The emphasis on asana practice is also specific to the
age we live in, for we live in a time of
extreme dissociation from bodily experience. When we are not in our bodies we
are dissociated from our instincts, intuitions, feelings and insights, and
it becomes possible to dissociate ourselves
from other people's feelings, and other people's suffering. The insidious ways in which we become
numb to our bodily experience and the feelings
and perceptions that arise from them leave us powerless to know who we are, what
we believe in, and what kind of world we wish to create. If we do not know when
we are breathing in and when we are breathing out, when we are unable to
perceive gross levels of tension, how then can we possibly know how to create a
balanced world? Every violent impulse begins in a body filled with tension;
every failure to reach out to someone in need begins in a body that has
forgotten how to feel. There has never been a back problem or a mental problem
that didn't have a body attached to it. This limb of yoga practice reattaches us
to our body. In reattaching ourselves to our bodies we reattach ourselves to the
responsibility of living a life guided by the undeniable wisdom of our
body.
PRACTICING WITH JOYFULNESS
When we begin practice, we may feel far from happy
within ourselves. In fact, even the semblance of happiness may seem as remote to
us as winning the lottery. We may feel utterly confused, buried in
self-destructive habits, and encumbered by difficulties, whether emotional,
physical, or material, that appear insurmountable. Our bodies may feel as stiff
and knotted as an old tree, and our minds a jumble of worries and neuroses.
Platitudes about the peace and happiness available to us right now sound empty
in the face of our very real pain. Most of us begin like this, and even those
who feel some sense of inner balance often find that underneath the thin veneer
of appearances, there is much work to be done.