Why do yoga?

View Why do Yoga? by Anne Vincent in Word format

Improved flexibility, increased strength, relaxation, stress-relief, improved health and increased feelings of well-being.

These benefits, which occur when we practice of yoga, are well known and are some of the reasons many people practice hatha (pronounced hat – ha) yoga (bodywork, breath work and relaxation). Less well known or spoken about are attributes which have come to be important in my own practice – self-knowledge or self-understanding, personal integration and a move to wholeness.

The word yoga is a Sanskrit word commonly translated as union although I prefer to use wholeness or integration. All too often this “union” is described in flowery words as some sort of idealised, utopian state. But if we think that we are going to bring that about by mindlessly doing a few exercises and a bit of chanting we are kidding ourselves. No – it’s more arduous than that.

Self-understanding comes through awareness - being aware of our actions, thoughts and feelings without labelling, condemning, judging or commenting upon them. And through awareness of our actions, our thoughts, our feelings comes the discovery of and understanding of their cause and an integration of all aspects of ourselves.

We are human beings, perfect in our imperfection. Self-understanding and transformation is not to be had by denying or suppressing the less pleasant aspects of our make-up. We have to look all aspects of ourselves straight in the eye and understand them, when we do they are transformed and loose their power over us. If you try and suppress the ones you don’t like then you just make them stronger (like the urge for chocolate). When we are aware and we understand ourselves we see things as they really are – not coloured by our conditioning, habits, likes, dislikes and desires.

To be aware is hard work. Oftentimes, when we are unaware, we just have to be aware that we are not aware – with no judging remember! There are no techniques to make you aware, you either are or you aren’t. The practice of yoga can show us when we’re unaware, it can reveal our habits and conditioning and help us understand them. When we understand them (intuitively rather than academically) we are free of them. We have to find out the truth for ourselves. Following a system or acquiring knowledge is just replacing one set of conditioning with another and it’s second-hand living because we’ve adopted someone else’s conditioning.

You might be thinking that, as a yoga teacher, I’m talking myself out of a job. I agree that a world without the need for yoga teachers would be the ideal state! But, as I said before, it’s hard work because we have to be very attentive if our minds are not to deceive us. If it was easy then we’d all be enlightened beings and the world would be a more joyous place. The role of the teacher is to help us discover our habits and conditioning and release them so that we discover a more intelligent way of being. It is not to ‘fix’ us according to some ideal (which is only based on thought and wishful thinking and not on reality) or to impose new habits upon us.

Phew! This is getting a bit heavy perhaps that’s why these things don’t get talked about that often. I hope that you are still with me and that I am not putting you off. That may all seem a bit daunting to you and you may be wondering where on earth to begin. Well we start with that with which we are most familiar – the body which brings us back again to the practice of hatha yoga.

When we perform the physical postures with awareness we notice our habits and things which aren’t working as well as they might; we gain understanding of our movement patterns and habits and we can explore and maybe discover more intelligent, freer, less forceful ways of moving.

Each posture (asana) of itself is of little importance and contorting the body into some idealised form is of no value. Achieving a pose means nothing. The gift of the asanas is that they teach us about our bodies and, indirectly, about our mental processes. Without awareness we bring our habits onto the mat and then our practice re-enforces them making transformation more difficult. It is the transformation that brings the many benefits associated with yoga.

What about creating utopia? Well someone who has self-understanding exerts an unconscious influence on others. So working on yourself is your greatest gift to mankind. Understand yourself and you help others to understand themselves. But be warned – if you consciously try to influence others you just become part of the problem!

 

View Why do Yoga? by Anne Vincent in Word format

 

Anne recommends A New Look at Yoga by Joel Kramer, an article which appeared in Yoga Journal in 1977, and Yoga as Self-Transformation by the same author from Yoga Journal in 1980.