The Promise of Yoga
A few years ago, I offered day-long monthly yoga retreats in the Coimbatore area, in the tradition of yoga as taught by T. Krishnamacarya. I had asked participants why they had come for a yoga retreat. Some of the responses were:
To build good health, longevity, peace, calm quiet
To find Body-Mind balance, mindfulness
To build discipline, motivation
To develop awareness, grounded-ness
To exercise
To understand myself
As a way of life
I wondered and asked them,
"if there are so many benefits of yoga, why aren't more people taking to yoga practice or philosophy to get out of suffering and experience this?"
I was struck by what emerged. It seems that our habitual response to suffering is one of the following:
Complain, blame others or the events in our life
Find ways to get over the suffering quickly and easily
Distract ourselves, find escapes (social media, comfort eating, substance, workaholism)
Find refuges in someone, or some idea and hoping that will save us from suffering
However, yoga and sankhya philosophy posit that none of these approaches is a long lasting solution to overcome personal suffering.
Each of us has our unique suffering signature based on our life experiences and how we make meaning of it. Maybe physical ill-health does not bother me much as a situation where I am afraid to speak in front of an audience. Maybe for someone else a physical injury to their ankle causes extreme suffering. Suffering implies a certain constriction at the psychological level, to our psyche, our entire being.
Perhaps the reason for these usual habitual responses to overcome suffering is explained by the word Atha - the first word that Yoga Sutra, a foundational text for yoga philosophy and practice, starts with.
अथ योगानुशासनम् , atha yoga anushAsanam (Yoga Sutra, 1.1)
Atha - it is a very important word, signifying a lot of energy even in the way it is uttered.
Any step to get out find a long lasting solution to suffering requires us to take steps and responsibility to understand the fundamental nature of suffering, the internal causes for our suffering and then the solution emerges. This is evidently more effort than say blaming, distracting, finding quick fixes, or leaning in on a savior. Atha, meaning now - indicates a certain readiness in this moment to stop blaming, distracting, finding quick fixes, or refuges and instead a readiness to inquire into the nature and deeper inherent cause of my suffering and then take action from this understanding.
The next word is Yoga.
What does Yoga mean to you?
Now, take a minute and think of 3 words that come to your mind when you hear the word Yoga. Chances are it includes one of the following words - asana, pranayama, meditation, peace, calmness, mindfulness, awareness, exercise, discipline, motivation, mind-body balance, flexibility. Yes, but yoga is all this and more. I have heard my teacher quote T.Krishnamacharya say:
"Yoga is like a well that never dries up. It is a well that keeps giving, from where one can always draw water to quench one's thirst."
The deepest thirst that Yoga practice and philosophy can quench is the thirst to overcome the suffering in our life - be it physical, physiological, emotional or mental suffering. The thirst to feel well-being, peace, contentment, completeness, resilience, anchorage, and clarity within, as we live our life is present for each of us. Let us call this the thirst for the non-suffering location. Contrast it with the location of suffering where we are in dis-ease, disturbed, discontent, incomplete, helpless, overwhelmed etc. There is not one person on earth who has not experienced the suffering location at one time or another in their life. And there is not one person on earth does not want to be in the non-suffering location (let me add forever!).
That said, each of us also has access to the non-suffering location - one that we all experience everyday when we sleep. Even if we have physical pain, mental/emotional disturbances, nightmares, there are moments in our sleep where we touch the non-suffering location within. We have a sense of it by the absence of suffering that we have experienced during sleep.
The extent to which we can find our way back to the non-suffering location within, consciously, varies from one person to another, from one situation to another and at various times in our life. Yoga practice and philosophy is about understanding what dislodges us from the non-suffering location and how to find our way back consciously, instead of getting stuck in the four habitual responses outlined earlier.
If we can commit to taking steps to move towards this non-suffering location within, whenever are suffering, then that is anushasanam, the third word- following the discipline (maintaining a particular routine to keep physically and mentally healthy). Then we begin the journey towards a different pattern of responding to our suffering, from the habitual set of responses listed above. This journey takes us in the direction of the non-suffering location within, consciously, with the help of the wisdom of yoga practice and philosophy. This is the promise of Yoga and this is why one must get into the practice of Yoga.
In the next post we will look further on what constitutes Yoga practice.
Written by Dr. Anita Balasubramanian
