Category: tadasana

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Sankhya, sovereignty and the sense of touch

In our investigation of the Sankhya philosophy and asana we begin with a study of the senses.   On the map, the senses are on the bottom row, left side – classified under sattva.  (see image below) For now we will consider sattva as awareness.  Senses are intimately connected to the quality of awareness.  Classically,  yoga is a discipline through which we access and become aware of our inner wisdom through practices by which we are trained to withdraw our senses from the external world.  As we turn them inward – our connection to the sacred and the infinite resources of wisdom and awareness are revealed.  The magnificence of asana is that it is a physical practice which results in a state of transcendent experience and understanding beyond the physical. Working consciously with our senses facilitates opening to greater levels of awareness and allows us to realize those more illumined states of awareness in the physical world.

When we practice, keeping measured attention on the breath will develop the objectivity we need to interpret the information we take in through our senses.

We can think of the information that we take in from our senses as data and the understanding and interpretation of that data is done by the mind.  Sankhya philosophy identifies different aspects of mind.  We’ll get to that later.  I just point this out because it’s just like looking at a spreadsheet,   The numbers don’t mean anything.  The meaning comes from analysis and the purpose with which you observe and work with  them. The more we can step back into an objective, non-interpretative relationship with our sense data the more we will understand about yoga.  For example, pain can be dangerous, healing, warning, or a clue for a potential adjustment. We need to be in a non-interpretive state to discern the meaning of the pain.

The following five senses organs are enumerated in the sankhya philosophy: 

The eye, the ear,  the tongue, the nose and the skin.

The disciplines of focus and austerity in the yoga practice are designed so that, just as we might learn to articulate the movement of a limb, we might also manage those sense organs.  As our practice evolves into greater levels of subtlety, we become masters of how a given piece of sensory data is interpreted.

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Today I’d like to consider touch.  Touch is a very physical sense and the physical body is the asana yogi’s primary vehicle.  The fundamental  and first level of awakening awareness of touch in the yoga practice comes through the feet on the ground.  Consider the following progression: 

  1. Tadasana: mountain posture – the feet are both on the ground  steady and even – the weight dispersed through the pads of the toes the ball and the heel. Both feet work together as one foot.
  2. Vrksasana – tree posture – we shift the weight to one foot, and connect the sole of the other foot to the inner leg.  The weight of the body is evenly dispersed through the standing foot
  3. Virabhadrasana 2 – warrior II -we begin to master weight distribution between two feet with the same sense of dispersion between the toe, ball and heel pads. 
  4. Adho Mukha Vrksanana – handstand – all the weight on two hands (look ma – no feet!)
  5. Adho Mukha Svanasana – Both hands and both feet on the earth and separated and new possibilities emerge in terms of weight distribution and articulation of the hands and feet against the earth. 

Some things we might note:

  • The touch of the body against the earth
  • The touch of two parts of the body against one another
  • The touch sensation of distribution of weight.
  • The touch sensation of activation of muscles and pressure.
  • Add to this the qualities that might be included in the experience of touch:
    • pain
    • pleasure
    • revulsion
    • hot or cold
    • heavy or light

Through attention and awareness the sense of touch becomes proprioception and kinesthetics – where our awareness of the inner landscape awakens and knowing our purpose in time and space. 

Take it further –   what is revealed is how the body works – including the internal organs.  Through attention to the more overt layers of sensation – awareness of the subtle developes and we awaken into clairsentience.  “I have a feeling”.  It’s like a gut instinct but much subtler and tuned to a different frequency.  Consider laying your hands on someone – a gesture of friendship or love or passion – all different frequencies or “vibes”.  Touch also has a relationship with the heart – this “I have a feeling” is a dimension of the emotional heart but also the spiritual heart. 

For the asana yogi, the heart is the seat of the nadam, the inner guru, sound vibration, the sound of vibration of Om.  Yes.  Vibration.  Detected by touch. 

When we practice asana we open doors to expanded understandings of….well, everything.  So as we pay attention to touch in practice – it opens the question of “pain” in yoga practice.  Many opposing views of how to relate to pain in yoga are espoused in the yoga community.  But through awareness we develop discernment about the sensations in our body – like pain.  This awareness is related to our personal sovereignty.

Consider a way  of relating to ourselves and the world which relies totally on external sources for interpretation (the doctor, the internet, our mother, the person one mat over from us in class).  This way of relating which denies our capacity to interact observe and interpret the signals of our own body.

Consider a way of relating  where the sensation itself governs us.  For example “Oops I feel something – I’m not going there into that forward bend, back bend, – I’m going to avoid sensation completely”.  The healing potential of the posture is never even approached.  We give our power of choice away to the sensation.

Consider a different way of relating, different than the ways described above.  Consider becoming aware of a sensation, observing, breathing, noticing the quality, and then noticing the quality change as we gently shift the body part a millimeter, or stretch a little deeper.   Then we come to know:

 “Oh – this pain indicates I need  the attention of the doctor”, or  

“Oh, this pain indicates I need to go deeper in the practice”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I need to be gentle in practice”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I’ve been slumping at my desk.”

Through careful observation of sensation we reclaim our power of CHOICE.  No small thing.  Moving into this state of sovereignty by activating awareness and choice –  we no longer make the pain all powerful by ignoring, fighting or delegating it.  We hold the possibility in our hands and through attention we discern the next best step towards wholeness, healing and yoga.

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An image of the chart of the sankhya philosophy with senses illuminated.

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About the Body: Headstand

Let’s not take a headstand out of the yoga practice!  Find a good Iyengar instructor and learn it from them! 

Around 2012 there were rumors that yoga  teaching  insurance would no longer cover classes where headstand was taught.  It was a rumor.  A  threatening one to us old school teachers who were under the gun at the time.   But headstand  is a posture which is open to debate.  In the classical schools it is the king of all postures.  In more modern accommodating classes, you may not ever encounter it. 

I am in the first group.  I studied and taught Jivamukti Yoga which has roots in the Krishnamacharya lineage.  Krishnamacharya was the root guru of three notable  traditions originating in his students  – Ashtanga (associated with K. Pattabhi Jois), Iyengar (associated with B.K.S.  Iyengar) and yoga as taught by T.K.V. Desikachar which he called “yoga”. 

At Jivamukti we practiced headstand for five minutes a day, and it was taught in almost every class.  I feared it deeply.  When K. Pattabhi Jois came to New York to teach I walked through my fear and took some of the classes the classes.  The first day he singled me out and did not let me run to wall during headstand.  He held me off balance in the posture for 12 very, very long breaths.  I was sweating bullets and seeing my life pass before my eyes.  The next day, he walked over, put in me in the headstand in a balanced way, and then walked away.  From that moment forward it was a favorite.

This was how it was taught in those days.  For me, this  was very effective. 

I’d had a long-standing issue in which  my cervical spine would lock up and cause much pain to me.  Going to the chiropractor helped but nothing really changed. 

I walked out of the Puck building that day and stopped on the sidewalk to stretch my post headstand neck.  As I stretched my neck the spaces between the cervical vertebrae expanded and my neck elongated in a way I’d never felt before.  I was already sold on yoga, but with that opening I was sold in a new way.  My curiosity about Patanjali, ancient sage of yoga and so called “jungle doctor” had been unleashed in my practice in a whole new way.  There was healing to be found in yoga.  The world looked a little different.

As a body worker and Shiatsu therapist I suspect in a casual unproven way that the pressure on my cranial sutures released some stress patterns in deep levels of my fascia.  (but don’t try this at home on your own, find a good teacher!). 

Remember headstand is just Tadasana, mountain posture turned around.  The posture is famed for the capacity to uproot all those places where we are stodgy and stuck in our ways.  It’s a fabulous transformer


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About the Body: The Body as a Communication Device

In the classic medieval text the “Hatha Yoga Pradipika” or The Guiding Light of the Yoking of the Sun and Moon – we learn that in classical yoga, the practice of Hatha Yoga culminates in the body’s resonance with the sound of “Om”.  We are tuned by the practice to a vibration where opposites are united and revealed as facets of one source. That state of unity creates a particular feeling tone. In my experience when that happens, we are feeling the love of the universe within our own form.  To do this, the biochemical aspect of the body requires cleansing (diet and various cleansing practices – the shat karma kriyas – the process of sweating during practice), the musculoskeletal system needs to be toned and balanced, and the energy body, emotions and the mind require discipline and clearing through meditation and sound practices (Om) and adjustments in personal care and ways of relating.  I know it sounds like a lot, but for most of us we do a little at a time, transforming at a pace that is appropriate for us.  The result of this is a clear “sound”.  We can hear it in the sound of our voice.  We can also hear it inside us as our intuition and wisdom become illuminated.  A common test is to listen to your Om at the beginning and end of the class. Or any old time you feel out of tune.  This clarity of resonance or lack there of is key to our capacity to communicate.  If you’ve ever tried to sort things out with a friend when you felt foggy day you know it’s more difficult than  when you are awake and clear.  The body is a communication device – not just with our tongues and mouths, but with our posture, the brightness of our eyes, and our health.  Imbalance in our system is reflected in the body.  And through working with techniques of Hatha Yoga we can bring the system back into balance. 

A good place to start is always the musculoskeletal system. The density of the bones and the memory capacity for the fascial tissue and muscles impacts the balance of the whole body mind spirit system.  So how do we start? 

All yoga starts with Tadasana – or Mountain  -or Simple Standing Posture.  It is so simple and straightforward that every tension is apparent. We just stand upright with the balance of the weight distributed evenly across the soles of the feet, arms alongside the body.  Personally, I never try to force change in Tadasana.  I use it as a measure.  How is my Tadasana at the beginning of practice? What is it like at the end.  Like the Om, it’s often very different, reflecting as greater state of balance and resonance.  Sometimes I’ll just stand in it for a long time and feel the tension patterns surface. 

Those tension patterns can tell us a lot about how we could create positive change in our lives.  There is no formula.  For me it’s always my hamstrings get short and tight and my head juts forward.  Over the years – through spacious self-reflection and input from yoga colleagues – I’ve come to know that when that pattern emerges – some piece of me is not in the present moment.  I’m hanging on to a belief, or perception or way of being that doesn’t serve me anymore.  Often by the time my body communicates something – I’ve been ignoring it for a while.  Sometimes insights about what needs to change will emerge during asana practice, sometimes meditation or the other forms of practice can help to illuminate the issues.  The key is to seek to understand in a receptive way rather than just to fix or overcome and that understanding lays the groundwork for transformation of the body and everything else through my practice.

My newsletter lays a philosophical ground drawn from Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.40 to work with in conjunction with this blog post. Take a look here: To Know – Results of the Experience of Yoga – https://mailchi.mp/4f8d72e44e70/to-know-yoga-and-the-experience-of-knowing

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