Yoga

Yoga is an Indian ascetic discipline which combines physical exercise, breathing practices, meditation, and ethical principles into a technology for transforming the mind, body, and spirit. In the fall of 2006 I attended a Yoga Alliance certified Hatha Yoga Teacher Training at Midtown Yoga under the direction of Kim Manfreidi. During the spring of 2007 I taught a weekly beginner's level Yoga class at the Fells Point Studio of Charm City Yoga. In June of 2007, I received my Yoga Alliance certification as a Hatha Yoga instructor at the 200 hour level. Beginning in April of 2008, I will begin teaching a weekly Beginner's Hot Yoga class at Charm City Yoga's Towson Studio. I practice and teach a Vinyasa Yoga practice which incorporates some of the body kinesthetic awareness I have learned as part of my martial arts practice.

I am not qualified to give a definitive answer as to what yoga "is" -- for that please follow some of the entries on my links page. However, I can sketch it in brief, and explain my own interest in its practice from a martial and a philosophical perspective.

In Hatha Yoga, one is guided by a set of encouragements (niyamas) and admonishments (yamas) in one's daily life, and adopts a daily practice of various postures (asana) and breathing practices (pranayama) in order to gain strength, balance, and flexibility. As the body becomes transformed, so does the mind, as they are in truth a single entity. As with any path, yoga is fluid, and can be secularized and commercialized by those who wish to gain from it, but its essence remains a basis for health and positive well-being. The trick, as with all paths one might chose to walk, is finding someone to learn from who has walked it before us and is genuinely invested in sharing it with others.

Simple Anatomy

I find that on a physical level, yoga offers excellent therapy for the various minor injuries I have collected over the years from running or martial arts. Sun salutations are excellent isometric exercises, developing strength and flexibility in the shoulders, arms, back, and legs. The vinyasa (flow) of yoga coupled with heat and breathing serves to stress the body enough that it gets a mild aerobic workout. Postures such as the crow or the side plank develop excellent muscular strength. Inversions develop kinesthetic awareness of body position and strength in the core muscles of the body.

While I knew well how to maintain balance in motion, the standing asanas provide me with the challenge of finding balance in stillness. Some of the postures are quite similar to martial stances, and provide for greater leg strength and joint mobility (strengthening the hips and knees). Others are quite similar to the training methods called toatenojutsu (which form a sort of martial qigong) I had learned and serve to strengthen the body in more subtle ways.

Having progressed to a certain state in my budō practice, I am attempting to bring my body into greater alignment and peace so that it might remain healthy for me to enjoy the fruit of that practice through the fullness of time.

Yoga as an Austerity

I also find that yoga fits in very nicely with, or at least is easy for me to add an adjunct to, my meditative practice. Each daily yoga practice is a devotion or offering which you are free to dedicate to an image or idea of your choice. This is not losing something, but directing the energy and breath you develop towards a positive goal. It instead reminds you that you can be more than just an individual in your life. When you consider what you want to gain from your yoga practice, you can dedicate its benefits to the well-being of your elders and ancestors, to the idea of peace or love or compassion in the world, or any other positive thing such as the desire for personal wisdom, courage, or understanding. In that way, it is not very different from any contemplative tradition that seeks to transcend the nascent conception of the self.

Indeed, early tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana) began as an amalgamation of early yogic practices with existing Mahayana doctrine. These traditionally would be considered spells or charms, rituals used for a particular effect. As such, they would have fulfilled a certain social role as dictated by the culture of the time. In the historical Buddha's teachings, he admonishes us not to become distracted by these by-products of meditation. For him they were real. For us they need not be so, although I believe there is more to the human condition than can be reduced to a finite set of equations with a pre-determined solution. In the context of Vajrayana, these rituals were considered with the goal of becoming a Buddha in this body -- escaping the wheel of karma in not a million lifetimes, but at each moment, right now. The idea of transformation in this body is an old one and is not limited to Buddhism. Taoists believed in a quest for immortality, and an alchemical transformation of the physical self. Ideas such as these remain to this day in neija and qigong. The commonality of these beliefs, across many different traditions of thought, interests me greatly.

In any case, I view the postures (asanas) of yoga as mudra performed with the entire body, as much as the kata of certain budō are mandala in space and time. They can provide a basis for contemplation, and transcendence or illumination of the soul. But as with any uphill path, it is possible to slide backwards and down. This is why the ethical guidance of yoga, or any path, is important. In yoga we learn our bodies are good and beautiful, and that there is nothing ugly about them. We accept ourselves, as we should accept others. In doing so, we should not do yoga in a quest to become beautiful. We are beautiful, but it is not meant in the erotic sense. The beauty is that of our potential, or true self. We are all but flesh and bone, transient on this world. We should look towards what benefits we gain from our practice, and how we might be able to share them with others.

Deities and Visualizations

In yoga, when asked to visualize something I find important offer the practice up to, I often think of any one of a number of deities which mean something to me. These often include: Avalokitesvara, Acalanatha, Tara, and Vairoçana.

My perspective is broad in its outlook -- different deities or forces venerated in disparate cultures may be but representations of the same underlying aspects or principles. These principles exist beyond mere names, and yet paradoxically, names are very important to us. The point is not to be caught up in belief, but through the practice of austerities, we forge our spirit. With the guidance of the world's great teachers, be they secular or not, we might use that strength to positive effect. We tend to ask always what is different, how we are not the same as some other, not wanting to become lost. But the real question is to determine what is the same, and follow it to its logical conclusion, being confident in our own ethical sense.