Nothing is ever good or bad
It has been almost a year since I first had the idea for Om Improvement. It is amazing always when I look back and realise how this all started: how something so happy and peaceful came from a period of darkness and unrest! Some of you who come to my classes may have heard the story. I was in a pretty bad shape this time last year. In a period of deepening depressing, someone in my family passed away and plunged me into a dark despair over life. Then life in its curious ways led me to the happy place that is OmIm today.
These excerpts are from my essay written during the yoga instructor's course exactly a year ago:
----------
I was not close to my grandmother. However, when she passed away, something in me snapped and all the stress of living and trying to make sense of it all collected into an insufferable heap of inner turmoil. I could not work, I could not sleep. I kept crying. I felt like my head went into overdrive trying to make sense of everything. It just kept thinking and thinking. I really wanted it to stop. I was tired of thinking. I was tired of living if living meant having to think. I wanted very much for it all to cease.
Nothing I tried cheered me up.
Looking back now with gentler eyes, nothing I did gave me any peace or happiness because they did not strike at the source of the troubles: the uncontrolled Mind.
If you do not look after your Mind, observe it, understand it and master it, you will have no peace. I had a sense of this from the doing the drawings and beginning the inner journey. However, it is through practising Yoga that I began to understand the nature of the Mind, its connection to the body and also how Yoga practice helps to provide us with a means to master the Mind.
---
As I ran into my yoga teacher 2 days following the funeral, I was encouraged by her to practice more Yoga as it would help.
As I attended daily classes of Yoga asanas, each session lasting about one and a half hours (including relaxation), I discovered that during the practice, I felt a sense of peace and relief from the grief and depression that no other activity could give me. The feelings will return after the session. Still grateful for even temporary respites, I went for Yoga almost daily for about a month.
Through the sessions, I became interested to know more about this effect of Yoga asana practice. I read the introductory sections of Donna Farhi’s Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit, several other books on Yoga and many articles on the spiritual teachings of Yoga in “Yoga Journal”, “Yoga International” and “Yoga & Health” magazines. I realised that there was a whole system of Yoga “technologies” developed since antiquity to not just train the body but also the mind, developing us so that spiritually we can achieve peace and happiness.
With this knowledge, I pursued Yoga asana practice with a new mindfulness and spirit of enquiry that I never had. This brought an ease to my movements and postures. With daily practice, I became able to relax into asanas I was unable to achieve before that. Additionally, I found great comfort in the pranayama practices that my teacher integrates into the sessions.
It is crucial to highlight the importance of the teacher in Yoga practice. In this case, it was my teacher’s compassionate but firm guidance through the practices that contributed to their ability to affect and benefit me. I have not even spoken more than a few sentences to her over the past 2 years or so attending her weekly sessions. But with a trust in her expertise and faith in her integrity, as well as motivation stemming from her inspiring dedication to Yoga, I was able to train without fear and with an openness to new experiences. I was challenged by the building up of the difficulty of the sessions while at the same time, relaxed. Over time, I had built a confidence in my body and a belief that it has no limits provided I proceed to train it in moderation and care. This is no mean feat as I never excelled at sports and had hated exercise since school days. I was able to achieve that because of the uncompetitive nature of Yoga practice and the supportive environment within which I practised.
In summary, energy returned to my body, clarity to my Mind and hope to my spirit. Still somehow I felt that I was not whole. It is no wonder why this is so, for according to Yoga we have five bodies or kosas. I had at that time only a vague idea of some of these and no idea how they are related.
---
I recently asked my yoga teacher if she reads minds. She jokingly replied “Of course! I do it all the time!” The reason I asked was because she came to me at the beginning of a class three weeks ago and asked me if I am interested in training as a Yoga instructor. The very question I wanted to ask her at the end of that class. This led to my enrolling in the YICC. In this very interesting course, I found answers and explanations to many questions I had on how Yoga helps us in achieving happiness. It is then that I managed to link the depression at the time of my grandmother’s death, the nature of the Mind, the spiritual cultivation of Yoga practice and the process of achieving happiness.
---
With my enrolment in the Yoga Instructor's Certificate Course (YICC), a deeper understanding of the meaning of Yoga and the relation of the Mind to the body and to happiness was finally revealed.
The concept of health, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), is a state of well being at the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social levels. In Yoga science, the concept of the body is expressed as “Panca kosa vivek”: a five layer existence. These five bodies are:
Ø Annamaya kosa: Physical body
Ø Pranayama kosa: Ethereal body
Ø Manomaya kosa: Mind body
Ø Vijnamaya kosa: Intellectual body
Ø Anandamaya kosa: Blissful body
The Yoga concept of health can thus be expressed thus: if we take care of the physical body and work inwards towards the cultivation of our kosas, we will achieve a level of bliss at Anandamaya kosa. Control is achieved when the mind is brought to silence, a state which is happiness.
Hence it can be argued that physical asana practice and breath control through pranayama practice are in preparation for deeper practice involving ever more abstract or subtle levels of our being. These latter practices are only possible when we are healthy in the physical body and adept at achieving calm in our movements. The two fronts of practice, external and internal are laid out in detail in Raja Yoga.
Raja Yoga seeks a mastery of the Mind. It purports Ashtanga Yoga or Eigth-limbed Yoga. The eight courses of practice work in tandem to achieve Mind mastery, silencing the eddies within our bodies, bring peace and happiness in Moksa, a state of total silence, rewarded with freedom, bliss, knowledge and power.
The eight “limbs” or practices are divided into Bahiranga Yoga (dealing with the external) and Antaranga Yoga (dealing with the internal).
Under Bahiranga Yoga are indirect ways to gain mastery of the mind:
1. Yama: a set of don’ts
2. Niyama: a set of dos
3. Asana: Yoga postures
4. Pranayama: mastery through breath
5. Pratyahara: mastery over sense organs
These practices develop the moral fibre as much as the physical makeup of the person. When adept at Bahiranga Yoga practice, we can with greater ease approach the subtler inner practices in Antanranga Yoga. Thus we can with practice reach further and further inwards with more subtle tools to hone all our kosas reaching toward the blissful body, Ananamaya kosa.
Under Antanranga Yoga are direct ways to gain mastery of the mind:
6. Dharana: focusing
7. Dhyana: meditation
8. Smadhi: merging with the super consciousness
Hence, Yoga gave me a theoretical framework to understand my self and a practical course of action to take care of my self. I realise that the moments of happiness or peace I experienced during asana practice in a period of intense and overwhelming grief proved that silence in the mind can be reached and the vast reservoirs of bliss can be released. The urgency hinted in my drawings and in the desire to come out of a deep sense of despair , added a serious motivation to my practice.
I have begun to take the Yamas and Niyamas into my daily life. In a way, I feel a sense of relief that this attempt has brought. The Yamas and Niyamas are a good guiding force in subtle decisions as well as more strategic decisions that we undertake all the time. Simply knowing that I am keeping mindful of the integrity of my actions and motivations brings a perceptible sense of ease in my actions. It adds discipline to the Mind outside of the concentration of asana practice. Each action, each thought becomes a part of Yoga practice, requiring the same amount of attention and discipline.
---
In the YICC training, I also came to realise grandma’s gift.
On the first day of the course, we each introduced ourselves in turn and explained why we were taking the course. When my turn came, I started crying as I realised that the soul-searching that led me to study Yoga started when she passed away. With her passing, perhaps she had wanted to make me take the inward journey. While I never got to know her well, I was saddened by her departure as she was a kind soul. She was always happy, always smiling, good-natured and loving. Her smiles were her gift to us when she was alive and the memory of her smiles, her gift after she had gone. Her goodness came back to me whenever Mr Sudheer (YICC instructor) says “Yoga is smiling”, “Have a beautiful smile on your face” during Yoga practice. So in that way, Grandma had practised Yoga all her life in her own way. Wasn’t she trying to tell me that the happiness and peace I have sought is within my grasp? And that I should pursue them NOW! And that I should keep practising all my life in all aspects of my life. I had been so lost and unhappy!
I will always remember this – her gift – and how perhaps this is a way her goodness will continue to live - through me and what I will do for others.
As the Bhagavad Gita stated, with non-attachment and practice, I realised that even an event life Grandma’s death cannot be simply good nor bad. We cannot understand the meanings of these things until we have developed through Yoga practice a detachment to the rough eddies of emotions and our senses. We master our immediate impulse to like or dislike and become calm in the face of challenges and happy always. The spiritual dimension of Yoga has drawn out the inner world into the open, given us a set of tools to work at achieving peace within ourselves.
Om.
These excerpts are from my essay written during the yoga instructor's course exactly a year ago:
----------
I was not close to my grandmother. However, when she passed away, something in me snapped and all the stress of living and trying to make sense of it all collected into an insufferable heap of inner turmoil. I could not work, I could not sleep. I kept crying. I felt like my head went into overdrive trying to make sense of everything. It just kept thinking and thinking. I really wanted it to stop. I was tired of thinking. I was tired of living if living meant having to think. I wanted very much for it all to cease.
Nothing I tried cheered me up.
Looking back now with gentler eyes, nothing I did gave me any peace or happiness because they did not strike at the source of the troubles: the uncontrolled Mind.
If you do not look after your Mind, observe it, understand it and master it, you will have no peace. I had a sense of this from the doing the drawings and beginning the inner journey. However, it is through practising Yoga that I began to understand the nature of the Mind, its connection to the body and also how Yoga practice helps to provide us with a means to master the Mind.
---
As I ran into my yoga teacher 2 days following the funeral, I was encouraged by her to practice more Yoga as it would help.
As I attended daily classes of Yoga asanas, each session lasting about one and a half hours (including relaxation), I discovered that during the practice, I felt a sense of peace and relief from the grief and depression that no other activity could give me. The feelings will return after the session. Still grateful for even temporary respites, I went for Yoga almost daily for about a month.
Through the sessions, I became interested to know more about this effect of Yoga asana practice. I read the introductory sections of Donna Farhi’s Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit, several other books on Yoga and many articles on the spiritual teachings of Yoga in “Yoga Journal”, “Yoga International” and “Yoga & Health” magazines. I realised that there was a whole system of Yoga “technologies” developed since antiquity to not just train the body but also the mind, developing us so that spiritually we can achieve peace and happiness.
With this knowledge, I pursued Yoga asana practice with a new mindfulness and spirit of enquiry that I never had. This brought an ease to my movements and postures. With daily practice, I became able to relax into asanas I was unable to achieve before that. Additionally, I found great comfort in the pranayama practices that my teacher integrates into the sessions.
It is crucial to highlight the importance of the teacher in Yoga practice. In this case, it was my teacher’s compassionate but firm guidance through the practices that contributed to their ability to affect and benefit me. I have not even spoken more than a few sentences to her over the past 2 years or so attending her weekly sessions. But with a trust in her expertise and faith in her integrity, as well as motivation stemming from her inspiring dedication to Yoga, I was able to train without fear and with an openness to new experiences. I was challenged by the building up of the difficulty of the sessions while at the same time, relaxed. Over time, I had built a confidence in my body and a belief that it has no limits provided I proceed to train it in moderation and care. This is no mean feat as I never excelled at sports and had hated exercise since school days. I was able to achieve that because of the uncompetitive nature of Yoga practice and the supportive environment within which I practised.
In summary, energy returned to my body, clarity to my Mind and hope to my spirit. Still somehow I felt that I was not whole. It is no wonder why this is so, for according to Yoga we have five bodies or kosas. I had at that time only a vague idea of some of these and no idea how they are related.
---
I recently asked my yoga teacher if she reads minds. She jokingly replied “Of course! I do it all the time!” The reason I asked was because she came to me at the beginning of a class three weeks ago and asked me if I am interested in training as a Yoga instructor. The very question I wanted to ask her at the end of that class. This led to my enrolling in the YICC. In this very interesting course, I found answers and explanations to many questions I had on how Yoga helps us in achieving happiness. It is then that I managed to link the depression at the time of my grandmother’s death, the nature of the Mind, the spiritual cultivation of Yoga practice and the process of achieving happiness.
---
With my enrolment in the Yoga Instructor's Certificate Course (YICC), a deeper understanding of the meaning of Yoga and the relation of the Mind to the body and to happiness was finally revealed.
The concept of health, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), is a state of well being at the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social levels. In Yoga science, the concept of the body is expressed as “Panca kosa vivek”: a five layer existence. These five bodies are:
Ø Annamaya kosa: Physical body
Ø Pranayama kosa: Ethereal body
Ø Manomaya kosa: Mind body
Ø Vijnamaya kosa: Intellectual body
Ø Anandamaya kosa: Blissful body
The Yoga concept of health can thus be expressed thus: if we take care of the physical body and work inwards towards the cultivation of our kosas, we will achieve a level of bliss at Anandamaya kosa. Control is achieved when the mind is brought to silence, a state which is happiness.
Hence it can be argued that physical asana practice and breath control through pranayama practice are in preparation for deeper practice involving ever more abstract or subtle levels of our being. These latter practices are only possible when we are healthy in the physical body and adept at achieving calm in our movements. The two fronts of practice, external and internal are laid out in detail in Raja Yoga.
Raja Yoga seeks a mastery of the Mind. It purports Ashtanga Yoga or Eigth-limbed Yoga. The eight courses of practice work in tandem to achieve Mind mastery, silencing the eddies within our bodies, bring peace and happiness in Moksa, a state of total silence, rewarded with freedom, bliss, knowledge and power.
The eight “limbs” or practices are divided into Bahiranga Yoga (dealing with the external) and Antaranga Yoga (dealing with the internal).
Under Bahiranga Yoga are indirect ways to gain mastery of the mind:
1. Yama: a set of don’ts
2. Niyama: a set of dos
3. Asana: Yoga postures
4. Pranayama: mastery through breath
5. Pratyahara: mastery over sense organs
These practices develop the moral fibre as much as the physical makeup of the person. When adept at Bahiranga Yoga practice, we can with greater ease approach the subtler inner practices in Antanranga Yoga. Thus we can with practice reach further and further inwards with more subtle tools to hone all our kosas reaching toward the blissful body, Ananamaya kosa.
Under Antanranga Yoga are direct ways to gain mastery of the mind:
6. Dharana: focusing
7. Dhyana: meditation
8. Smadhi: merging with the super consciousness
Hence, Yoga gave me a theoretical framework to understand my self and a practical course of action to take care of my self. I realise that the moments of happiness or peace I experienced during asana practice in a period of intense and overwhelming grief proved that silence in the mind can be reached and the vast reservoirs of bliss can be released. The urgency hinted in my drawings and in the desire to come out of a deep sense of despair , added a serious motivation to my practice.
I have begun to take the Yamas and Niyamas into my daily life. In a way, I feel a sense of relief that this attempt has brought. The Yamas and Niyamas are a good guiding force in subtle decisions as well as more strategic decisions that we undertake all the time. Simply knowing that I am keeping mindful of the integrity of my actions and motivations brings a perceptible sense of ease in my actions. It adds discipline to the Mind outside of the concentration of asana practice. Each action, each thought becomes a part of Yoga practice, requiring the same amount of attention and discipline.
---
In the YICC training, I also came to realise grandma’s gift.
On the first day of the course, we each introduced ourselves in turn and explained why we were taking the course. When my turn came, I started crying as I realised that the soul-searching that led me to study Yoga started when she passed away. With her passing, perhaps she had wanted to make me take the inward journey. While I never got to know her well, I was saddened by her departure as she was a kind soul. She was always happy, always smiling, good-natured and loving. Her smiles were her gift to us when she was alive and the memory of her smiles, her gift after she had gone. Her goodness came back to me whenever Mr Sudheer (YICC instructor) says “Yoga is smiling”, “Have a beautiful smile on your face” during Yoga practice. So in that way, Grandma had practised Yoga all her life in her own way. Wasn’t she trying to tell me that the happiness and peace I have sought is within my grasp? And that I should pursue them NOW! And that I should keep practising all my life in all aspects of my life. I had been so lost and unhappy!
I will always remember this – her gift – and how perhaps this is a way her goodness will continue to live - through me and what I will do for others.
As the Bhagavad Gita stated, with non-attachment and practice, I realised that even an event life Grandma’s death cannot be simply good nor bad. We cannot understand the meanings of these things until we have developed through Yoga practice a detachment to the rough eddies of emotions and our senses. We master our immediate impulse to like or dislike and become calm in the face of challenges and happy always. The spiritual dimension of Yoga has drawn out the inner world into the open, given us a set of tools to work at achieving peace within ourselves.
Om.
