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Articles > Magazines > New Age > Easing Into Yoga
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Easing Into Yoga
- By Shoba Narayan
(This article originally appeared in
January 2000)
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I sit cross-legged on the blue carpeted floor of the Integral Yoga Center, feeling a mixture of bravado and nervousness. Although it is a beginning yoga class, the students around me exude confidence as they stretch like dancers in preparation for the teacher's arrival. Only I sit like a Buddha, stupefied by stage-fright, surrounded by purple bolsters, cushions, and the large towel which the Center provides to use as a mat. I watch a lissome lass lie on the floor and coil herself into the Plough pose so that her head appears between her calves. Ye Gods! Could I have done that even before child-birth expanded my girth?
Our instructor, Mara, enters the room and shuts the door. She is a slight, middle-aged woman with an aura of peace about her. Like most of the students, Mara is wearing tights and a T-shirt. She sits in the center of the circular room painted in soothing shades of lavender and leads us in chanting the word, 'Om' three times. As we raise our voices in unison, the vibrations from the sacred sound arouse prickly hairs along my spine. I have come home.
Mara leads us through a series of gentle forward-bending poses, cautioning us to stop and relax if we feel tension in any part of the body. Most of the movements are slow and deliberate, less about speed than about mindfulness. "Stand with your feet apart. Hands raised above your head in the Mountain Pose," Mara says. "Exhale and bend slowly to touch your toes. Contract your abdomen and breathe from the diaphragm area. Hold the pose, hold the pose, and slowly lift up."
Correct breathing is the focal point of yoga along with balance and stillness. Mara emphasizes inhalation or exhalation while performing a particular pose. Usually, bending, coiling or compressing the body is accompanied by exhalation while upward-rising, expanding poses are accompanied by inhalation.
Slowly, our class progresses to the harder poses. Mara asks us to lie on our stomachs for the Cobra pose. I raise my head slowly off the ground and look up like a cobra. My arms support my weight and my legs are flat on the ground. I watch the graceful, effortless curve of Mara's body and push myself into imitating her pose. My muscles stretch and scream for release, my arms tense and beg to collapse, my lower back aches from the contraction. I hold my breath as I concentrate on achieving the 'perfect' pose.
"Don't push too hard," Mara says. "Take your body to the point of pain and hold the pose for as long as possible. Breathe normally."
Then comes Sarvang-asana (The All-Organ Pose). I lie on my back and slowly lift my feet skywards so that my chin touches my chest, 'massaging the thyroid gland,' as Mara says. My hands clutch my mid-back as they attempt to hold aloft my feet which sway from side to side, threatening to topple any second. My neck is scrunched and my face is red. Mara walks around, adjusting an arm here, a leg there. "You are trying too hard," she says gently. "Let go. Find your center and try to balance on your shoulders instead of using your hands to hold the weight of your legs."
The class ends with Yoga Nidra or guided relaxation. We lie flat on the ground with our eyes closed. Mara draws the blinds and makes the room dark. She urges us to relax every part of our body, starting from the head to the toes by taking deep abdominal breaths. I feel like I am in a gently drifting cradle, warmed by the sun and cut-off from civilization.
There are many styles of yoga taught in America, and almost all of them are good. Astanga yoga and power yoga are for those who want a serious workout. Kundalini yoga is for those who wish to awaken their spirituality. Iyengar yoga is noted for its precise postures and the use of props such as cushions and blocks. Kripalu yoga focuses on aligning movement with meditation. Integral yoga gives as much importance to pranayama (breathing practice) and meditation as they do to the poses or asanas.
I have enrolled in a Hatha Yoga class at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York City, primarily because it is the most basic type of Yoga practiced all over India. Hatha Yoga's beauty is its no-frills simplicity. In America, it is taught by most schools and private teachers. The Integral Yoga Institute offers three levels of Hatha Yoga as well as special classes for elders and pregnant women. Several instructors take turns teaching the classes but many centers around the country have just one instructor. Integral Yoga offers a ten-class card or a twenty-class card. I chose the ten-class schedule.
Most yoga poses aren't hard to master. They aren't complicated gyrations or sequences that one has to memorize. Anyone with a reasonable amount of flexibility can pick them up in a couple of days. Mastering the mindset that goes with the poses is harder. "In Hatha Yoga, the postures are not considered the most important," says Bhagavan, manager, Integral Yoga Center who has practiced yoga since 1987. "The reduction of mental activity is key."
Yoga, above all, is a lesson in humility. "It is not about achieving," as Bhagawan says. The teachers at the Integral Yoga Center talk about 'surrendering to the body,' by 'breathing into the areas of tension,' and 'letting go.' Yoga is contradictory to everything America teaches about hard work, competitiveness and achievement. Yoga is 'non-competitive,' says Bhagawan. It is the path of least effort towards no particular goal. It is about surrendering instead of striving, and being instead of achieving.
Don't get me wrong. Yoga isn't a cake-walk. The advanced poses involve coiling yourself into human-balls while balancing on two hands, a mean feat for even an athlete. As a beginner, I try to push my body into achieving graceful poses, just like the instructor. Instead, the trick is to gently take your body to the point of pain and hold it there for as long as possible, breathing normally. After a few days of doing this, I find that my point-of-pain stretches farther and farther away.
A word about Yoga teachers. Some of them walk you through every pose, giving a running commentary on what to do. Others demonstrate the poses and then use key phrases as punctuation. "Breathe into the areas of tension." "Let gravity do the work." "Surrender into the pose." "Let go. Let go." I found that the ones with a running commentary were useful in the first couple of classes but as I learnt the poses, I preferred the more succinct ones. The running commentaries were a distraction I didn't need once I had learnt the poses.
Yoga poses are very portable. Doing one of them in the middle of the day is just as good as an elaborate ritual at dawn or bedtime. Great yogis, reportedly, did only one pose a day but stayed in the pose for hours, observing miniscule changes in the body while attempting to still the mind. Meditation in movement.
The greatest benefit of my ten yoga classes is not my body's increased flexibility and concentration or the sense of well-being that surrounds me like an armor. It is my heightened awareness of two very Eastern concepts: Less is More and Go with the Flow. They are cliches, of course. Through Yoga, I internalized them. I was accustomed to thinking that life was a struggle with impediments that had to be overcome. The spontaneous ease of Yoga was a new concept to me. As I relaxed into my poses, my body memorized the softness in my muscles. I learned to carry that ease into other tasks. After two weeks of doing Yoga, I become aware of how unnecessarily tightly I grip my pen while writing and how loudly I speak into the phone when I don't need to. I become aware of the tension around my neck as I race to catch a cab. I learnt to take deep breaths and become aware of my posturewhen I was sitting, carrying my baby, putting away groceries or even sprawled on the couch watching TV.
Yoga, ultimately, is about mindfulness and I could translate that into all areas of my life.
Basics:
The word yoga is derived from the word 'yoke' and involves uniting the mind with the body. It was developed in India some 5000 years ago. There are 4 paths to yoga.
- Jnana, the path of knowledge or wisdom
- Bhakti, the path of devotion
- Raja, the path of self control
- Hatha Yoga, which includes postures and breathing, and is the form most popular in the West, is actually part of Raja Yoga, the path of self control (source: Yogasite.com)
What is it?
Hatha Yoga is a series of slow, deliberate poses that increase flexibility, improve circulation and increase concentration. All of the Integral Yoga Hatha Classes involve opening chanting, then physical postures (asanas) followed by deep relaxation, breathing practices (pranayama), meditation, and closing chants.
How to find a class?
Yoga classes are available in most American cities. Look in the Internet for the Yoga site at http://www.yogasite.com which has a yoga teacher directory by state, yoga retreats, photographs of postures, yoga publications, newsgroups, mailing lists and organizations. The Integral Yoga Center's Web site is at
http://integralyogaofnewyork.org.
How much it costs?
Yoga classes generally cost about $10 per class. Most classes last an hour and twenty-five minutes. A ten-class card is available at the Integral Yoga Center for $90 and a twenty-class card is $170.
What to take to the class?
A towel, loose-fitting clothing and clean socks. Please do not eat for at least an hour before class.
This article originally appeared in
January 2000.
Copyright © 2000 New Age. All rights reserved. |
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