Practicing and teaching yoga is trying to see and share things that are not able to be seen; experiences that are so difficult to describe with words.
Because of the difficulty people can have in connecting their reality to their experience of yoga practice without being able to see a thing or touch it, I try to find images that you can visualize while you’re practicing. (That I can use as well.)
I’ve been purusing the Hatha Yoga Pradipika lately. It’s one of the texts used in advanced yoga teacher trainings. The title in english is Light on Hatha Yoga. There are a few things I’ve rediscovered that I think might help you in your practice.
In the ancient wisdom of Hatha yoga practice, the body must be addressed first before more subtle practices can be effective. Not just with asana but with nutritious food and shat kriyas (cleansing practices).
Only then is it recommended to move on to pranayama.
The image above is used to visualize the ways prana moves in the body. Prana (life force) is the subtle reason we have physiological processes (according to yoga. Everything that manifests as physical phenomenon is a slowed down vibration of prana. When energy flows freely through the body, we are well, our bodies performing its various tasks optimally.
The metaphor in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika for the cause of disease is a stagnant pond. When prana gets stuck, just like a pond without an outlet, bacteria begin to colonize. The practices for freeing up stuck prana and making sure it flows are the practices of pranayama.
Prana Vayu is the term for the different ways prana flow in and out of the body. Vayu means wind.
Apan Vayu– the section of prana that governs elimination. Usually moving down and out of the body (birth, urination, dedication) it also governs exhalation. Basically, getting rid of anything that would kill us if we kept it.
Soman Vayu – the movement of prana in the torso that regulates digestion. Visualized as a spiral, I like to imagine it as a tornado. Digesting not just food, but information, a healthily flowing soman vayu means we can process efficitently, taking up nutrients and ideas that make us better, elimiating waste.
Udan Vayu– the movement of prana that governs expression. Udan Vayu is in the area of the throat. When it is flowing properly you can express your insides to the outside world clearly and effectively.
Pran Vayu- The movement of prana that regulates intake. Typically situated in the head and shoulders it is your ability to take in the world. When pran vayu flows freely you can accept, taking the world in as it is without being overwhelmed by it.
Vyan Vayu– the coordinating and distributive aspect of prana. Vyan Vayu regulates that which circulates through the whole body: brain and nerves, heart and blood vessels. It is related to our ability to be ourselves and know our place in the world.
Yoga is the practice of reckoning with things that impact you strongly that you cannot move with your hands, that you cannot observe with your eyes. Yoga has a concept for turning inward to observe and it’s pratyahara. The practice by which you turn those senses, typically used to interact with the outside world, inward is pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses). Pratyahara is what allows you to “see” your thoughts, “hear” your emotions, feel your energy move; to experience fully the universe within you.
When I teach, sometimes I mention that your imagination can hold an entire universe. Because, truly, your mind is bound only by the limits that you set for yourself. I like to say that adults are not actually adults, but adult-shaped children. We are bound by our conditioning and we move in the world the way we think adults are supposed to move, as opposed to with real maturity or authenticity.
In order to be truly with ourselves and live lives that feel right for us we have to stop caring about the perceived judgment of what others might think of our behavior and move from a place that is deep within us. It is what cannot be logiced. It is what cannot be touched or seen, but a feeling that arrises. We don’t owe anyone an explanation about how we live our lives. It doesn’t have to make sense from the outside. Believe in yourself.
In my childhood I was raised with an acute awareness of what others could possibly be thinking of me and my actions. I was told that my actions reflected on my parents and therefore needed to be what my parents thought they should be. This is the emotional equivalent of making your kids sit at the table until they finished vegetables that they didn’t want to eat. When you supersede inner impulses, you teach people that there experience is wrong, their subtle feedback is wrong and your opinion of their experience is right. Which leads to a dysfunctional emotional relationship with food, and to the pantomime of adulthood we live with.
I’m not interested in living as a renunciate. The lineage of yoga that I have trained in started in the Himalayan mountains where some guy in the brahman cast would go off into the caves with a boy that would be given up by their family. They would eat food donated by the village and practice yoga, disconnected from life. A way of life I am wholly uninterested in. However, one of the things that happens when you do all of that is you learn about the intricate and subtle ways that your inner universe exists, and you become at once individual and everything.
So! Keep practicing! We don’t need caves and gurus from the world. We have all we need inside ourselves. Give yourself the time and quiet to be able to experience it.
I use this kind of image to imagine what chakras look like. This is a rendering by NASA of how the earth’s magnetic field presents. It’s a model we can use to create awareness and understanding of that which we know exists and impacts us, but can not be seen with our eyes. This model happens to be apt, as ancient yogis noticed the human being has charged areas. The top of your head and front of your body are said to be positively charged, while the bottom of your feet and back body are said to be negatively charged.
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