Asana work can be physically demanding. Sure, there is gentle yoga,
restorative yoga, lying down asleep yoga, and we all need those sometimes.
But we also need to kindle our inner fire, to explore the edge of our physical
performance envelope. It is only be exploring that edge that the envelope
will become larger. This is more usually expressed in the negative “use it or
lose it”, but I prefer the positive slant, “use it and become more”.
I remember when I couldn’t do a headstand at all, I remember when I
couldn’t sit straight in Dandasana. One of Pattabhi Jois’ sayings was
“practise and all is coming”, warning that we need to be patient. Just
practise and “all is coming”. We all have limits to our performance envelope
on any given day. By exploring those limits, we can improve our physical
performance, but also, and more importantly, we can train our minds to
operate calmly at those limits.
The breath is our guide when we are exploring that edge. If we lose our
breath, if it becomes laboured, we have lost our way and ventured over that
edge. When you are at the edge of your performance, whether it is holding
your hand position in down dog or trying to arm balance, you need focus,
and the breath is the bridge between body and mind (1) . Keep the breath
flowing smoothly in the pose and your mind can deal with the sensations, the
fear, the shying away from discomfort that is so natural to our animal selves
as we approach the edge of our performance envelope. Once we pass
those barriers, we enter our peak performance zone, right on the edge.
So, follow the breath and see where it takes you.
Felicity Heathcote wrote “Peak Performance, Zen and the Sporting Zone”
twenty-five years ago. She was a performance coach for the Irish Olympic
team at that stage. I was practising Zen meditation at that time. This is a
stark, bare, arid, and in its own way, incredibly beautiful, practice. You sit on
a black “Zafu”, staring at a blank wall for ages, then at the sound of the gong,
you get up and slowly, in a very controlled way, walk in a very mindful way
while your poor legs get a bit of life back into them. Then you sit back down
and down it again. The head monk in charge of the meditation will have a
stick, so that if you fall asleep, he can tap you on the shoulder to bring you
back to yourself, to consciousness. The sound of the bell, too, brings you
back to the here and now. In hindsight, I now see my attraction to the Zen
way as a desire for ritual without the baroque ornamentation of the Roman
Catholic Church. In that bare, distraction free environment, your mind really
does become a “mad monkey”, jumping from subject to subject, rattling the
bars of your cage, chattering away about how stupid this is, to get up and run
around, to go eat something, to scratch that itch on the outside of your left
ear, and so on, ad nauseum ad infinitum. Then, for me anyway, it would be
as if my mind dropped all that chatter, or at least I went somewhere else,
away from the chatter. This “somewhere else” was quiet, worry free, calm
and beautiful, crystal clear. I was unable to do anything with it. My mind
would pop out of that state without any perceptible provocation and I
abandoned the practice before I was able to carry that calm with me into
ordinary life. Felicity Heathcote, a clinical psychologist who had lived in Japan,
brought the idea of bringing that calm into the sporting arena for Irish elite athletes,
and it is now common for athletes to receive coaching on the psychological elements of
performance.
The yogis of old knew all about this. You follow your breath, this calms and
steadies the mind to bring focus. You follow a dristhi with your gaze, to
bring focus. You feel out the edge of your physical capacity with that focus
and the smooth flow of your breath leads you on into performance of what
they termed “austerities”, that brought the body-mind to that place of calm.
We in the west tend to forget that the posture work of Yoga is but one aspect
of the Yoga system. The postures become an end in themselves rather
than the preparation of body and mind for the real challenge of life, to move
within and join with our own inner light in this wonderful dance of life.
Om Shanti! 4 th November, 2020
(1) Thank you to Carol Murphy for the timely reminder.
