The Beginnings of a True Yoga Practice

I think that today may have been the first time I've ever actually practiced yoga.

Something inside my head clicked early this morning, words my teacher Chad has told me many times suddenly resonated. Reading Yoga Mala, Sri Pattabhi Jois's treatise on Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, and a conversation with teacher here named Govinda last night at the coconut stand brought them to life for me.

Chad always says "focus on breath and bandhas, the asana is secondary."

In Guruji's book I read obvious things like how yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, and end to the chatter in your head that distracts you from connecting to your Atman, or the Universal Self. The short book also also talks about the need to detach from things that are transient, material, etc. Through pranayama, or focus on breath, you focus the mind and find the connection to Atman.

Last night over an evening coconut I was talking to Govinda, a very special man who has been practicing ashtanga for over fifteen years and is one of its few certified teachers. I was telling him how I thought I might have re-injured my hamstring the other morning, and how upset I would have been to hurt myself during the first few days here.

"It doesn't matter," he said to me. Then he went on to talk about how all you need is breath and bandhas, things you can do just the same with or without an injury. We also spoke of what yoga is to him, this very thoughtful and intellectual man who had clearly experienced this elusive connection I'd only read about. He told me he knows very experienced practitioners who have not made the connection, who after so many years of ashtanga, are really only doing gymnastics.

I woke up wide awake at 3 o'clock this morning, my mind flooded with thoughts I had to write down in my journal. Something had come together in my head. I need to let go of the asana, the form of the pose, the flexibility or control or strength or beauty of my practice, I had to let go of my ego. Detachment, as Guruji discusses in the Yoga Mala. Let go of wanting to drop back or have a perfect handstand or jump through with straight legs, let go of caring how many asanas I'd been given.

So this morning at the shala, I put my new found theory to the test. The change was striking. I usually don't sweat much when I practice, even here in hot and humid India, but somewhere in the middle of the standing series, I started pouring it. Despite the frequent distraction of students squeezing by my mat there was a focus that I've never really had before. It was almost as if I'd put myself into a trance. Ironically, my asanas were also much more fluid. I felt like I finally connected to what Devorah, my other teacher back home, has said to me so many times: "Stop trying so hard, stop putting in so much unnecessary effort. Just do it."

Something different, something new, something special happened on my mat this morning. I'm sure I'm barely scratching the surface of the discoveries of this path of yoga, and for years to come I'll experience similar epiphanies. And so after over a year of near daily dedication to asanas, I think I've finally started to practice yoga.