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Fall 2003

NAMASTE,

Sometimes at the beginning of class, or occasionally in one-to-one conversations, I ask my students how they are doing with their practice. To tell you the truth, I am usually met with blank stares. I do get responses every now and then. They vary, of course, but one I get fairly often is: “I want to practice, but I’m afraid I won’t get it right.”

And up pops an important and interesting question: What’s the deal on getting it right?

Is there a right way to practice yoga? A “correct” way to do a pose? A Platonic archetypal cosmic Triangle Pose form to which we may all aspire?

And the answer is: Yes and no.

There is no Right Way To Practice Yoga, which is to say, there is no one way for every person for all time. That’s why there are so many styles and methods. In Iyengar Yoga, for example, we inhale from the bottom up. In Viniyoga, they inhale from the top down. People find a way that works for them, they share it with others, and if a significant number of people are drawn to that approach, a distinct school or method is born.

There is a right way to practice yoga, though, and this is true on two different levels. On one level, we might practice according to a particular style or tradition—Iyengar Yoga, for instance, the tradition taught here at Unity Woods. Since it is Iyengar Yoga, by definition, whatever the Iyengars say is the right way IS the right way. If you don’t want to play that way, you don’t have to. You can do something else, but those are the rules for Iyengar Yoga from the get go. Bikram, Anusara, Ashtanga, and most of the other methods have their parameters and dogma as well. Some are more strict and prescribed, but there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way within almost every method.

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One of the distinguishing characteristics of Iyengar Yoga is that it makes powerful use of form in a very detailed and specific way. There is a classic form for each of the asanas—a Platonic archetypal cosmic Iyengar Triangle Pose form, if you will. When I teach a class how to do Trikonasana, I am usually teaching the students to approximate the correct form of the classical pose as defined by Mr. Iyengar—at least as I understand that form to be. If a student doesn’t turn his foot the right way, I give him a “correction”, i.e. I show him the “right way”.

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Some people bristle at the term “correction”. To them, it means that they were “wrong”. It may make the students feel bad about themselves and undermine their confidence, it is said. Some say that it doesn’t build the student up, but instead tears them down. Couldn’t we use a term other than “correction”? couldn’t we be more “positive”?

Perhaps, but actually, in the context in which we are working (that being Iyengar Yoga), the pose IS wrong and is in need of correction. Rather than devising euphemisms to make the student feel good about himself (How did we get so fragile?!), I prefer to guide him toward the understanding that I am not correcting HIM, I am correcting HIS POSE. HE’s just fine, but HIS POSE is veering off track, and like the course of an errant sailboat, needs correction.

This raises a more important issue than which way a student’s foot is turned, that being the tendency for him to identify with the pose, or on a larger scale, his body, or his job, or his nation. Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutra, describes one of the causes of suffering (klesas) as asmita. Asmita is our inclination to identify with something other than our real nature, which Patanjali says is pure consciousness and which others define in many ways, ranging from the Knower or the Seer to the Atman or the Self or simply Awareness. We think we are our small self and all that that entails: male, female, able-bodied, disabled, teacher, student, American, French, and on and on. And in our day-to-day lives, that serves us up to a point. I’m glad I’m male and my wife is female, for instance.

Well, that’s a lot to take in, and I don’t pretend that I present that in any detailed way to my beginning students, nor do I expect them to come to such an understanding right away. I prefer to let the practice work its magic, for them to catch glimpses of the possible, and to amplify those glimpses as seems appropriate and possible. I do think it is important for the student to learn not to take things personally, just as it is important—more so, really—for the teacher not to intend things personally.

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But getting it right in the context of a particular method is not the only way in which there is a right way to practice yoga. There is a broader and ultimately more significant right way to practice yoga. That comes by refining yourself over time, in the cauldron of your practice, until you eventually develop the knowledge and skill to practice in a way that “right” for you. That may continue to be in the tradition in which you began, or it may be in a completely different style, a blend of different methods, or an approach you develop on your own. At that stage of the game, what makes it the right way to practice is not determined by some external measurement but by whether it serves your intended purpose. Your intention (sankalpa) and the degree to which your practice moves you toward realizing your intention become the indications of whether you are getting your practice right. If your practice isn’t effective in taking you where you want to go, you are going to need to examine what you want, what you are doing, and make a “correction” in your course.

I think that there is yet another aspect of this whole right and wrong thing. Being a long time devotee of Alfred E. Neuman, I tell my beginning students in their very first class not to worry about whether they are getting it right or not, just to do the best they can. I say this because they are not going to get it right. For over twenty years I have been doing Trikonasana in front of Mr. Iyengar, and as far as he is concerned, I still haven’t gotten it right. At first glance, this may seem a bit discouraging to the student. Hell, he might think, if I’m not going to get it right, and if after twenty years of practice, my teacher can’t even get it right, why bother? But to tell you the truth, it’s really kind of liberating. I work hard to do the best I can to “get it right”, in all the complexity of that word, to the best of my ability. Then, I’ve done my best, and whether or not it is right or wrong is a millstone I can set aside. Besides, if I think I’ve got it right, I’m finished. Nothing left to do. Has anybody gotting it right, so that there is nothing left to do? There’s always something left to do.

Somebody once asked Pablo Casals, who at the time was in his nineties and an acclaimed virtuoso of the cello, why he still practiced three hours a day. “Because,” he replied, “I think I’m improving.”

p.s. I want to thank so many of you for your support and kind words with respect to the last newsletter. I regret that due to an error, the last sentence of the letter was omitted. Copies of the corrected text were distributed at the centers and posted on line. The final sentence should have read: Although there is plenty of room for doubt, despair, and disappointment these days, one thing I’m sure of: yoga is an unparalleled gift for finding your way in interesting times.

       

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