A few episodes ago, I compared the eight steps of Yoga to eight steps of a ladder. Asana is the 3rd step in the original Yoga of Patanjali. In the previous episode I have explained how the meaning taken on by the word asana these days, does not match the original meaning of the word.
So, am I suggesting that Asana as propagated today is a wrong step in Yoga? A wrongly placed step can topple the person who tries to climb up the ladder 😉
Actually, I am trying to find some justification for including today’s asana in the Yoga practice.
The way various body postures have been added to Yoga over a period of years, does make me believe that the claimed benefits of these Asanas have nothing to do with how exactly you twist and turn. There is hardly any uniformity nor there is any verifiable theory that links these twisting and turning to the claimed benefits.
But at the same time, these Asanas, which I would like to refer to as Yoga exercises, seem to have some positive effect on our health. Most studies done on modern Yoga, indicate that Yoga brings down various stress markers. That is the way they improve our health.
How do we explain that?
If you closely observe the current practice of asana across various prominent schools of Yoga, what do you see common in all of them, apart from various ways of twisting and turning?
How are these exercises better than any other exercise in improving your health? What is special about Yoga exercises?
Let me digress a bit.
In Buddhist meditative practices, they have what is called Sati. These are the practices one undertakes in the beginning of the formal practice of meditation.
In particular, there are what are called Kaya Sati and Anapana Sati.In Kaya sati, one closely observes each minute movement of the body. When one sits, one observes how the legs are placed, how the back is held, how the neck and head are aligned and so on.
Similarly, when one gets up from a seated position, again one observes how one presses the feet on the ground, how one lifts the buttocks and leans forward, and so on.
When one walks, one observes how fast or how slow he walks, how the hands and the legs alternate, how the body bends back and forth, and so on.
The idea is to practice watching the body closely. This would improve our ability to focus on something. With practice, we get more and more control on our attention system. That enables us to voluntarily focus our attention on whatever we choose to.
Similar idea holds in Anapana Sati. Anapana means breathing in and out. You observe how you breath. How the air passes through the nostrils, the sensation that air creates inside the nostrils, the way the air fills the lungs and finally gets expelled.
So, these Sati techniques are actually training exercises to hone your focusing skills. Buddhist texts are very clear on the purpose of these exercises and how they work. They view them as preparatory for later meditation step where a prolonged steady focus is needed.
As I said in one of my previous episodes, ability to focus helps us in minimizing stress. Instead of getting bogged down by a flood of thoughts, we can be selective and choose to focus only on those thoughts that help us. That would eliminate unnecessary thoughts and hence indirectly minimize stress.
Are modern Yoga exercises, which they call as Asana, just some form of Sati exercises of Buddhists?
Among the wide varieties of Yoga exercises, there are mainly two types. One that focusses on alignment of body and placement of limbs relative to each other.
While doing these exercises, you are unknowingly paying attention to your body movements. Only difference is that in Buddhist form, there is no willful manipulation of the body, but only observing it passively. So, what you are effectively doing is some form of Kaya Sati! Naturally, they improve your focus and help in stress minimization.
The other class of Yoga exercises emphasize on synchronizing breathing with body movements. You are supposed to breathe in and out in coordination with body movements. Or in other words, you are paying attention to breathing. So, it is a form of Anapana Sati!. Needless to say that, even this has potential to minimize stress.
Training the focus or Pranayama is actually the fourth step of Yoga. But somehow our modern Gurus have clubbed it with the third step namely the Asana. That is why I said that Asana of today’s Yoga is a misplaced step.
It may be effective but it is not in the order. It is not only misplaced, but also misleading since no Yoga teacher explains how it leads to stress reduction. They project it as if it is some mystic technique somehow linked with the body! They talk about pranic energy, cosmic energy and what not!
That is where the problem is.
That reminds me of an interesting and humorous story which says a lot about the way modern Yoga is progressing. I will talk about it in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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