As I delve more deeply into Iyengar Yoga, I’m struck by the fierce commitment to presence of mind. I spent a weekend in November, 2014 at a workshop with Manouso Manos in Chicago, with my friend Amy. Manouso studied almost annually with BKS Iyengar for almost 40 years. He has a passionate, engaged energy, requiring you to work consistently. Seven years ago, I would never have done an Iyengar yoga workshop.
When I took my first Iyengar class, I couldn’t cope. My monkey mind jumped from branch to branch and desperately wanted to keep moving. I found the level of detail overwhelming and just had a need to move my body in a gross way, not in a fine, detailed way. Now I find extraordinary pleasure in working with detailed anatomical focus.
On the Saturday of the weekend of classes we spent an inordinate amount of time in Pyramid pose (parsvottanasana), a pose where you split your straight legs front to back by approximately three and a half feet in the frontal plane. We placed our hands on a chair seat and were given the following directions:
Back leg: extend your inner groin to your inner knee, move the middle of your femur back to the hamstring, balance your hips, extend your calf muscles down towards the achilles, draw the back edge of the metatarsals (where the main arch begins) towards the heel. Repeat on the front leg.
Seven years ago, I couldn’t have directed that kind of detailed, anatomical focus towards one of my legs, let alone both. But seven years ago I hadn’t gone through such profound experiences where I had very little control over the timeframe: such as my child’s cancer, the dying of my cousin and separating and divorcing my partner of sixteen years. These have increased my ability to surrender and let go of the past and future and focus on the present.
As I repeatedly followed Manouso’s directions, I realized that this intense focus on my physical body, powerfully anchored my mind to my body. And, if my mind wandered off, thinking “Gosh, I’d like a cup of tea right now,” or “I’m looking forward to eating noodles with Amy later,” Manouso would catch my physical body’s failure to comply with his directions and come over to my mat and slap my offending leg and issue a curt, clear verbal directive, snapping me back into the moment.
Again – in the past, this would have upset me and made me want to walk out of the room. Now I appreciate that I am being brought into the present moment. I’ve heard that in group Zen Buddhist meditation settings that can happen too – the teacher will slap you on the back to bring you into the moment. It is so easy to live a life focused on the past or the future. Obsessing about what has been or what might have been and being concerned about the future – what might or might not happen, a feeling that things will all be better once you get to a certain point.
Somehow, it was not until this weekend doing this workshop that it really hit me, that that was one of the main reasons that I loved Iyengar yoga: my teachers are trying to educate me and help me experience myself in the best possible way, right here, right now. What is life without immediate and direct experience of the present moment?
“Sometimes our body is willing, but our mind is weak. Sometime our mind is willing, but our body is weak. Do not be afraid. Strive to extend your capacity but do not be disappointed with yourself. What does not challenge us, cannot change us.” ~BKS Iyengar.
Tamsin Astor-Jack, PhD writes at www.YogaBrained.com/blog
©Tamsin Astor-Jack, Yoga Brained LLC