The Science of Yoga

 

I snapped up William J Broad's The Science of Yoga when it appeared on Brotherhood Books. 2022 marks the fourth year -- possibly even the fifth? -- that I have done a yoga session every morning; I think I've only missed two days due to sickness. I'm well aware of the benefits that regular yoga has brought to me: I am SO much more flexible, aware of my body, some long-standing aches and stiffness have been ironed out, and my mental health has improved. As soon as I sit down on my mat in front of the big window and start the rounds of slow breathing before I begin the exercises, I feel calm descend. So I was intrigued to read Broad's account of the changing claims for yoga as it's spread through the western world.

For a while there was a wild assertion that yoga was the only form of exercise that a healthy person would ever need -- despite the fact that while yoga excels at slowing and calming, it's not that great at raising your heart rate (unless you deliberately plunge into energetic repetitions of the Sun Salutation). Reminders not to push too hard, not to contort too forcefully, made more sense as I read about cases of stroke and injury -- no wonder instructions for headstands and shoulder stands don't appear in newer textbooks! 

On the other hand, benefits for mental health, gentle physical healing, creativity and apparently sex lives are starting to be better documented. Yoga is fantastic at doing what it does; the danger lies when we try to co-opt it into fields where it doesn't belong.

Light On Yoga

Okay, confession: I didn't read every word of this seminal yoga handbook. I was too gobsmacked by the positions that the human body can assume -- BKS Iyengar's body, that is, definitely not mine!

Light on Yoga was one of the first yoga texts to be published in the West and I can clearly see its influence on several of the books that followed, particularly my own personal yoga bible, Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan, which offers a simpler and less strenuous program targeted at 1960s 'housewives.'

In contrast, Iyengar demonstrates 200 postures, some of which are extremely demanding! But the structure of the book, which offers step-by-step instructions, many photographs, suggested postures for different ailments, and comprehensive practice courses, has obviously provided a template for many yoga books which followed.

I'm tempted to label this book as fantasy, because there is no way I can aspire to anything other than the most basic asanas. Perhaps I'll file it under 'inspiration!'

Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan

Something a bit different today. I've had this book for 20 years and returned to it many times, but it's been neglected for the last three or four years -- but I pulled it out again 26 days ago and I'm back, baby!

I'm not a great one for signing up to classes; I prefer to learn things from a book, privately, and work at my own pace. Richard Hittleman's 28 Day Yoga program is perfect for that. It leads you gently, step by step, through 38 basic yoga positions over a month, building steadily and carefully to ever-greater challenges, and leaves you with three basic daily routines to practise at the end. I followed those daily routines for many years -- not always daily, but regularly. But it's been great to go back to the start and ease into it again. Having not done yoga at all for a long time, I can really feel the difference in my body -- I feel looser, lighter, fitter and more supple.

A word of warning: the book was first published in the 1970s, and it shows. Each day's program (taking about 20 minutes to complete) ends with a 'Thought for the Day' on topics like nutrition, smoking, the benefits of gentle stretching etc. There is much wisdom here, but also much dated hilarity. The reader is assumed to be a 'housewife.'

If the activities of housework (cleaning, shopping, child care) constituted true exercise we would not see the housewife tense, irritable, overweight, flabby, depressed and complaining of many aches and pains.

There is also an unhealthy emphasis on how yoga will make you beautiful! So take all that with a pinch of salt. But the exercises themselves are fantastic, and the program is so carefully structured, it's a wonderful introduction to yoga.

Slow Reading

I am a fast reader. I gobble my books down like a handful of popcorn, barely bothering to chew. Observant readers of this blog may have noticed the rapid movement of titles in my "What I'm Reading" list. For me, reading is a reflex, an addiction. My automatic response to an empty moment is to reach for a book, and race my way through it at top speed.

This means that I consume a lot of books (good). But it also means that I don't absorb what I read (bad). A couple of weeks after I've finished a book, I struggle to remember exactly what happened. And this weekend I realised that sometimes I struggle to recognise what's happening even while I'm still reading!

You see, this weekend I went to yoga camp (good). I only brought one book with me (bad). By the second evening I had only one chapter to go. Cue panic!

I finished the book. It was William Golding's The Inheritors, his novel about a group of Neanderthals and their first encounter with homo sapiens. The Neanderthal protagonist doesn't understand a lot of what he observes - to him, the homo sapiens' boats are logs, their bows and arrows are bent sticks and twigs. Most of their actions are incomprehensible to Lok, who watches dumbly, confused and frightened.

After I finished the book, I dimly realised that something Very Bad must have happened. But I couldn't quite remember it happening. I had to go back and reread the last few chapters to pinpoint the exact moment of the Bad Thing. And sure enough, I found it. But like Lok, the first time round, I hadn't understood what I was seeing.

Lok had some excuse: he is a Neanderthal. But I was just reading too fast. If I hadn't been at yoga camp, I might not have taken the time to reread; I might have just moved on to the next book.

Perhaps this is the true lesson of yoga camp: slow down. Be mindful. Pay attention. Take the time to digest what you're reading, and be nourished by it.

Om...

Yoga Camp Part 2

So my dear friend Elizabeth and I went on our annual pilgrimage to yoga camp. This actually began with sitting in Friday night traffic on Bell St and snarling at the other drivers, "Move it, buster! We need to get to yoga camp!"

The experience continued with teeming rain, fallen trees and flooded roads, none of which inhibited our enjoyment. We didn't even find out what happened in the election until after we'd got home again, that's how cut off from the world we were. Bliss! Though I was so worried about missing early morning yoga that I leapt out of bed at the sound of Elizabeth's phone, flicked on the light and started getting dressed, until a sleepy Liz informed me (with admirable restraint) that it was actually only midnight...

This year, our course focused on meditation, which is something I know nothing about and feared I would be very bad at. During our 5.30am yoga class, the teacher told us that we should be still, and allow our breath to move through the physical body, without disturbing it; and suddenly I saw that in meditation, the thoughts should be allowed to move through the still mind in the same way, and suddenly it all made much more sense.

I think my favourite moment was when the whole class chimed ommmmm, the harmonies resonating, weaving in and out, and vibrating through us as if we were bells.

Om is the sound that created the universe, you know. In the beginning was the word, the breath of life, and the wind passed over the waters. And certainly all the dams were full. At the ashram, Swami Atma told us they'd been chanting for rain. She giggled. "Well, that worked!"

Remember I said I was going on a yoga weekend and I was scared I wouldn't be allowed to read books? Well, I went, and I was allowed to read.

But I didn't want to.

Five Things I Loved About Yoga Camp

1) It was beautiful.
This was where we stayed. The ashram is surrounded by forest. Kangaroos and wallabies wander the property, magpies, parrots and kookaburras call, fairy wrens hop through the gardens, and a tiny but insistent frog tok-ked periodically from the pond. (We saw rabbits and foxes too.) The gardens are serene, the simple buildings look out over trees and gardens drenched by gentle rain. No TV, no phone, no radio, no internet. Just being there was refreshment for the soul.
2) The yoga.
Well, the whole experience was all sort of yoga, but I'm talking about the bendy-stretchy stuff. My favourite sessions were Yoga Nidra, where you lie still and someone talks you through deep relaxation and a kind of guided meditation. It was absolutely blissful (and two story ideas came to me while I was in a trance, hooray). Some people fell asleep. Okay, I fell asleep too, but only for a second.
3) The chanting.
I didn't know there was going to be chanting, and to be honest, if I'd been told, I might not have come. But it was great. We chanted mantras, and even though I didn't know what they meant, the experience of community singing or chanting is so powerful and joyous, it didn't matter. Group singing was always the part I loved about church, when I went, and this was just the same (albeit in Sanskrit). It's interesting that different spiritual traditions end up using the same tools - music, meditation, prayer, work - though they might label them differently.
In one session our teacher talked about the yogic tradition of using chanting to alter energy in the body, to create healing energy in the world, and I couldn't resist a private smile as I thought about the magical chantments of my Tremaris books. Maybe it's not so far-fetched after all.
4) Getting up at 5am
No, really. Okay, you'll just have to trust me on that one.
5) Karma yoga
This means housework. We didn't have to do much, just half an hour a day - mopping bathrooms or cleaning toilets. If we'd stayed longer, we might have helped in the gardens (they have an incredible vegie garden, and most of the meals we ate were grown on the ashram) or the kitchen, preparing the vegetarian meals. But it didn't seem like work, because everyone was doing it at the same time. The idea is that, if done mindfully, domestic work can be a kind of meditation too. And I must say, it was lovely to be somewhere that was uncluttered, and tidy, and scrupulously clean. It made me realise how stressful it is to live in the kind of mess that I'm used to at home. I need to re-think my attitude to housework - and enforce it on my family! This might be a work in progress...

In fact, there were more than five things I loved but I won't bore you any further. Suffice to say that I'm very glad I went, and while I won't be joining the ashram any time soon, I came away with a renewed determination to practice yoga every day, and some new ideas about how to enmesh it into my life. Thanks to Elizabeth for asking me to go with her.

Hari om!