Iyengar Intensive Day 2: Morning Session
"Yoga is like an ocean: As the ocean is very deep, so yoga is very deep. In the three or four days I am here, I cannot give you everything. But I can give you the means to progress."
That's how Sri B.K.S. Iyengar began his remarks on the second day of his Estes Park intensive. Despite Guruji's impressive vigor, he's reminding the hundreds of us gathered here that this that this will probably be his last trip to the West. It's not only a last chance for us to absorb his knowledge and wisdom, but also his last chance to offer us the gift of his teaching, his last chance to convey to us what he considers the very essence of yoga.
In a sense, this is the beginning of the passing of the torch, the transmission of Mr. Iyengar's teaching lineage. When those of us lucky enough to be here leave, it will be our task to use that gift well, to create a ripple effect by taking what we've learned back to our home communities and sharing it with our students and friends.
Guruji touched in passing on a multitude of topics this morning, but three of his main themes were:
the use of props in yoga;
the importance of humbleness, of maintaining the open mind of the beginner;
and the spiritual essence of pranayama practice.
For much of the opening of his talk, he worked with his senior teachers Patricia Walden and Manouso Manos. They demonstrated many of the poses we did in class yesterday, first without props and then using props. In every asana, Mr. Iyengar demonstrated how the props can and should be used.
Many people have the misconception that props are there to support the pose, to make it easier, he said. Instead, we should think of the props as educators--in fact, as gurus--to point out to us the parts of our bodies that are asleep, the parts where intelligence is not yet flowing.
For example, if we're doing Parsvakonasana, placing the outside edge of the back leg heel against a block or a wall can remind us to ground that part of the foot--to keep both sides of the ankle even, avoiding the tendency to collapse the inner ankle and let the outside edge of the foot become light on the floor.
Jokingly, Guruji told us that "Yoga is a disappointing art." The difficulty of svadhyaya--the self-study that is at the heart of yoga--is that it brings us up against all our dark sides, all our weaknesses. But, he said, "Your 'failures' are your stepping stones to climb the ladder of spiritual growth."
He reminded us that the results of practice often don't come immediately. Our growth in yoga is a series of ascents and plateaus. It's easy to get discouraged and lose our way when we're on a long plateau, but that is precisely when we must redoube our efforts to maintain our practice.
On the importance of approaching practice with the open mind of the beginner, Mr. Iyengar said, "The learner must always have a humble mind; if not, they are no longer a student, they are no longer learning." While working with Patricia Walden, one of his most senior teachers, Guruji reminded us that from the standpoint of the immense amount we all have to learn about yoga, we are all beginners. "I may be the superior [senior] teacher to Patricia," he said, "but compared to all of yoga, we are both students. From that perspective, there is no difference."
Here's today's asana sequence:
Tadasana (Mountain Pose)
Parsvakonasana (Side Angle Pose)
Trikonasana (Triangle Pose)
Padangusthasana (Big Toe Pose)
Padahastasana (Hand Under Foot Standing Forward Bend)
Uttanasana (Intense Standing Forward Bend)
Virabhadrasana I (Hero Pose I)
Virabhadrasana III (Hero Pose III)
Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose)
Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog Pose); first with the hands on blocks, then with them on the floor
Dhanurasana (Bow Pose); first with a rolled blanket under the thighs near the knees, then without
Urdhva Mukha Svanasana [again]
Dhanurasana [again]
Paschimottanasana (Seated Forward Bend); first with a rolled mat or blanket under the sitting bones, then with it under the heels, and then with a prop under the sitting bones and the heels
After the practice sequence, Mr. Iyengar spoke on pranayama. I hope to write more about that later, but for now I have to run off to our afternoon session--and do pranayama, instead of writing about it.
