Jan 23. Why Paining?

            Namarupa Yatris Bobbie Jo and Steve’s postings on injuries, (www.theconfluencecountdown.com) including the words of a few old-timers, has got me thinking.  As a full-time Mysore teacher, I am no stranger to pain.  The practice first teaches how to move with integrity, to avoid pain, and then one needs to learn how to learn to move others with that same consciousness, again to avoid pain.  If the mind steps out of line while I am adjusting, as it often does, pain will be there.  Pain reminds me: Kate, you are missing the point.

Teaching aside, here in Mysore, on my first week of full practice at 4AM, I’ve been meditating on pain anyhow.  As you might imagine.

Its not like I’m getting adjustments.  So, I am seeing the main difference here is the quality of my effort.

Whenever I am wondering about the yoga, I take it back to what I have learned from the sutras.  Two points come to mind:

* Practice requires a long time, and consistent effort. 

* Future suffering can be avoided.

My last post mentioned the realization: I am wise enough now to moderate the quality of my efforts.  Effort must be consistent, sustainable.  After 15 years, and seeing postures come and go, and come again- for myself and others- I take it all in stride.  The performance of a posture, well it’s a real treat.  But the proof of the pudding is this:  what is the benefit?

Kate’s Misplaced Effort Indicators:

*thinking about what the posture looks like on the outside

*allowing mulabandha to flap in the breeze in order to make some shape happen

*worrying that I “won’t be able to do it”

DO WHAT, DUDE?  That is the question this week.  Why paining?  For what benefit?  I get pain when I work too hard.  Simple. 

It’s so easy to do here, with the full power vibes of the room.  If I can see the striving before it starts, I can pause and ask:  What is the intention of the present effort?  Isn’t yoga supposed to bring us to the now?  If Ipay attention, and notice the 3 points listed above, I am likely to avoid future suffering.

I’d like to quote what Nancy Gilgoff always answers when asked about whether Ashtanga hurts people: “It’s not the practice, it’s the practitioner.”

Thus far, I have noticed in myself and in many students, that incorrect effort is a result of this weird (cultural) feeling that “I am not OK as I am.  I must bust my ass to be better.”  Ashtanga, coupled with this attitude, will break us.  Seasoned practitioners of Ashtanga, as I see it, have come to know a rare sense of humility, and contentment.  Awake students will gravitate towards these old-timers.  Working to the point of injury is not the point, and yet has one benefit: injury breaks the pattern.  Be it Karmic, physical, or mental  (one might argue these 3 beget each other), the systematic nature of the practice will change the pattern. 

New mind is making.