‘Be strong then and enter into your own body,
there you have a solid place for your feet …
Don’t go off elsewhere!… throw away all thoughts of imaginary things
and stand firm in that which you are.’ ~ Kabir
There’s a conversation in the contemporary yoga community about how we need to ‘get beyond the physical’ practice to experience ‘authentic’ yoga. This getting ‘beyond’ is often associated with seated meditation or stillness practices. Odd as many meditation techniques are grounded in breath awareness, sense perception and other experiences of embodiment and Yoga Nidra has its incredible body scans. I recently read The Wakeful Body by the Buddhist teacher Willa Blythe Baker who describes how these somatic practices connect us to a spirituality which ‘does not transcend, it metabolises’:
You don’t need to leave anything behind. In fact, you cannot leave anything behind. ~ Willa Blythe Baker
Even if we sit without using a technique, just aware of what arises, sensations of embodiment regularly come to the fore whether grounding the awareness or as a distraction. Seated or moving we are likely to experience, at least intermittently, how enhanced awareness of our embodiment grounds us; steadying us in the present and tuning us into our interior physical and energetic landscape. Why pit the movement sequences of yoga and the stillness of meditation against each other or suggest one as superior? And, given that sitting is an embodied experience, what does it mean to go ‘beyond the physical’?
‘Somatic Mindfulness is informed by one very simple observation.
The mind is distracted, but the body is not. The body is not thinking or ruminating.
It is just feeling and being present, aware and vibrant…so we practice waking down not waking up.’ ~ Willa Blythe Baker
In my experience, seated meditation never suggested dynamic practice was superficial or lesser than. On the contrary, the vibrant energy of dynamic sequences and the quietude of sitting have enhanced and shed light on each other in myriad ways.
Well, this ‘beyond the physical’ stick people are beating themselves with may well have traditional roots. In a course with Ty Landrum we recently discussed how, whilst it shares profound teachings regarding the mind and meditation, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra describes a world-renouncing Yoga. Of course this is perfect for those whose yogic process is to renounce the world, but this is not the yoga of most modern practitioners of yoga and meditation. Patanjali’s Yoga liberates (kaivalya) us from our entanglement or enmeshment (saṁyoga) with our physicality and the world, so that our consciousness can reside in its own true nature (svarūpe). For Patanjali then, our embodied situation and relationships distract us from consciousness or the soul. This is very different from the non-dual Indian traditions like Tantra in which the material world and our bodies hum and resonate with consciousness itself. These traditions embrace our embodied situation as an expression of consciousness. It is unsurprising that it is out of these non-dual traditions that Haṭha Yoga and its modern postural offspring were born.
Surely, our experience of the world is first and foremost one of embodied consciousness.
‘The body is our general medium for experiencing a world.’ ~ Merleau-Ponty
Dynamic postural yoga is an evolution of Haṭha Yoga, but it reflects the meaning of Haṭha as power, force or intensity. It stirs and shifts dormant energy in the body. Remember many other deeply spiritual practices, like yoga, involve movement: the Lakota Sun Dance; the trance dancing of the Kalahari San people; the Maori Haka; the whirling dervishes of Sufis and the Cham dances of Tibetan monks in the Himalayas. They combine rhythmic sound, with repetitive movements or dance to induce trancelike states to connect to an animate life force. Of course, yoga is also completely different, but my simple suggestion is that stillness is not the only way to experience spirituality. In India when you ask how old Yoga is, you are often shown pictures of Gods like Śiva or Kṛṣṇa dancing as examples of early yoga. In the Vijñāna Bhairava an important Indian Tantric text, rhythmic movement is suggested for its meditative powers:
‘Oh Goddess, as a result of slowly swinging or rocking the body,
one attains a tranquil state of mind and floats into the stream of divine consciousness’ ~ śloka 83, Vijnana Bhairava
‘Whirling the body round and around until it falls on the ground makes the energy causing commotion at once (become static).
By that cessation the supreme state appears.’ ~ śloka 111, Vijnana Bhairava
These verses conjure images of dancers and dervishers by suggesting rhythmic, even chaotic movement as a way to experience consciousness. Whether we consider ourselves spiritual or not, we can all feel from our first experiences of Yoga how they viscerally stir energy in the body, where stillness practices settle energy in the body and when the conscious mind attends to either, transformative experiences may ensue.
Of course even in dynamic yoga there are profound periods of stillness (though even breath creates powerful movements in the trunk of the body). However, I have never bought the suggestion that physical movement implies mental movement. Any regular practitioner knows well that we can find ourselves incredibly physically still and distracted or moving dynamically with a quiet mind. If you observe someone practice, you cannot see their Yoga, you can only make a guess at their inner states.
This is not to say that Yoga can’t be superficial or performative; it is not always a transformative inner process. Just as people can sit in meditation whilst going over an argument in their head or self consciously affecting a meditative look. We can engage superficially and ‘perform’ any spiritual practice. Still, to me, engaging with our embodied conscious experience in dynamic flow or in stillness is not to be transcended for some preferred yoga that is ‘beyond the physical’. We are embodied beings. When the soul (puruṣa) is liberated (kaivalya) from the physical body, it is the end of this embodied life. Many renunciate practices yearn for this transcendence of the body, to end the suffering of material existence in a way that most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, do not. So maybe your morning ritual of yoga is the authentic yoga for you.