Hi! My name is Ramya Iyengar. I am a yoga therapist who loves to code. You are receiving this email because we have interacted in the past in the context of Yoga. If you don’t want to receive the email, please feel free to unsubscribe. I would hate to see you go though.
Wish you all a very Happy New Year!
My 2021 ended on a high note. I successfully completed my 2.5 year long Yoga Therapy training. I also completed my pilot research study for Rheumatoid Arthritis with a small batch of individuals with RA and the results are truly fulfilling!
Those who stayed regular in practice saw a remarkable improvement in fatigue, reduction in pain, improvement in their overall physical function and a surge of confidence to move forward.
I eagerly look forward to initiating this project at a larger scale in the future.
My work as a Yoga Therapist and my study and practice of Yoga helped me discover the underrated trait of simplicity in practice
Our minds love complexity! At any given point in time, our minds can think of a hundred things and more. Keeping it simple requires focused attention and depth of knowledge.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the famous French writer and aircraft designer once said -
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away”.
Programmers are often asked to judge their work by this basic criterion. Simple programs usually surpass their complex cousins in reliability, robustness, ease of maintenance and extensibility.
What is Simplicity in Yoga?
Bhagavad Gita defines Yoga as Duhkha Samyoga Viyoga Yogah : Detachment from attachment to suffering is Yoga. Yoga is often referred to as Viyoga KAraNam - that which helps you to detach - that which helps you to remove.
Remove what?
All that covers true understanding.
The whole idea of Yoga is to achieve a quiet and lucid mind that reflects the truth.
The lesser the thoughts, the quieter the mind. The quieter the mind, the more it can focus. The more the focus, the better and deeper the understanding. The deeper the understanding, the more lucid it becomes and the truth shines through!
Cutting down thoughts with control seems impossible to achieve.
It is not about replacing disarrayed thoughts with positive affirmations ( which are thoughts).
Instead, what is advised is abhyAsam (practice of the 8 limbs of Yoga) and vairAgyam ( creating conditions for sustained practice ) to train the mind to focus on one thing at a time.
Patanjali defines 5 limbs of Yoga for practice - yama, niyama, Asana, prANAyAma, pratyAhAra and 3 more - dhAraNA, dhyAna, samAdhi as the fruits of the above.
These limbs, contrary to common belief, are not linear, they feed each other.
We are experts at separating out each limb, separating Asana and prANAyAma from dhAraNA and dhyAna.
We are experts at keeping our practice superficial, unmindful, ,practicing a few minutes of “guided meditation” and believing that we have a quiet mind.
We find a million excuses to run away from training our mind to pay attention.
So, what is Simplicity in our practice?
We have to build the idea of single pointed focus into our daily practice, and not separate it out as an ingredient for what we call “meditation”.
In Asana, it means that we keep the movements simple and train our mind to focus on our breath all through the movement. Yes it is difficult in the beginning. But that is the practice.
Nothing more, nothing less.
In prANAyAmA, it means that we replace our unconscious pattern of inhale-exhale with conscious, comfortable, long and subtle cycles of exhale-inhale as per our current capacity. We are lured into believing that we need more - "take a deep breath". It is the other way round. Breathe out deeply and breathe in passively.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Notice how the Inhale-Exhale is turned around to Exhale-Inhale in prANAyAmA. It is important that we learn to exhale completely first. Exhaling better helps us inhale better and not vice-versa. More on this later.
The 10 yamas and niyamas are to help us create conditions for practice. Just like our inhale and exhale are interrelated - our inward and outward engagements of the mind are interconnected. Isolating one from the other is not Yoga. The yama and niyama are also signposts of progress/regress.
A strong Asana and prANAyAma practice over a period of time paves way for pratyAhAra - we start taking more steps to create conditions that aid us in our practice, through our diet, lifestyles and our daily engagements with the world.
The strength or intensity of practice doesn’t lie in the complexity of postures we practice everyday. It lies in the subtlety of breath we are able to achieve and the cycles of conscious breaths we are able to take. It lies in the quality of attention we are able to pay.
Keep it Simple!