When I think about yoga I know there is something drawing me towards a personal experience of consciousness. How do I begin to express that experience? Fortunately I am not the only person to have asked; Patanjali threaded together a systematic explanation over 2000 years ago.
“With prayers for divine blessings, now begins an exposition of the sacred art of yoga...”
When I started teaching people one-to-one, and then classes, I was obsessed with having enough work planned to fill the time allotted. I planned the class minute-by-minute to have an elegant flow of postures; a good balance of types of posture and counter-posture. I tried to challenge experienced students, and yet also give easier options for beginners with plenty of detailed instructions and adjustments. I wanted to take people to the edge of their conscious ability and allow them to feel their other-than-conscious ability beyond; asking them to “be present”. I must make time for Pranayama and relaxation at the end of the class… Wait a minute. Did I say that? The one thing no one can do is to make time.
Time is such an elusive concept. We can observe time: we can measure it…the clock ticks. But we can’t control it. We can predict it at a gross level, but at a sub-atomic scale events have a bizarre random nature predictable only by statistical average. We have no direct knowledge of time other than our own physical and mental experience of events in the present moment. It may be that it is the propagation of events that is the reality and time is only a secondary comparative measure after the event. As a pre-supposition, a working definition of time might be as an experience of the unfolding of events.
We are just a formation of seething, boiling, random events unfolding at the microscopic level; blood flows, synapses connect; and at the macroscopic level? We can be agitated and self-conscious; or we can be detached observers. Consciousness is this strange process in time of self-observation. Simple recursive rules can lead to complex behavior, and self-reference leads to our introspective awareness of our own inner states.
So how should I approach the teaching of Yoga? Fortunately I am not the first person to have been concerned about this. Patanjali sewed together this formula over 2000 years ago:
“With prayers for divine blessings, now begins an exposition of the sacred art of yoga.
Yoga is the cessation of movements in the consciousness.
Then, the seer dwells in his own true splendor.
At other times, the seer identifies with the fluctuating consciousness.”
[Ref. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, verses I.1 to I.4 Iyengar’s translation]
