Consciousness.

This has been rattling around my headspace like a bean in a helmet for a couple of weeks. Clarification: I am aware of the function of the “core muscles” in the fitness sense, and I’m also aware that bandha practice is an incredibly nuanced and historically sound concept, one that we’ll be spending our whole lives refining. But just as I am encouraged to “teach to what I see”, I also want to “write to what I see”, and this is what the Sjanz sees.

I began my yoga with an Ashtanga practice as most of my students are aware, and man we used to have such an excellent time. We’d practice for like 3 hours and then go have brunch, and then wait tables in the evening. To be young again, I swear. I had tremendously skilled and knowledgeable teachers, and they taught us the way their teachers had tought them: beginning with a focus on ujjayi pranayam and the bandhas, or locks, of the lower body, most notably mula and uddhiyana bandha.

The bandhas are so darn esoteric energetically that to explain the whole thing would take yonks, so, pragmatically enough

Those are bigger than my boobs, for serious

they’d just ask us to bring our awareness, uh, THERE…and “contract your perineum” “pretend you have to stop going pee” “pull your belly to your low back”. The word core or phrase core strength had not yet reached its apocalyptic zenith at this time but it was still widely known, even in the 90s with a Democrat in the White House, that a fat tummy meant you were a) lazy b) stupid c) unhealthy. “Engage your abdominals” all that kind of stuff. The fancy yoga way of saying those actions was “engage mula and uddiyana bandha” which seemed respectable enough; after all, it wasn’t in English, and it certainly felt strange and foreign enough that you felt it simply must be doing you some good. I can recall [maybe it's different now, I don't know] beginning practice with breath awareness and these two “locks”. Right at the start, you suck in your gut, clench your bottom, pay your ticket and take the ride. You were supposed to practice at the crack of dawn if not before, so your belly was totally void. Presumably you’d had nothing but chamomile tea and bean sprouts the night before, so, so far so good. Also, one established at the beginning of practice a commitment to keep the mind void of extraneous thoughts, simply focussing on the breath counts if anything. I would always get like Eminem lyrics in my head; I knew I was a bad yogi.

Later in my reading, I think it was Yoga Journal, one of the teachers that they interviewed for an article on the mysterious mula bandha described it as “keeping your mind on God” or something like that. That sounded a little more purposeful. That is, the upward motion of these bandhas when correctly applied was meant to direct your attention upward, transcending this wild’n'wooly world of weak flesh and taking you all the way to willing spirit. Gotcha.

Opening

So I picture our prayers rising like little Air Mail envelopes to God, our desire to transcend and ascend floating through our crown chakras up to the Big Guy. Only, there’s nothing in our bellies cause we can’t eat and there’s no thoughts in our head, so we pull in our gut and clench our bottom and seal the envelope…

…and God is puzzled by these blank sheets He keeps getting. Sometimes there are numbers on them. And why do I have to look constipated and/or anorexic so I can struggle to make my way up to Him? Isn’t he so awesome that HE can come down to ME? Aren’t I assigning a certain distrust in His omnipotence by pretending that he cares about my perineum?

Dear readers, you know I’m making too light of a very serious thing, cause that’s how this blog rolls. But seriously. After a while you just gotta think: Have any of you ever pooped? Do you know how digestion WORKS? Do you think God made it that way, or is it just one of those hopeless situations where we’re broken and flawed and if we could we’d just poop incense cakes or geranium essential oils?

Crohn’s disease, constipation, infertility, prostate cancer, ulcers, pancreatitis, dysmennorhea, irritable bowel syndrome, urinary tract infection, hemhorroids, stomach cancer, kidney disease. Not knowing when you are hungry because you force yourself to eat stuff you don’t want. Not knowing when you are full because you can’t properly excrete what you DO eat. Being angry all the time because you want to eat but you can’t eat or you want to poop and you can’t poop. These are all very serious, and very complex problems, and none of them are solved by squeezing your butt shut and pulling your belly in.  Your belly is there for a reason. As my dear teacher Eila used to say, and as John also says in different ways, that’s where your life is.

Not to mention the poor lower back. Oh, the lower back. Martin Kirk was good enough to remind us that the loss of US gross national product to low back injuries is in the billions of dollars. I have seen and taught enough students to know that although

OH MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CURVES

the words “US” and “low back” in the same sentence might give rise to a vision of the morbidly obese, remember that the US has both the fattest AND the fittest…and the low backs of the fittest are Messed. Up. Srsly. I have to avert my eyes when I see people jogging and the spinous processes of their lumbar vertebrae are showing as they jog…jog…jog…jog…jog…hundreds of pounds at a time smashing down on the anterior portion of their discs, good God ZE GOGGLES ZEY DO NUFFINK. I’d always be asked if I had low back pain during backbends. No, I’d say, I just have a large butt. Don’t fix what ain’t broke. Still, I hear “Pull your belly in to your low back” and these stegosaurian ridges appear in peoples’ lumbar spines, leaping out of their skin. Brrr.

Revelation

I wouldn’t ever be one of the beansprout-eating-get-up-at-5-am-yogis. That was becoming abundantly clear. I was also pretty stoked about the supposed bliss of the practice, this joy that would inform every aspect of life, but I sure wasn’t going to get that if I couldn’t poop and couldn’t eat and had to mail these empty envelopes to God every time I practiced. I also wasn’t going to get that being made to feel like a rhinocerous every time I lollopped into the yoga studio. And let me make it clear: I do not think I’m a large person. But these yogis are not to scale. There are some LITTLE humans out there, friends. A normal sized candidate like myself swells to enormous size relatively in their company. This is a not a feeling that inspires, comforts or heals when placed in the context of a community that values hollow, hard bellies.

So John Friend, via Elizabeth Rainey, lays on me this whole concept of the head of the femur belonging towards the back of the acetabulum, increasing energetic flow to the entire pelvic area. It’s 2004. My wellness increases. My confidence increases. It is a validation that goes right to the heart of me: I feel reflected for the first time in my yoga practice. There’s a softness that commences every session, where instead of us poor mortals doing the heavy lifting trying to take our sphincters and appendices to God, He simply fills us where we make space. It is a prayer, and to me it’s a prayer of gratitude, because I knew this other way just was never going to work *for me*. By its fruits I know it: My pulse slows to a more regular rate. The hemispheres of my brain are more equitable. My face softens from its default gut-pulling-in-hard-slog-Protestant scowl to my true face.

In fact, this newer practice begins in the OPPOSITE way: Fill your mind, and fill your heart. No emptiness here. Soften your skin and make your thighs heavy towards the floor. If anything, engage the periphery, so when you mail your prayer to God, right from your centre, it is so rich and full of potential that it needs an extra stamp.

Experience

Now, the ascent heavenward is still a part of yoga. We all still want to be our best, to move onward and upward with potency and imagination, so yes: mula bandha keeps your mind on God, and the upward movement of your energy is part of your true nature, like a tree or flower stalk. However, the sequence in which these actions are taken is, to me, absolutely critical and I mean no disrespect to my former teachers: I don’t want to send a blank message. I want to make space to receive the true power and benefit of the practice; I don’t want the bandhas to lock the doors before I get to decide who’s invited to this party. God in her wisdom has blessed me with the discernment to know what is happiness, what is health, what is beauty and what is balance: why refute Her elegant system? So yes, once you have composed your ode to the Divine, don’t let it languish on your desk: seal that sucker up and send it skyward, root your tailbone, charge up the pose, stretch as long and as fully as you can. Sequence is key; no point sending a blank cheque or a blank CD.

“Core” has become like “low carb” to me: addressing the symptom but not the problem. Hardening the core prematurely makes no space for transformation, no space for the delicate anatomical shifts that we desire to put us safely in our optimal alignment, and no possibility of us as individuals EVER being enough. You’re never going to be so disciplined and thin that you stop pooping. Sorry. Well, maybe those guys who live in the woods and meditate 15 hours a day do. Good luck with that and let me know how it works out for you.

What I see is: back pain, anxiety, students complaining about “tight hips” and “sore wrists”; I see tight bums and bellies, and flaccid fingers and toes. I see tight brains and scared eyes. Engage the periphery and transform from the core, transform from a receptive and open centre. Personally, I think your yoga and your prayers go much deeper this way.

4 Comments »

June 18th, 2009 Hope Says:

Hey Sjanie, Fantastic exegesis. Prescient too…the core was also the topic du jour–from a non-yogic angle–in today’s NY Times. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/core-myths/?em (Does this constitute a news scoop…I guess that would be the tailbone discussion.)
I really appreciate that you’re taking these concepts to task, making them work their supper. Questioning the edicts. Thanks for sharing the way your brain works!

June 18th, 2009 einajs Says:

Hope, you just saved me a post-update, because another student was good enough to mail me that exact article today! Also, thanks for using the word “exegesis”

If I could dial down the rant [because I do tend to get ranty on this subject] and just coalesce my thoughts into two points they would be:

– everything in balance [balanced action!]

and

– our collective knowledge about the body is always shifting, so be aware of any sacred cows e.g. “MUST ENGAGE CORE BEFORE MOVING” or whatever. It’s not so much a news scoops as Nature showing us that maybe the fitness community has gone a little too far to one extreme. It’ll swing back and we will become more nuanced in our understanding every time.

June 19th, 2009 Sylvia Says:

“Do you think God made it that way, or is it just one of those hopeless situations where we’re broken and flawed and if we could we’d just poop incense cakes or geranium essential oils?” – ahahahahahah!!! Hey, we could, if we ate incense and geraniums more. Yum!

July 24th, 2009 Vandana Says:

love this post. makes the most sense ever, remembering back to those early ashtanga years (and it is still that way in so many classes)!! along with sucking in the belly for bellydancing, my poor once-healthy spine is very relieved to be able to finally soften a bit in your yoga classes!

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