Can you “do” Sarvangasana?

Many years ago a good friend of mine who saw my “Light on Yoga” said he had seen that book and spent time with it and could do pretty much all the asanas in it.  A couple of years or so after that same friend came to a few of my yoga classes for the first time - he had just taken part in a long distance mountain cycling event and I have never seen stiffer muscles!  Virasana had to happen with the buttocks on a chair and feet on a blanket on the floor.  I doubt that this was the “doing” he was talking about when we first discussed “Light on Yoga” and he had just been able to copy all the asanas in the book.

What does “doing” an asana involve?  If you are a beginner, it involves watching your teacher make a shape and then listening to instructions as to how to make that shape (right foot out, left foot in, etc) and having a go at making that shape yourself.  Beginners tend to listen well - they may not remember the names of the asanas from one week to the next, so if I were to say “Parivrtta Parsvakonasana” they might watch with interest and simply have a go.  More experienced students might recognise the name of the asana, recall its difficulties and then have to deal not only with a reluctant body but also a reluctant mind.  Adult beginners may face difficulties creating the shape of an asana but be open to further instructions to help and maybe the introduction of a prop. Younger beginners can “do” a whole range of asanas often easily and cover more “shapes” as we build up the basic alphabet of the asanas.

If we compare learning asanas to learning to write, saying “I can do Trikonasana” or “he can’t do Janu Sirsasana” is perhaps a bit like saying “I can do the letter C” or “He can’t do the letter W”!  Or better, maybe to see asanas as conjunctions of letters that build up words - turning out the foot could be C, stretching out the arms O, moving to the right N and extending the arms vertically E.  But still we have a word, a collection of letters, that has little meaning without context.  Young students with flexible and able bodies can attempt so many asanas, a little like when children learn to write words and write page after page of words that may not hang together in meaning-filled sentences, just for the joy of being able to put letters together and get them on paper.   At this stage we encourage this freedom, fluidity, enthusiasm and joy - they all play an important part in shaping the will to continue later on.  At some point in the future random words will become sentences and maybe these sentences will become more complex, more able to express finely detailed thoughts, ideas or descriptions.  But for the time being they are just “doing” the words, creating the shape, the pattern and the order of the letters.

So if at the start of our yoga journeys we are learning what the “shapes” are and how to create them, what are we doing several years down the line when perhaps we still can’t make the proper “shape” and “do” the asana?  There is no doubt in my mind that a student unable to catch the foot in Janu Sirsasana, unable even to come forward as sitting up straight is a challenge enough, is nonetheless “doing” the asana.  Actually there is more outward evidence of “doing” in that student who breaks out into a sweat and starts breathing more perceptibly when asked to extend the foot into the belt, than in a student who might comfortably fold in half, head on leg, and then turn her head to have a quick chat to her neighbour who also has her head on her leg.  Yet if you asked them, the first student would say “I still can’t do Janu Sirsasana even after all these years” whereas the second one might say “I love that one - have always been able to do it”.  What if, in that particular asana, the act of “doing” was actually about the act of surrendering?  The first student might ultimately surrender to the discomfort and bear it, but is unable to surrender the muscles and completely let go, whereas the second one who lets go and folds without a second thought is able to surrender the muscles but maybe not with such awareness that the mind has also surrendered and let go.

This makes me think of tourists who might arrive to “do” Europe.  That would probably involve flying in to various European capitals and major sights (in Greece you would “do” the Acropolis, Delphi, Olympia and probably Cape Sounion, possibly taking in some staged Greek dancing at the Dora Stratou theatre), ticking them off your list and moving to the next one.  This has its merits in that you get to see a lot of different things.  But do you really experience what a country is in essence by “doing” things this way?  If you really want to “do” Greece you need to try reversing your car onto a ferry with several men in boilersuits shouting at you all at once, witness villagers shouting and having an argument and then drinking together having an equally loud but amicable conversation that evening, see lambs heads lined up in a taverna waiting to be roasted and served as a delicacy, be greeted each summer by your neighbour bringing you a delicious home cooked pie and more to help you recover from your journey, bob about in the sea chatting to old yiayias in baggy black swimming costumes who will tell you how many swims they have had that year and spend hours sitting in smoky offices dealing with Greek bureacracy.  These things bring joy and present challenges - at times unbearable (especially the last one on the list) but you are left inevitably with a deeper impression and a better idea of what Greece is about.

So back to the asana.  Just as you might think you are getting the hang of it, along comes another instruction to challenge you a bit more.  Many students hate having obstacles put in the way of what they think is getting into the asana - that awful moment for example when you are made to wait in Trikonasana or Parsvakonasana and keep extending to the side rather than just plonk the hand down on your leg.  Or being asked to do half Uttanasana rather than flopping into full Uttanasana.  Often we are reluctant to use a prop if we think we don’t need it, but that prop will have been given for a purpose to help you to improve an aspect of the asana.  These “brakes” in the journey (or even “breaks” - both work!) make us hone in on the parts of our bodies that often stay sleepy, helped out by the parts that easily and eagerly work.  (How many of us flexible students can mask our stiff upper backs by overbending at the lumbar?)  For flexible students, it is as if they are being asked to behave like those students who might look like they can’t do the asana.  We don’t want to hold back and correct the lower back because it makes us face our stiff shoulders and upper back.  We want to get our head down in a forward bend because we can go home and say “I got my head down today”.  But forward bends are called “forward bends” for a reason, not “head down bends!”  It is our egos that we seek to gratify by creating these little meaningless milestones. So where now is the issue, where are the obstacles - in the body - or in the mind?

“Doing” an asana, then, has to involve the mind.  This is where those who think they can’t “do” are at an advantage - they have to keep trying and this conative action has to be coordinated by the mind and the intelligence to bring awareness.  Stiff muscles and reluctance in the body speak to us loudly, immediately bringing awareness to that area.  In desperation we try everything - pushing, pulling, moving, holding back….and then perhaps exhaling, opening a window into the world of the breath, more precisely, the “associated breath” that works with the body and the mind to help us “do” the asana.  It is much harder for the teacher to help a student to bring that awareness when they can easily “do”.  If hamstrings are long and loose what reason does a student have to work to extend and soften the leg to be able to bend forward?  Yet a forward bend, even with head down and back straight, without that awareness and true extension of the leg, without the incorporation of the mind and the breath, is not being “done” fully.  Like everything in life there needs to be a balance of flexibility and firmness, strength and suppleness.  For such students other asanas will help to shed the light needed.  We all have different strengths and shortcomings which we can address with our yoga practice and with the variety of ways of accessing the asanas that BKS Iyengar has given us to work with.

To “do” the asana we need to come to it each time with a beginners’ freshness but bringing the awareness our experience has given us so far.  The brand new student may not be aware of the state of their spine, for example, other than that parts of it are sore - they do as they are told to do in class, hamstrings may hurt and throw a spotlight on that area, they are not entirely sure what should be moving where, feet do their own thing even when corrected momentarily and they cannot see obvious progress from week to week (don’t worry - the teacher can!) but know that they feel better after each class than before.  Awareness and reflection develops with both practice and experience.  Experience develops with awareness and memory.    It is important not to get too caught up in the “I can’t do this” mentality - we need rather to cultivate an acceptance of what we can manage there and then, that time, that day, knowing that this is a stop on a long journey rather than the end of the journey.  And that actually, the best news of all, this journey doesn’t really end  - there is always more to discover and to experience.  Be curious in your practice - experimental rather than seeking to achieve.

While giving birth to Nancy, our 4th child, even though I had done it three times already and knew what to expect and what to “do”, I remember sobbing “I can’t do it”!  At which point our wonderful midwife looked me in the eye, beamed at me and said “You ARE doing it”!  My mind had jumped ahead to the completed process which seemed impossible but actually the labouring, the pains, the effort, the focus, the doubt, the joy, the wonder - these are all part of DOING the giving birth.  And then there is the whole question of how much you are doing it and how much it is happening to you; although I was the one doing the act of giving birth to our children, with all the considerable effort that is appropriate to such an activity, I was also part of an inevitable natural process that engulfed me and took its course.  I just had to keep on track and work with it.

Prashant talks about us doing the asana and the asana being done on us. Here ’s where we have to thank Patanjali for drawing grammar into the equation as it helps us to clarify what we are trying to understand.  In GCSE Latin Nancy and I have just covered the present active participle  - “doing” or “cooking” - and the perfect passive participle - “having been done” or “having been cooked”.  (Actually the examples tend to be gorier and more in keeping with the Roman empire - “having been dragged” and “having been captured”)  At what point in our practice do we reach the limit of “doing” and start to experience “having been done” by the asana?  What if, instead of saying “I have done Trikonasana” we were to say “I have been Trikonasana-ed”?  Savasana is perhaps a better example of this.  We lie down, we arrange ourselves and actively make sure we are letting go - these are all actions in the sense we identify with…but after that?  We may stay with our breath and seek quietness of mind but something is happening to us that is beyond our realm of doing.  Savasana is doing us!  We are more likely to describe it as an experience than an action - so how about we look at the other asanas with that mindset as well?

This takes us back to the stiff and struggling beginner.  If that student, struggling to sit up straight, through all the effort gets even a glimpse of some freedom in the spine or the pelvis and that “good” feeling it brings, they are beginning to experience the asana and the asana is beginning to give something to them.  It may not look like Guruji’s sublime asanas in Light on Yoga but never mind - something is happening that we can’t see, some sort of secret shifting, knitting, unravelling, organising, coordinating, not just of the body but probably also of the mind and maybe even the breath.  I see this in class often after Sarvangasana (shoulder stand).  There are usually many variations going on - some may be doing it classically on the usual blankets or blocks, those with stiff shoulders might have two bolsters to help them to access Sarvangasana which they might be too stiff to do safely any other way, a couple may be doing chair Sarvangasana.  Looking especially at those new to the asana or who need to work with bolsters or extra props, I always see a change in their faces and eyes - a softness and a clarity.  They have been lifting their legs and their chests but other than trying to keep their throats soft they have not actively been trying to bring this about for themselves - the asana does this work on them. This work at the invisible level, this wonderful integration of using the body, the mind and the breath together with the intangible effect of each asana, is where yoga begins. Not just for the flexible, not just for the fit - yoga is for all.