One Million Imperfect Chaturangas

Around ten years ago, I had the great fortune to go on retreat with my teacher, Acharya. One aspect of the retreat I was particularly looking forward to was a daily sitting meditation with him. At this point in time, after years long diversions via asana and pranayama, I was coming back to establishing a meditation practice. That would be strongly re-enforced by a daily sitting with my teacher over ten days.

But each evening as I sat, I was immediately and persistently distracted by a knot, a niggling tension, beneath my right shoulder-blade. And each evening my meditation was destroyed by this distraction. At this point, I had been practicing ashtanga yoga for around 20 years… and I discovered that I could still not sit comfortably for meditation!

As I tried to relax the knot beneath my shoulder blade, I became aware of other tensions in the body, and soon came to realize that in spite of the postural “corrections” and releases that had taken place in my body through asana practice, my body was still full of stress - it had just been re-distributed - balanced, somewhat, perhaps, but not eliminated. I became aware of layers and layers of tensions spread across the body - all tied up with this one knot beneath my shoulder.

When I reflected on the 1000s of hours of tennis, hockey, cricket etc. I had played in my youth, all of which cultivated asymmetrical development of musculature and add to that the decades of assisting students in the shala, carrying strollers laden with sleeping children and groceries up many flights of stairs, flying and driving 1000s of miles - sometimes it’s a wonder that the body is not totally broken.

I suspect that the tensions and pains in my body are fairly average. Everyone experiences stress on the body from life circumstances. But this yoga I had been practicing and teaching had not helped much! In fact, maybe it had made things worse.

Perhaps being pain free is too much to ask?

When I think about the stresses caused by practice - the million or so chaturangas I have done over the last 30 years, the number of times I cranked my leg behind my head etc. etc. - perhaps it is no surprise that my body has suffered.

If over all these chaturanga repetitions you were to put even a little more weight into one shoulder than the other - over one million repetitions - what would the outcome be? Setting aside the further stresses that the “correct” posture puts on the neck and shoulders.

Exercise develops muscle tone - but toned muscles are not relaxed - a psychological tension underlies or is a companion to any muscle tension. I had developed “good posture” but had to sustain stress in maintaining it.

After recognising the negative impact my practice had been having, I started to modify it. I felt the desire to only do postures that affected both sides of the body evenly - ie with both legs either straight or bent. The only exception was a simple sitting posture for meditation.

Eventually I lost the desire to do any postures. Acharya taught that a balanced and healthy life naturally leads to yoga. Asana is remedial but if you do what the body was designed to do - ie walk, carry - take care of life’s necessities - in other words not use the modern conveniences that eliminate the need for physical movement or exertion - then that should be enough.

I have long been bemused by the idea that a remedial practice like the KPJ system requires continued application: if the remedy has been effective, surely practice will no longer be required. Does that prove that the remedy is ineffective?

Yoga practice shows us where we have to make changes: at the “edge” of practice, whatever that is for an individual person, the obstacles for moving forward are not in practice, they are in life, they are “moral” issues not physical obstacles and inflexibility.

I have long pondered the words of Rudolf Steiner that were something to the effect: For every step on the inner path of spiritual evolution you make, you have to take three steps in your moral, external life. Life is the great teacher - too much focus on practice may stop you from learning the lessons that are right in front of you.

In the last year my practice reduced to sitting and walking: I would sit for around 3hrs and walk around 7 miles every day. I did a few stretches and very occasionally some asanas.

Teaching has been a physical stress that I had not recognized until I stopped. Apart from the physical exertions teaching entails, I travelled to 23 countries (many of them repeatedly: India 20+ UK 35+) and 23 states in the US over the last 20 yrs. I have driven and flown 100s of thousand of miles teaching yoga around the world. It has been so wonderful to just sit and not go anywhere.

A few years after that retreat, I was again with Acharya when something he said caught my attention: “Pains experienced during meditation are mostly due to previous sins.” By sins, I understand him to mean, afflictive actions, thoughts or words that lead to pain or harm.

At the same time I had been pondering a question. Patanjali states that, that in order to enter deeper stages of meditation, one needs to neutralise the negative marks (samskaras), the negative impressions, caused by previous experiences that are sunk in the unconscious. How should one access these and remove their sting?

The idea that memory is stored in the body is not a new one, but as far as I can see, no one has properly mapped or identified what this could mean. Is anger stored in a specific spot? What about memories of specific instances? Or are memories stored in the brain?

I have long felt that the body is a canvas upon which our emotions are painted. Different emotions elicit different sensations in the body. Some would argue that the emotion is caused by the chemical processes happening at the cellular level. Regardless, a residue of past experience is evidently imprinted in the physical structures of the body. This can easily be observed from introspection and observation. Maybe not every experience leaves a trace but certainly every negative one does.

But I did not have a method for decoding these paintings. One of the reasons for this are the layers and layers of tensions that years of experience have woven into the body. The patterns are complex and intertwining.

Each muscle is composed of 1000s of fibres and these fibres can act independently of each other - ie within one muscle there are a great number of possible combinations and permutations of tension.

Typically, wherever one muscle attaches to a bone, other muscles attach at the same point. These muscles in turn attach at various points on the skeleton, and those points are attachments for further muscles.

When a muscle acts, it affects other muscles that have a mutual point of attachment and this thus creates a cascade of shifting actions throughout the body.

A further cause of physical tensions in the body is the connective tissue that wraps every muscle, joint, organ - creating a mycelium like web throughout the body. This viscera has been found to be highly “intelligent” and also responds to “experience”.

Acharya’s statement gave me a new line of enquiry. From that point onwards I started, instead of trying to diffuse tension or soften it, to go as deep into the pain as I could: I decided to meditate on the pain.

Our tendency is always to avoid pain. We shrink from it. That shrinking is muscular and it exerts continued tension in the body even after the pain has gone.

So when we try to relax, we stretch muscles. Since this had not worked for me, I wondered what would happen if I instead went deep into the pain. The pain became my meditation and I allowed it to take me wherever it wished.

This took my on a fascinating journey into my history as it had been mapped out on my body and I developed a number of lenses or perspectives to identify the channels or currents that these samskaras (charged memories) and vasanas (pattens created in the mind that act as restricted channels) created.

Higher stages of yoga are not possible without neutralizing the afflictive charge attached to these samskaras. But true freedom, peace and happiness is also impossible without eliminating these pains which place unconscious stress on the mind and body.

I am unable to explain the process I went through in depth at this point in time - it will take me some time to properly record my several methods, which took the form of meditations, but there are several things I discovered that are of particular interest:

The first is that, if you look at the pain or tension in the body there is always a psychological component. Tension is never just in the body, there is always a psychological aspect. Physical pain is exacerbated by unconscious psychological stress - just sinking into the pain and discomfort, releases some of that added psychologically caused physical stress and pain. By doing this, you also become more aware of what specific psychological factors have created tension - memories of events or feelings - and in doing so, the body starts to release further.

What I discovered was that as one tension started to release, other parts of the body would “wake up” and bring the attention there: a cascade of releases would take place. These might be quite intense, or very subtle and the releses would continue to take place after sitting practice… if one pays attention and allows it to happen.

The body wants to relax and release but the unconscious mind grips it in place.

I came to a belief through an excavation of these tensions in my body that one’s whole history is recorded there - the sanskrit word samskara, used in this context for memory, literally means “mark” - perhaps “scar” is the right word.

Memories may be stored in the brain but the emotional mark is stored in the body. I believe that mark may act as a stimulus or magnet for further similar emotion: feeling the physical sensation may elicit the emotion, while further experience of similar emotion amplifies or intensifies that mark.

I believe that anyone can benefit from exploring this process, but those who have a previous experience with asana and pranayama practice will be equipped with much better tools. Also, this process may be too intense for some people who may not be ready to re-experience certain past events. As I have said, I plan to document my process and provide some more specific tools over time. Even though we work hard to come to terms with our history, I believe that any experience that caused stress or suffering leaves a residue in the body that continues to cause stress until it is recognized, acknowledged and released.

Yoga evolved in a much more less traumatized and stressed-out society. Guidance in personal evolution is encoded in the somewhat “moralistic” yama and niyama, but little is said about the internal process of development and evolution that is required. Compared to the environment out of which yoga evolved, we have moved so far away from nature, from wholesome living and we have accumulated so many stresses because of this. So a practitioner could be deemed evolved because of his outward behavior but little would be known about his inner challenges and pains.

I believe the ashtanga practice actually prevents the release of much of this baggage. There are a few factors that are particularly harmful: premature application of bandhas, extensive use of strong and even breathing, too many repetitions of stressful postures, not enough time for the body to properly release tensions, too much energy used for physical practice… that is apart from all the other dangers - injury, ego, narcissism etc.. again, I will explain my thoughts in more detail in the near future.

But in the meantime I can offer a remedy for those damaged or limited by ashtanga practice or by life in general: The wonderful Integral Practice created by Acharya addresses many of the shortcomings presented by the Pattabhi Jois method.

It is a great practice for those who have practiced the KPJ method - many aspects will feel familiar, while others have been refined and improved.

guy donahaye3 January 2022