Tradition & Habits (The Diver), Ache-a Pada
Posted in ashtanga yoga on 06/14/2009 11:02 am by karenLots of yoga thoughts all coming together these days.
Okay, so what if you find out the practice is wrecking your neck? What if there’s a pose that might “break” you? Traditionalists Fundamentalists might suggest that the practice will NOT wreck your neck, and that there is no pose that could break you. You know, because the practice is perfect. But wait a minute. Is that the answer? Do you take it on faith and keep cranking away?
I consider myself a traditionalist, though — humorously — the Universe has blessed me with a sequence of non-traditional teachers. Volleyball Guy, Muscle Man, Matthew Sweeney, Celeste Lau, and most recently Troy Lucero (aka, The Diver).
You know what I think The Diver saw, within moments of observing my practice? Well, yeah, that I tend to fly upwards out of my hands and feet. But that’s easy, because anyone can see that. No, I think he saw something even better: he saw my devotion to the tradition.
At one point he came over, crouched down, and tipped his head to listen to my breath.
“Are you inhaling to jump through?”
“Uhhhh, yeah…” I said, trying to figure out, at 6 AM, whether I had misperceived everything I’d ever been taught about the breath in jump throughs.
“Try exhaling on the jump throughs.”
What?!?! Have I been doing this wrong? What does Yoga Mala say? What does Lino’s book say? What did VBG teach me? Why didn’t Matthew Sweeney notice this, if I’m doing it wrong?
Oh, my.
Busy, busy mind.
Geez, Karen. Just try it.
Another little lesson came during utthita hasta padangusthasana, when he moved around in front of me in erratic patterns as if he couldn’t decide which student to go help. Then he stopped and asked me if I knew why he’d done it.
“Because people fall over when there’s movement in front of them.”
Yes, that’s why. But he wasn’t doing it to get me to focus MORE. Nope. This was all a lead in for a discussion about drishti. And habits.
Is there a correct placement for drishti? Karen votes “yes.” Do I use it? Yes. Religiously.
Interestingly, drishti is something I cling to because I am very visual. I fly up out of my hands and feet (i.e., have great difficulty staying grounded), and I fly out of my eyes (i.e., I get ungrounded in response to visual stimuli). So I hang on to drishti for dear life.
The Diver asked me to try practicing UHP and letting my eyes go everywhere: all around the room, to objects up close, to objects far away, etc., etc., etc. As he suggested this, I felt a surge of freedom that was quite remarkable. Let my eyes go anywhere? Learn to remain grounded regardless the visual stimuli? Whoa! What kind of flexibility is this?
“Close your eyes,” he said, as I was practicing the flexible drishti.
I did.
Am I doing good? Can I nail this? Am I falling? Do I like this?
Sigh. Just feel it.
He also asked me to change my hands on my feet in forward bends. Including not touching the feet at all. And to toy around with entries into poses so that I wouldn’t be defaulting to automatic.
Suddenly it dawned on me that what he probably saw was someone practicing “by the book.” And he wanted to hold out the suggestion that “by the book” is a habit like any other. A healthier habit than smoking cigarettes, certainly, but a habit nonetheless.
Before I left the shala, he made a point of telling me that the kinds of flexibilities we’d discussed do not preclude a bhakti practice. I felt so energized by this idea that mental flexibility and devotion can go hand in hand. I mean, I know that to be true, but I tend to fall into a kind of automaticity that I cultivate with my nerdish curiousity about technical details.
What I felt when practicing with The Diver was an incredible sense of freedom and joy and inquiry.
It could have gone two ways: I could have felt defensive and angry that he was telling me to do the “wrong” thing, or I could open my mind to the possibility that my practice really *is* mine, if only I can loosen up my mind’s (often) tyrannical fundamentalism.
It was some pretty advanced teaching, and I’m still pretty blown away by it.
***
Okay, so Saturday is led primary at the shala and I’ve been going the past few weeks. Everything was rolling along swimmingly yesterday until we got to purvottanasana. I went up and gah! my left hamstring was… well, it was like it was frozen/cramped. Not a huge pain cramp, but like a frozen sore spot right in the belly of the muscle.
All the rest of primary was fine, but I know I’m gonna feel it again tomorrow when I get to eka pada sirsasana. ‘Cause that’s where it came from.
Candice did some work on the hammy knot, including some deep work with her ELBOW (gulp!). At the end she said, “You should ice that. I worked in pretty deep.” Um, yeah — I noticed!
My right hamstring insert is the weak link usually (thanks to a tae kwon do incident years ago), so it’s surprising to have the left act up. Muscle bellies are easier to heal than inserts, though, so I’m happy.
We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. In the meantime, some akarna dhanurasana to the rescue. 
06/14/2009 at 4:38 pm
What he also probably observed about you was a curiosity ‘neath the systematicity. He has such a good teaching about mindlessness… I’m not sure I’d have been able to recognize it as easily as you did.
06/14/2009 at 5:03 pm
Well, I suppose you can test curiosity pretty easily — just ask someone to do something unfamiliar!
Gosh, this begs the question: Is building new samskaras really terribly different from clinging to old ones? This notion (jettison ALL habits — “good” or “bad”) might lead to a practice that is totally “in the moment” — which’d be an astonishingly advanced practice. Imagine trying to dissolve the samskaras of preference and achievement-orientation and path-of-least-resistance and what-was-this-like-yesterday *all at once*. Whew! My head would explode. (Ha! And I use discipline and the system to avoid ever going there…)
06/15/2009 at 10:21 am
Delicious post, Karen- really enjoyed it! (by the way, I have my own tae kwon do incident injury- flares up every now and then- left knee. argh!).
Drishti is SO interesting to me because it’s a constant battle, for many reasons. I love the idea of drishti, and when it comes easily, it’s so powerful and calming, but sometimes it doesn’t work for me. I have a lot of vision issues (prone to headaches from sharp, bright lights, or trying to land a focus). Sometimes when trying to keep the focus on a close spot- nose/3rd eye- and having my eyes shoot back and forth between focusing on the softness of either of those drishtsi and all the movement around me- I go bonkers. Like my eyes won’t stay focused and without hurting and have to shoot to the background instead of the foreground. Know what I mean? Maybe it’s because I do so much close work during my day. I’ve had to sort of make up my own dristis to calm my mind and keep from hurting my brain.
I think the UHP exercise Troy was doing with you is brilliant. I have found that over time I go from no-drishti to super focused and I-can’t-do-this-pose-without-it drishti, to finally finding a place where I can do crazy, teetering postures with a whirl of activity around me and hold a soft drishti that I’m not completely relying on. It’s so freeing to get to that point.
Sorry to write so much- drishti is something that really intrigues me. (and also this breaking from traditional only to come back to traditional with a lighter and looser understanding of it)
06/15/2009 at 12:18 pm
Dear Karen,
De-lurked a long time ago, and still an observer rather than commenter…
This post spoke to me for two reasons: “non-tradiional” teachers, and dristhi.
My teacher would totally fall into the non-traditional category by contemporary Mysore standards, yet was certified by Guruji many years ago. Arriving at his shala, my practice was totally deconstructed and carefully reconstructed (as is often the case), particularly regarding economy of movement, tidying up of vinyasas, and, yes, dristhi. After enquiring whether my drishti was correct in UHP and passing the test, teacher proceeded to shake my temporary secure feelings by indicating that in the very advanced stages of practice, drishti becomes an internal concept. Close your eyes or even look anywhere you wish, stability in the pose comes from elsewhere. This concept of internal stabilty went even beyond proprioception… Needless to say, I haven’t reached that level yet!
Friend of Frogs and Squirrels
06/15/2009 at 1:14 pm
Oh, FoFaS, that’s JUST what The Diver said about drishti. Hmmm, now I am so curious about where you reside… (trying to get a bead on who your teacher might be…)
Liz, I am super visually-oriented and I also get migraines, so I am with you on the weird visual phenomena. I think I overcompensated by being a blind devotee of drishti.
06/15/2009 at 1:57 pm
Karen,
I used to live in the States but no more! My teacher however is on yet another continent! Email me if you wish.
I am fascinated about the ways in which all teachers mentionned are “non-traditional” and how their “deviation” was inspired by their personal practice and experience. My teacher’s deviations would include use of second series backbends to facilitate UD, modifying poses (“the full expression of a pose is often mistaken for the benefits of the pose”), some Iyengar-based aligment principles, use of props, and, horror, teaching of pranayama to beginners. Yet fully orthodox in the use of sanskrit, sticking to the series once poses are mastered and moving students relatively slowly through series…
06/17/2009 at 4:52 am
wow, it’s your blog, Karen, but i have to thank FoFaS for her insight. it makes my unorthodox self practice seem like the right thing to do (i’m venturing into, heavens, 3rd Series).
hugs
Arturo