Guru

My yoga mat after this morning's session. Ready for another day.

It's such a comfort to me that my yoga guru has returned after more than a year away. I tried really hard to find another teacher but Jennifer seems to be, for me, irreplaceable. She is learned and compassionate. We are slowly working back through the injuries I sustained through the wrong kind of yoga or no yoga at all. I feel like a flower opening.

A guru is a teacher, anyone who ru's your gu - i.e., lightens your darkness. Jennifer is mine, and she has gurus of her own. In traditional yoga you trace your lineage back from your guru to his or her guru, and so on. We all trace our yoga lineage back to Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga Sutras, the pholosophical underpinnings of the asanas (poses) we in the West think of as yoga. Yoga is a way of life, a practice, and the asanas are merely a way to achieve a clear state of mind.

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918 - ) is a guru all Western yogis owe a debt to. He is the author of a definitive text on the asanas that emphasizes proper alignment: Light on Yoga, first published in 1966 and still in print,. He continues to teach and publish. The book on my mat, Light on Life, came out in 2005. Jennifer had recommended it shortly before she went away, but I hadn't delved into it. Today our yoga lesson was based on Chapter 4, Clarity, which begins:

"You cannot hope to experience inner peace or freedom without understanding the workings of your mind and of human consciousness in general. All behavior, both constructive and destructive, is dependent on our thoughts. By understanding how our thinking works, we discover nothing less than the very secrets of human psychology. With this right perception and understanding of our minds, the door opens to our liberation.... The study of mind and consciousness, therefore, lies at the heart of yoga."

Elsewhere Iyengar said:

"The goal of yoga is to be free from the afflictions of the body and mind, so that all other actions can be done without inflicting pains on others or on oneself."

Day by day I am being freed from afflictions. My spine becomes more flexible, my breathing deepens, my arms and legs grow stronger, my balance improves, and my mind grows clearer. Is there any greater comfort than that?


COMFORT: DDW Sept 12 challenge by Anniemay

(SOOC + iPhoto Vignette)