No need to improve. You are that.

So you've noticed that you're breathing more fully, or you're regaining range of motion in your hips, or you're able to stand on one foot for longer, or you're sleeping better, or all of the above.

Or maybe you've noticed that it's THAT chick who is sticking Tree (Vrkshasana) and Headstand (Shirsasana), and today you are decidedly NOT.

Whether you are feeling encouraged or discouraged, remember that this yoga thing is not about self-improvement. It is about Self-realization.

Yes, your small-s "self" will improve. But not necessarily in the ways we expect or desire. The set of physical sensations, thoughts, emotions, and whatnot that makes up your individual self changes a LOT because you practice yoga.

But just go back to the old yogic texts when you need a reminder--and I so often do--that it's not really about that. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras devote a whole chapter to outlining all the siddhis--abilities--that may come about from a regular, intense, devoted yoga practice. Then the chapter ends with a warning: Don't let these newfound skills distract you from the real goal. What's the goal of yoga? The same as the process of yoga:

Remember the Self. Wake up to the realization that even though it seems like I'm just a small-s self wandering this earth bumping into other small-s selves, we're really all a part of something bigger. This is what the Upanishads call the Self (with a big S).

I prefer the verbs "realize" and "remember" because the yogic texts, and our own yoga practices, constantly show us that it's not a process of acquiring new information. This is something we know already, deep down, and we let ourselves forget it in the rush of getting things done. In fact, as amazing as the process of childhood and adolescent development is, it is really a process of building up a small-s self and creating a shell of personality (preferences, differences, opinions, divisions) around our basic, deep-down similarities and connections.

Once we do this successfully, we have a few choices. We can just keep shoring up the line of defense of that isolated self with more and more likes and dislikes, more rigid opinions, and so on...or we can begin to OBSERVE the process by which we do this and not be entirely threatened when we realize that the small-s self isn't all there is.

So whether you balance masterfully or tip over and laugh today, whether your hips ache in tightness or open lightly like flower petals to the sun, just remember what Uddalaka teaches his son in the Chandogya Upanishad. He tells his son to put salt in a cup of water and bring it to him.

"Where is that salt?" the father asks.
"I do not see it," the son replies.
"Sip here. How does it taste?"
"Salty."
"And here?"
Salty."
"And there?"
"I taste salt everywhere."
"It IS everywhere, though we see it not. Just so, dear one, the Self is everywhere, within all things, though we see it not. You are that."

You are that, dear ones. Tat tvam asi. You are already that which you seek. The Self, or whatever you prefer to name it.

So is everyone else. Now can we remember that as we leave our mats?

(The Chandogya Upanishad excerpt is adapted from Chapter VI of Eknath Easwaran's translation, a lovely one, loose for the sake of poetry and clarity.)

Where is my guru?

Sometimes I have dreams in which my teacher Sharon looks like someone else, or even changes into someone else. Once she suddenly turned into my mother-in-law. Another time she had short blond hair, like a good friend of mine.

I think this is my mind's not-so-subtle way of reminding me that my teacher, my guru, is in everyone. People I get along with, people I don't, people I barely know. Friends, strangers, family, animals...those in my past, those in my present, and those I have yet to meet. The teacher is in all situations--beginnings, middles, and ends.

This is also Sharon's lovely interpretation of the "guru brahma" chant, and if you think you've never heard it, listen closely the next time you hear the George Harrison song "My Sweet Lord." It's in the background. You can read her full interpretation in the book Jivamukti Yoga.

The "guru" is the teacher who removes the darkness, the "goo," the muck that coats our windows and prevents us from seeing clearly. Sometimes we think it's just one person, but it can be everywhere if we are ready for it.

Dedicate your practice today to seeing the guru in EVERYTHING...your tight muscle, your injured joint, your fantastic capacity to balance, the tailgater behind you, the delicious lunch, the spilled tea, the smile on a stranger's face.

I may not understand what is being taught at each moment, but I can open myself to the possibility of the darkness being removed, so that I am ready to see more clearly how things actually are. Whether I am taking a class with my teacher Sharon, or talking with my mother-in-law, or seeing an old friend, or looking in my rearview mirror.

Preparing Myself

"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult task of all...the work for which all other work is but preparation." (Rilke, as quoted by Jack Kornfield in A Path with Heart)

As you practice today, remember that no matter how hard it gets, it is nothing compared to staying calm in the face of a frustrating interaction, remaining loving when someone close to you pushes your buttons, and being kind even toward those who seem to wish us harm.

Do the work that prepares you for that most difficult task. Embrace the challenges and obstacles on your mat so you can be ready for the challenges to loving and showing that love. Take a long shavasana at the end to let it all sink in, so you rise from your practice knowing that you are ready for the task and the privilege of loving others.

(I highly recommend Kornfield's book, by the way, if you'd like to read further.)

We are what we repeatedly do.

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

I don't usually put much stock in Aristotle, who was deeply and unfailingly dualistic in his view of the world and has helped embed our western world in that way of thinking for centuries. But this quote strikes me as quite yogic.

Practice one or more of the techniques of yoga--asana (posture), pranayama (breath and energy expansion), bhakti (devotional chanting and acts), dhyana (meditation), karma (service), or some other-- and soon we realize excellence.

Not necessarily a perfect backbend or a divine voice or an entirely still mind, although these will come with time, I hear.

But excellence in ways that creep up on us without us forcing them: we can be a little kinder, we feel less grasping for things we don't have and more gratitude for those we do, we stay calmer in the face of disruption.

This is because we practice these difficult things, little by little, even when we seem to just be bending and breathing on the mat. (And the bending and breathing help prepare the body for these broader changes as they bring to an optimal state all its systems: nervous, digestive, muscular, cardiovascular, endocrine, and so on.)

Aristotle was saying something quite in line with the yogis: It's not all about genetic gifts, and it's not about what you believe or think. It's about what you DO.

Do your best, each time, with what you have. Such a cliche, but so true. And if it is something you wish to excel in, do it over and over and over. The yogis were talking about daily, committed, intense practice. (They weren't talking about a six-week workshop and then a video once in a while.)

As the Gita reminds us: Put forth effort and let go of your attachment to results. And then do it again. And again. And again....

Get a grip. Then let go of it.

"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace." (Achaan Chah)

Where do you feel yourself holding on, maybe even gripping tight? I feel it in my hip flexors--the fronts of my hips-- and in my lower back. Maybe you feel it in your jaw, or in your shoulders, or in your pelvic floor. Maybe you feel it most in your mind, holding on to a goal or an idea of how things 'should' be.

Chah is speaking in the Buddhist tradition, but the yogis have their own way of saying the same thing. They claim that the best way to catch a monkey in the jungle is to simply put out a jar of treats with a narrow neck. When the monkey finds it, he will thrust his open hand into the jar, grasp the treats, and try to pull his fist out. The narrow neck will prevent him from extricating himself. He will try like anything to free himself with his fist grasping the prize, and remain stuck no matter how hard he tries...because he is unwilling to let go.

I don't know if this is true of real monkeys; the yogis are talking about the monkey mind. And there the story holds true, at least in my experience.

In your practice today, watch for what you're grasping, gripping, holding. Maybe you notice a relationship between what you're mentally grasping and someplace you are physically tightening--but that's not necessary. Just noticing either the mental OR the physical holding gives us an entry point for letting go of it. That's the beauty of raja and hatha yoga.

Notice the tightening. If it's physical, you can even exaggerate it to really make it conscious and volitional (this is the PNF or "resistance" method I teach sometimes, for those of you who have learned it). If it's mental, do that, too! Focus on it, let it really percolate up.

Then let it go.

Top down or bottom up

Next time you have a chance, read some of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Bihar School of Yoga translation has the best commentary). Or read a book by Georg Feuerstein to get a sense of earlier hatha yoga techniques and the influence of tantra on yoga and Buddhism.

In the wake of the Yoga Journal controversy about their ads, it's good to remember the fuller picture of yoga practices. It is, after all, a practice that focuses on the bodily practices so that the student can realize nonduality; that is, really GET the way that the body is not separate from the mind, nor from other bodies, nor from other material things.

I am all for a discussion of why YJ needs to reconsider their editorial (both text and image) emphasis on asana and why the relationship between editorial and advertising sales is increasingly twisted in most magazines, including YJ.

But to say that Kathryn Budig's photographs in Toesox ads are just more "naked women" and say they are not "about the celebration of the beauty of the human body or the beauty of the poses" seems misguided to me. The photos show a woman in motion who is strong and focused, not waifish or pouting or staring blankly or any of the typical "I am a sexual object" indicators.

And if we consider the many techniques of hatha yoga, we find many that are far more salacious and eyebrow-raising than naked asana practice. For instance, there's going into a river to draw the water up into one's anus, hold it there, and then expel it. There's having ritualized sex. There's meditating on corpses in a burial ground.

There are lots of practices, especially the ones from the "left-handed" tantric schools, that encourage the practitioner to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing something forbidden, exotic, unusual. It can help to wake us up.

AND there are many others that encourage the student to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing the mundane and ordinary. That is, by practicing the same thing OVER and OVER again. And finding the freshness in it even though it is, on the face of it, very familiar.

You may remember this argument from the movie My Dinner with Andre.

I think the two approaches work beautifully together. A yoga practice of asana (moving and holding postures) and pranayama (breathing consciously) and pratyahara (turning senses inward) and dhyana (concentrating) can do BOTH.

Sometimes I take a class and it blows my mind. The teacher gets me to do things I'd never think I could do. I move and breathe steadily until I let go of everything but just this breath, just this moment. I am alert and calm and totally focused. They usually have to exhaust me and get me right to the edge for this to happen. They have to remind me of my true Self, which is bigger than the little one I usually identify with, and threatens to dissolve little-self.

Other times my practice is so familiar I can feel myself starting to get bored and I have to work to make what is so familiar fresh. I have to make an effort to notice what is different about this easy inhale from the last one, this Warrior B from yesterday's. This is another way to wake up.

So in today's practice, your intention might be to make way for either of these to occur...either the huge unusual event that shifts your perspective suddenly, or the gradual changes that take place when we apply ourselves to a regular, ordinary practice and notice what happens over time.

Top down or bottom up? I'll meet you in that middle path.

Liberté, équanimité, fraternité!

Tonight in class I'll be teaching a lot of twisting, sidebending, and inverting postures. So I've been thinking about what we need to do to get into each of those positions.

It's pretty basic: to enter any yoga posture safely, we need to find a neutral posture and even breath first.

But NEUTRAL is not the same thing as HABITUAL. Our habitual posture and breathing is often far from neutral.

This is where ujjayi samavrtti pranayama and bandhas come in. They help us create a steady breath with equal-length inhalations and exhalations, plus find neutral pelvis and a long, tall spine, as we begin each movement.

Then we can twist safely. We can sidebend without crunching. We can invert without compression.

It's tempting to think that we can wring ourselves into position with muscle and force, and once we get there start to breathe fully again and maybe "fix" the areas we've tensed up...but it will always feel better when we remember to work the equanimity in our breath and the neutral spine with space between the vertebrae FIRST.

In our everyday lives, we can find equanimity before putting ourselves in positions that could cause strain. We find "neutral" so that we can enter a difficult situation and still breathe...so that we can emerge from a place of constriction even stronger, even more spacious than before. As the systems of the body--respiratory, skeletal, muscular, circulatory, etc.--find a calm, steady state, so can the mind.

So, as many teachers have pointed out: Find the Tadasana (Mountain) in every posture. Even breathing, neutral pelvis, tall spine. In today's practice, focus on that FIRST, before any movement to twist, side bend, invert, back bend, or forward bend. So what if you don't grab your toe or wrist or get into some extreme new variation of a posture? Explore equanimity--it might be the most extreme thing you do today!