I laughed out loud when I heard the voice-over on a promotional video for a new yoga product: a yoga mat with positional markings on it which purports to “[help] you find calm and inner peace”. Surely this had to be some kind of spoof?
The publicity email invited me to support a Kickstarter campaign for a “revolutionary” new yoga mat. The sticky mat in question has various markings printed on it, so that the practitioner knows the “right” positions for their hands and feet. It comes in three sizes, small, medium and large, “all according to height”—as if all our bodies had the same dimensions! It struck me as unfortunate that such a product could have been developed with seemingly little understanding of what yoga means, and what a physical asana practice is actually for.
On a very basic level, all our bodies are differently proportioned, regardless of height: The length of our limbs and torsos is not standardized. (And for that matter, even if our hands are in the “right” place, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re distributing the weight as we need to be, or pushing into a part of the hand or foot that will help us.)
Our expression of any given pose will vary dramatically according to where we are in our practice. Do you remember the first time you tried Virabadrasana II, Warrior 2 pose? Very likely your stance was quite short and your front thigh was far from parallel with the ground; you probably breathed pretty hard, sweated quite a lot, and found it hard to stay there for long. Then maybe over some time, you were able to move with greater ease and fluidity. You found your body saying “Yes” to deepening the pose a little, moving your feet a touch wider apart, bending your front knee a little deeper while being careful the knee didn’t track beyond your front ankle. You eased into it, over some years. Even within one class, a pose can become more available.
In my understanding, paying attention to what’s really going on in your body—your completely unique body—is asana practice. We learn to listen to what the body and mind tell us, and make good decisions based on that information, not according to habitual behavior or one-size-fits-all instruction.
A good teacher will pay very careful attention to you as you practice. She or he will look at how your body is aligned and what’s going on with your muscles: are they tense, juddering, slack? Your teacher will notice how you’re breathing and what’s happening to your face. One fab instructor of mine once noticed, as the class attempted a particularly tricky pose, that we all looked like we were going to the guillotine; we laughed, of course, loosened up, and made our way into the posture with a lot more ease than we would’ve found otherwise.
Similarly, the art of self-practice (ie doing yoga on your own) is a profound exercise in engaging with your whole being. Without a teacher watching and making adjustments, you become your own guide. You alone are making the decisions about the poses you practice based on deep listening. In this way, you take responsibility for yourself.
I giggled, earlier, about the idea that one could find calm and inner peace via a yoga mat with some markings printed on it (or in any prop, for that matter). But I fully acknowledge the seriousness of our need to find inner peace—particularly in the West, where our value system can seem so skewed.
It is good that people are looking towards the system of yoga in the hope of welcoming these things into their lives. And it is so important to practice carefully and safely. But I have serious reservations about gimmicky products like these. Asana is just one part of the journey towards yoga (meaning, union), and honing our ability to observe and listen and make adjustments is a crucial part of that inner journey.
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