Faster Than Thought

I have learned that, with my teacher's help in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana, I can lift and hold my leg above the strain of the hamstring. That is, the teacher helps the leg to rise up in front of the body, helps it to turn out to the side while the hip drops and relaxes, helps it back to the center as the head lowers to the leg...and then, as my teacher and I leave the leg, it stays comfortably held up in front of me. No strain at all. We work so that the extended leg is above the strain.

So, lately I have been feeling stuck. I haven't written overtly about it, but I think that part of the subterranean feeling was, yes, part of the practice, but also not knowing how to get unstuck. As it turns out, I was stuck in stiffness, stuck in thought.

This past week, I expressed to my teacher that I was concerned that I was not making progress in Janusirsasana C. This asana is more about the hip than the toes or the foot or the knee...something in my hip was not letting go. So he showed me a few ways to wiggle more into the pose. But I could tell that he was still thinking. (Truly, there is a weight to it in the shala. But it's not weighted thinking in a heavy, burdensome sense. It seems that he is imagining, creating new ways and reaching back into familiar ways to help his students in their practice. There is something positive and light about this invention. Anyway....) So he came back over to me, and he told me that he wants me to work with speed. "You...go faster." As in, practice faster. He told me to think of a jazz musician or a race car driver: "Faster," he said. "But don't hurry."

So I practiced faster. And he said, "Not fast enough."

So I came back the next morning, and focused on practicing even faster. And he said, "Is this faster than you usually practice?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Not fast enough."

Pause.

And he said, "I want you to be breathing as if you were running." Oooooh.

Wait. Wha-haaat? I thought the practice was supposed to be slow and deep and long. I thought the practice was supposed to take me away from my fast-paced life and slow me down. In fact, a couple of months ago I deliberately slowed myself down even more, trying to achieve this languid, liquidness. Hoping it would trickle up to my brain.

But I was completely wrong. My intentions were good...but my approach was the opposite of that which would accomplish peacefulness.

"It's an experiment," he said.

And so I did what he said. I started practicing quite fast. I started breathing heavy. I started to sweat much more. I felt a kind of momentum. I was tired and winded, yes...but my body was warm. Warmer than it had been before, even though I was spending less time in the poses (because a 5-count of breaths is shorter when the breaths are shorter).

And I started to think less...and fidget less...and my joints opened a bit more. I moved quickly into Parvritta Parsvakonasana — much faster than my usually laboured process. I took out much of the shifting about before jumping back, which helped me to connect the seated asanas more fluidly. And sooner than I expected, I was done with Primary and moving into Second Series, with energy to give to those poses.

I set my fascination aside as much as I could, but during dropbacks, I asked him what his hypothesis was for this experiment, and it was as I thought, as I had experienced (this organic understanding of the lesson can be refreshing; it reveals an evolving connection to the self). He told me that he wants to help me to think less, to warm the body and open the joints so that I can progress in Janu C (and in Supta Kurmasana, for that matter). And so that I can move more into Second Series. He told me that Guruji often encouraged speed, that it was essential to the practice. He said that Guruji attributed stiffness to "too much thinking."

Too much thinking.

So the slower practice was not accomplishing what I thought it was...it was a relaxed, languid practice. But it wasn't softening me. It was giving me far too much time to fuss about. And it was keeping my joints cool.

And, I had been wondering all this while why Sharath's and Kino's Primary Series are so speedy. Why so fast? Because it is meant to be a swift practice, a synchronized practice. At a workshop a couple of weeks ago, my teacher talked about how the asanas work like branches that spread out from a single core set of principles. The core remains steady while we practice each asana, and after each asana we return back to that center. Swiftness helps us to keep the practice together, like the ida and pingala around the sushumna nadi...like vertabrae on a spine. I often tell my students that a thesis works like this — the evidence hangs on the thesis, which holds the argument together. I now understand my own metaphor in a new way.

And the speed helps to streamline the connection between mind, heart, and body. As with the teacher helping the leg to rise above the strain, so the swiftness — and steadiness — of practice helps to keep the mind from racing. It cannot race because the body and breath are working together — there is less room for the mind to get a word in edge-wise. The mind must fall into the heart. There is a profound efficiency to it, but it is intended to be without strain, without stress. Just do it — the conversation between mind and body is short and sweet.

In this experiment, I see an illustration of how lightening it can be to give the mind less of an opportunity to be idle, less of a chance to tell us a story about why we should fear, or resist, or worry. Though these emotions have their utility, I find that the stories my mind tells are like Dementors; they take the life out of my practice, my rest, my work. And to practice languidly, for me, right now, is to indulge them. Recall that the patronus requires intense focus on a single idea: joy. The fractured, wandering, frayed mind cannot conjure a patronus...

Yes, the powerful, energetic, beautiful practice is the well-conjured patronus.