Inside Yoga 216 (13/11/2017)
Yoga can be many things to many people, it can offer a good stretch, it can be one time we relax, and it can make us feel so much better, yet none of these will be found or achieved without the task being set to become absorbed in yoga.
Being absorbed in something is an activity we often do perhaps without thinking about it or being aware, like a musician lost in the music, but in yoga we train ourselves to access this at will and to maintain it.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which describes the path of yoga, describes eight limbs of yoga with the eighth limb being Samadhi, which in its simplest explanation is described as the state of absorption or oneness.
In the sutras, the third verse of part three, is explained as “when the object of meditation engulfs the meditator, appearing as the subject, self-awareness is lost. This is Samadhi.” (BKS Iyengar). Or for another interpretation of the same text, “Soon the individual is so much involved in the object that nothing except its comprehension is evident. It is as if the individual has lost his own identity. This is the complete integration with the object of understanding (Samadhi).”
In yoga asanas practice you can describe the object as being the collective of our breathing/body/mind seen as one object, it is what we are observing and seeking to keep all other distractive factors at bay.
Nothing exists in isolation and as such the state of Samadhi can feel both distant and inaccessible and at the same time close and part of us because as we practice and put all of the eight limbs of yoga into practice we will feel moment to moment how we are assembling a structure that feels at times completely stable and perfect while at other times shaky and ready to wobble and collapse.
This is the nature of our yoga practice. We continue to plough on knowing that the path is heading the right way, and these states of union and Samadhi can sometimes become tangible and real. Though there is a catch: these perfect states of Samadhi are only achieved devoid of ego, the part of us that will point back at us and say (or shout) “look what I am doing!” is not what yoga is about – at this point the structure falls away and we start rebuilding.
Yoga is practice, yoga is training – a mind training to bring balance, to develop a sense of union with ourselves and everything around us.
Related blogs about this topic with links
Patanjali – https://www.yogabristol.co.uk/2011/03/15/inside-yoga-29/
Why we must concentrate – https://www.yogabristol.co.uk/2017/06/12/why-we-must-concentrate/
Finding the balance – https://www.yogabristol.co.uk/2017/05/15/finding-the-balance/
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