Recently, I have been thinking quite a bit about what the Ashtanga practice does to us. Not so much on a physical level, but more on an energetic level. These are things I have thinking about since I first started writing this blog, and probably even before that: At any rate, I definitely have been thinking about them since I started doing the second series backbends and feeling their subtle energetic effects more than two years ago.
These thoughts are not very well-formed, but they revolve around a few questions: Is there a particular kind of person (maybe a Type A anal control freak) that is most commonly drawn to Ashtanga? Does the practice ameliorate and "mellow out" these individuals' "negative" qualities? Or does it make these qualities more pronounced; for example, if one is already a Type A anal control freak, does practicing Ashtanga make one even more of a Type A anal control freak? Or is the story a little more complicated: Perhaps the practice brings out the Type A anal control characteristics of the Type A anal individual, making them more pronounced, so that the individual can see these "negative" traits in all their ugly glory, come to terms with their dark side, and eventually, after Dirgha Kala, finally be able to purify themselves of these "negative characteristics"?
Being a neophyte on the Ashtanga path, I do not have answers to these questions, and also do not feel all that qualified to write about these things. But I write anyway, because writing and thinking aloud is what I do ;-)
But yesterday, I came across something that might shed some light on these questions. I was reading this recent post that Linda over at Linda's Yoga Journey wrote about the most recent yoga scandal to hit our, uh, otherwise pristine yoga community; in case you don't know about the scandal, let me just say that it involves an individual whose first name rhymes with "bathtub". I'm not going to talk about it, because although I do feel for those who were harmed in this case, I don't know enough about what's going on to say anything with any authority (actually, when was the last time I actually knew enough about anything to say anything with any authority?... but I think you get the point).
Anyway, as I was saying, I read Linda's recent post about this scandal. In this post, she shared a very interesting and thought-provoking message from one of her readers. Here's part of the message:
"These yoga practices can very often and easily drive up combinations of energetic imbalance that predictably result in such situations. I used to wonder why so many of these yoga gurus would end up in scandals, if they are supposed to be models of “enlightenment”, but now I can see that it is not at all surprising.
Because yoga is primarily a “fire path” (with practices designed to move shakti upward through the spinal and central channels and out the crown), males in particular are susceptible to these problems. Most men are already somewhat imbalanced toward this “fire” direction, as opposed to most females, whose “water” (cool) energy tends to flow downward more easily and are thus more naturally grounded when practicing yoga...
[This imbalance] often results in sexual activity because of the unconscious nature of its manifestation. When you’re not grounded at all and you’ve bypassed your lower chakras to shoot out the crown, those lower centers tend to act on their own. And it can also result in various forms of male/female domination, abuse, and control."
As is clear from the context, the person who wrote this was trying to shed light on why the recent scandals (the one involving the "bathtub" guy and another earlier this year, which involved somebody whose name can be rendered in Spanish as "Juan Amigos") happened by talking about the energetic effects of yoga practice. But I also can't help feeling that all this is also relevant to the above questions that I have been having about Ashtanga practice; as many of you know, the goal of Ashtanga practice, from an energetic point of view, is to get Kundalini to awaken from its dormant state at the base of the spine and to rise through the sushumna nadi to come out through the crown chakra. In particular, the backbends and leg-behind-head postures in second series are supposed to work together by generating the creative tension in the spinal column to encourage this upward movement of Kundalini.
Seen from this perspective, I wonder if all this may also be related to the reason why we don't start pranayama practice in Ashtanga till after the practitioner has finished third series. Maybe this no-pranayama-till-completion-of-third-series rule acts as a sort of safeguard against the kind of energetic imbalance mentioned in the comment above. As you know, pranayama practice works directly with the nervous system; while the benefits of pranayama are great, the stakes are also higher. If you mess up asana practice, you mess up your body. Which is pretty bad, but fixable. But if you mess up pranayama practice, you mess up your nervous system. Which is, well, really, really bad. You might go crazy, or become afflicted with the kind of energetic imbalance mentioned in the message above.
Seen in this light, perhaps there is a method to the apparent madness of Ashtanga. Perhaps there is a reason why we are not "allowed" to start pranayama till after we have mastered third series, as crazy and unreasonable as this may seem ("Why do I have to freaking be able to stand on my hands and put my feet in lotus at the same time before I can be allowed to do a few freaking breathing exercises? Where's the sense in this?!").
Well, here's where the sense may be: Perhaps the idea is that a practitioner whose nervous system has become more grounded as a result of practicing both primary and second series would be better equipped to guard against the kind of imbalances mentioned above. So in this way, the order of the Ashtanga series and the no-pranayama-till-completion-of-third-series rule can be seen as "energetic safeguards" that serve to protect the practitioner from himself or herself.
At any rate, this is my theory. Nobody has yet endorsed it (or refuted it, for that matter), so don't take this as the Ashtanga Gospel Truth. But here's something else that may be interesting and related. A fairly reliable source recently told me that over the course of his/her long practice career, he/she has met some male Ashtanga teachers who have definitely abused their positions of power as teachers. I have not practiced Ashtanga long enough to be able to verify these claims independently, but I trust this source. Anyway, the upshot seems to be this: If abuses of power caused by energetic imbalances can occur even with the energetic safeguards that are in place in Ashtanga, how much worse would they potentially be if these safeguards weren't there?
In saying this, I am not saying that Ashtanga is "better" or "superior" to other styles or lineages of yoga because it has these safeguards. I'm sure that other styles also have their own energetic safeguards, or some such equivalent. At any rate, I don't know enough about other styles or lineages of yoga to talk about them here. I can only talk about the style that I practice. And even then, I suspect that I may be going way out of my depth here. But I thought I'll put my thoughts out here anyway; maybe we can still learn something from one another by thinking and discussing together; after all, there's a Chinese saying that can be translated roughly as "Three incompetent generals can outsmart one military genius." (If you read Chinese, the original saying is 三个臭皮匠顶个诸葛亮. Ha! Now you know how bad I am at translation :-))
Anyway, I feel myself starting to wander off into neither-here-nor-there territory. Which is a clear sign that I should sign off now. Well, as always, it was fun writing this; hopefully, you will have at least half as much fun reading :-) If you have anything to share, I'll love to hear from you.
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