Neal Pollack on The True Meaning of Yoga

When we were talking about what the hell a Faster Times yoga column would contain, my editor proposed that we feature photos of me, demonstrating the yoga pose of the week. I said that would be a great idea, if he wanted to immediately lose 95 percent of his hard-gained page views. While I practice some poses more skillfully than others, my yoga asana technique can, in general, best be described as “mad cattle stampede through the sagebrush.” People go online for any number of reasons, but no one, no matter how mentally ill or fetishistic, is ever looking for photos of an early-middle-aged, slightly overweight, hairline-drastically-receding, back-furred Jew doing half-assed yoga poses. Of this, I can be fairly certain.

Nevertheless, I think I can explain some things about yoga, in the most basic sort of way. So: If you’re practicing asana (Sanskrit for poses), you want to be as focused and diligent as possible, for many reasons. Proper alignment means your skeleton and muscles and joints and digestive system will be healthy. Frequent (but not too-frequent) practice means you won’t hurt yourself as easily. As for what that proper alignment might entail, I suggest you turn elsewhere for adjustments. BKS Iyengar’s Light On Yoga is probably the best contemporary source for showing good asana form. You’ll get excellent alignment instruction if you attend an Iyengar class, though the odds are also high that you’ll end up getting bent over the back of a folding chair by a stern schoolmarm wearing a red velour sweat suit. That happened to me recently in a studio at the back of a West L.A. strip mall, and it wasn’t real sexy.

That said, whether you’re hanging from ropes like an Iyengar Nightcrawler, Lululemoning some sexy Shiva Rea bhakti goddess flow, grinding yourself through a brutal 7 AM Mysore Ashtanga workout, puffing the breath of fire with your turbaned kundalini guru, or just trying to survive your 11 AM Power Flow class at Bally’s 24-Hour LA Fitness, you’re still not necessarily doing yoga. There are nearly 200 yoga sutras, and only three mention asana in any form. I once took a workshop from a master teacher who makes a multi-million dollar living putting nervous New Yorkers through a daily two-hour Gwyenth-izing. He said, “All you really need is headstand, shoulder stand, and meditation. The rest is just frosting.” I take that to heart while I stand on my head and watch the Dodger game in my living room. Sure, I think, I’m doing yoga, particularly if I pause the TV during commercials.

The Sutras, more or less the nondenominational yoga Bible, explains this ancient and totally inscrutable practice through Sanskrit aphorisms that tend to defy interpretation. But I’ll try to interpret anyway. To practice yoga means to focus intently, for a long period of time, and to do so skillfully. The object of your focus can be a gazing point during vipassana meditation, or a yoga pose, or a trumpet solo, or a poetic stanza, or the God of your choice. The key element, though, is focused mental energy. If you begin to master this, you’ll learn how to practice citta vritti nirodhah, or “cessation of consciousness patterns.” In other words, you’ll stop thinking, or at least in the way we define thought. This will make your focus on your chosen object, subject, or whatever even more intense.

Asana, in the form of group exercise classes, was traditionally taught in India to children, as a way to prepare their bodies for seated meditations and their minds for this kind of focused attention. Adults were never meant to obsess over other people’s trademarked flow sequences. Of course, this isn’t India, or the 14^th Century, and we’re not children. Most of us came to the practice late and totally unprepared for its magic gifts. That’s why, when the alarm goes off at 7 AM on Friday, I haul my creaky, hairy ass out of bed, suck down a pot of tea, and drive 20 minutes to a rundown dance studio in Silver Lake so my asana teacher can drag me, quite unwillingly, through another led Ashtanga primary series. By the end, my mind feels relatively clear, but it’s a short hit, and soon enough again I have to pull myself through the same reedy swamp of poses. I’ve barely begun practicing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get stoned and stand on my head for a few minutes while watching highlights on the MLB Network. It may not exactly be yoga. But it’s a start.

Photo by gbSk