The Treasure Within

If you know what Supta Baddhakonasana is, and the effect, recall how you feel in class when the teacher announces it in class. In my 20+ years of teaching, it is the second Sanskrit name of a pose my students recall (first one is Savasana!) So imagine how I felt this morning, when I arrived for Prashant’s class, and the thick black cushioned mats were out instead of our regular sticky mats. That could only mean one thing. Restorative and pranayama class. YES!! It’s just what the doctor recommended. After I settled into my space with my pranayama pillows and blankets, I embarked on a Prashant expedition. 

We started with rope Sirsasana or supine poses. Our choice of supine poses. (When I have a choice, I find myself asking , body, which one do you need?) Since I had extra blankets and pranayama pillows, I gave some away to share with some of the latecomers, as sometimes the props are not enough for all. It is expected for those who need less props to practice aparigrahah (non attachment, non hoarding )and share with those who need them more. (That is after all, the practice of ahimsa, (non-violence) and maitri, (friendliness). It really is not that difficult to practice the yamas in real living situations. Just be a descent human being and be mindful of others needs, not just yours, and that is Yama.

In my Supta Virasana with way less support that I usually give myself, I found that it was difficult to go down at first, but after a few moments of surrender, the body settled in. Prashant was continuing on his theme from Tuesday about being abdomen minded. He told us that most of us were only chest and lung minded in pranayama, props minded in how to set up, but that we needed to have associated conditions in the abdomen for the abdomen. The abdomen for the breath, the abdomen for the mind conditions.

First he sensitized us and helped us to let go by evacuating the mind, the breath, and the abdominal cavity. We were not to do anything, but just to observe the processes of the mind, the body, and breath with Ujjayi 1, 2. But he told us not to label the breath. The breath has no name. It’s just breath. As beginners, we have to understand the techniques, but he encouraged us to let go of all that once the body understands the techniques and effects, since we each have to discover our own treasure. Not to get stuck on the techniques or it becomes a rogue subject. He joked about the treasures in the sea. How an elephant is so magnificent, but next to a whale, it can fit in its tail. It can eat us. The whale is so enormous. And there are many creatures we don’t even know about. There are so many shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean full of treasure. Undiscovered. Like that, we have our own sunken treasures ready to be discovered. They are inside of us. We are born already having the treasure in our embodiment. But we must dive deep to find it in in this lifetime. In this embodiment.

We switched, taking turns on Rope Sirsasana, where we observed the thinness of the abdomen, the length of the abdomen, and the resulting movement of the breath. He said that we are told to close our eyes. But when we close our eyes, they are really not closed. They are closed on the outside, but they are open on the inside. What can we see from the inside? Where are we to look? That’s what we have to discover. With our eyes  open and looking on the inside. We still needed to let go further and further. 

After another Supine pose (Supta Baddha Konasana for me), this time with no support under back, with Viloma 2, then 1. We then added the sounds Lam, vam, ham, ram on the exhalations to observe further. We were to exhale in the triangle of the trunk downwards, but then he had us do it like a funnel exhaling in the brain towards the back of the skull, and in the triangle going downwards towards the floor and then downwards towards the pelvis. I found myself going deeper and deeper to a very quiet space. Then I heard a loud horn that played the 80’s Brazilian Lambada tune “Chorando se foi...” (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=phyC9rzjpPQ) and I was quickly taken out of the depths of my “soul” and interrupted by my smriti vritti (memory mind chatter) and taken back to my days of lambada competitions. Which then led me to think of my ex-husband, who was my dance partner. Which then took me to a non emotional passing thought which said, Rosa go back to where you were with Prashant and in your depth. This song usually has brought me back to recollect a vast array of emotions, and as Patanjali tells us, some mind chatter can be painful, and some is not painful. Smriti (Memory) can be both painful and not painful. This song used to be a painful longing to hear, but over the years (and lots of yoga!), today it was not painful. It was an interruption, but didn’t create any changes in my heart rate, or breath. Just like memory can be useful in finding your keys (that’s a vritti— a movement in the consciousness), this vritti was like a passing cloud. As quickly as it arrived, it passed. And I descended back into some kind of jewels that I cannot describe. 

Just like Prashant’s classes, they are hard to describe. I do my best, but I am sure there’s loads of his treasures that hopefully are somewhere in my consciousness, just not quite in my immediate smriti. I do however, don’t understand why I am in the mood to dance, albeit by myself for myself, and do it abdominally minded. So of course that creates more vrittis in my head. Vrittis of Prashant dancing. At first Bollywood style. Then more like Hari Krishna style, since he is a Bhakti yogi (at least in my vrittic mind). I mean no disrespect. But I can only assume since Prashantji loves music, I can only imagine he also likes to dance. Although probably not Lambada. At least I won’t be the one to ask him. 

Thank you for indulging in my reality, but also in my minds reality, which is really just an illusion. Hopefully my own vrittis do not disturb my recollections of Prashant’s classes, but open up a discussion in your own mind to create the freedom to let your vrittis run wild, as being here does mine. Any misunderstandings are completely mine, any genius is completely theirs. (The Iyengars, the classes, the teachers at the Institute.)