by Yogi Ananda Viraj (Eugene P. Kelly, Jr.)
I am doing an asana only when I am not doing one. To be immersed as an asana, in an asana, is to lose the doer. To lose the performer of postures is to touch upon the freedom of doing and the core meaning of asanas. This meaning is a living, breathing meaning without an appropriated significance. No one owns a posture, no one does a posture. Authentic enactment of a yoga posture is to surrender the “knot” of self into the silent totality of simple poise. Breath breathes; doing does. No other body movement is designated as explicit release – asana is without effort. To be attentive as asana is the participation in sacred incarnation. For the body to know its embodiment, for the body to feel the many bodies it is, the knot must be untied in graceful, effortless attentiveness. Simply mind the asana.
He who conquers the postures (asanas) conquers the three worlds.– Sandilya-Upanisad
Breath moves the body; its pauses, its strains, its flow is the animation of body posture. Let breath do asanas. Intention moves breath; intend the blessed poise of posture. Silence yourself in anonymous curled body breathing. Enter the silent world of living body life that abandons the knowing doer, the restrictive knot that is lethargy and weakness. Learn with the wholeness of body-lives to feeling-knowledge. Feeling-knowledge is the awakening of the nervous system sensitivity to the fluidity of changing breath-language patterns. These patterns live with ecstatic, palpitating urgency in change – the body as unceasing mobility. Let your eyes touch the tree; let your ears sing the bird song. The fully awakened nervous system is open to the world’s becoming within it. The asana is the first step to such an awakening.
Invite yourself to the practice of asana. Allow time for the body to convince the thought world-maker of the depths of its mobile holiness. Asana refuses refuge to tension. Self-knot is denial of body fluidity, body bliss. Grant yourself the time to set the body on the move. Let the thought rest and the felt totality live in generous spontaneity.