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Yoga
about hearing, responding Yoga is not about stretching; in fact, a stiff person might even have some advantages over a very flexible one. Yoga is not about physical fitness, though that may be a side benefit. Yoga poses aren’t meant to be held and achieved, but continually explored. After nearly 20 years of teaching yoga and producing 15 videos, Rodney Yee challenges what he says are some of its most common misconceptions in his first book, “Yoga: The Poetry of the Body” ($21.95, Thomas Dunne Books).
It’s most obviously a practice guide for beginners and more experienced practitioners alike, with 400 photos accompanying eight full practices — Playful, Falling, Grounding, Alignment, Breath, Resistance, Relaxation and Movement — tied to 45 basic yoga poses. But it stands out more in the recent onslaught of yoga books for its adjoining texts. Each segment begins with “Considering the Practice,” an overview of key aspects of the upcoming moves as well as poetry from Walt Whitman, Gary Snyder, Pablo Neruda and others. It ends with “Reconsidering the Practice,” thoughts on taking those lessons into everyday life, such as: “So next time you find yourself in a conversation, play with the changing alignment of your body, leaning toward or away from the person to the left or to the right, and feel how the whole conversation changes because of the alignment of your body.” Perhaps even more engaging are the conversations between Yee and co-author Nina Zolotow, a student of his and writer whose one-sentence “short stories” are sprinkled throughout the book. They taped hours of discussions on why they do yoga, whether there’s a right and wrong way, developing a home practice, etc. While other students may relate to Zolotow confessing — to her teacher! — that she doesn't feel emotionally balanced in spite of her yoga practice, they may be surprised when Yee shows some emotion of his own: In a section on “The End of Suffering,” when Zolotow presses for examples as Yee describes when his wife briefly left him, and in “Meeting Resistance,” when he acknowledges fears that he may be repeating with his own children the somewhat distant relationship his father has with him. Another aspect of resistance is why Yee believes inflexible folks might have a type of advantage when doing yoga. “It isn’t about how far you can put your foot around yourself,” Yee told me recently by phone. “Yoga is really about the union of the mind, body and breath.” When a stiff person faces the resistance of tight muscles, the mind is automatically engaged; a flexible person might find getting into poses so easy the mind can wander. With more experienced students, Yee also cautions against aiming to master a move. “It’s not the perfection of a pose but an ongoing listening, with a response. It’s a dialogue with your body, a dialogue with your mind, a dialogue with your breath.” In a sitting posture, for example, he said, “I might feel like I might have sort of found the center of my posture. But if I keep looking, there’s always still something to adjust. Maybe I’m not breathing into my lower back, and that might be from tensing my lower back — because I’m trying to sit up too straight.” |
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