Day #27 - Discipline to be Undisciplined
/It seems that each time I visit RIMYI there is a clear thread being delivered by all the teachers across the month, and each time (well twice) it seems that this thread is undoing something that has previously been done.
One thing I have learned in India is nothing is as it seems.
Two years ago the classes were very dynamic, there was a clear message to reverse how the teaching of Iyengar yoga had become static.
Sunita (BKS daughter) teased us in class the other day, she got a student on the stage with their back to the wall and said shift your weight into your left foot, now bend your right knee and bring your toes on the floor and your foot resting in your left ankle, now bring the foot higher to you left knee, now hold the right ankle and left the foot up into your thigh and move your right knee back. Now slowly come down and change sides.
She said ‘this is how you teach in the west, here we say lift your foot up’ of course she used a strong demanding voice that was quick and the student’s foot was in place in a second.
So the teaching that year was about being dynamic and moving quickly and making quick transitions too.
This year there have been a few threads that all link.
Experimenting and exploring in your practice, rather than just doing. Breaking out of thinking there is a particular and singular way of doing an asana, but many and we need to explore so that we learn about yoga through the asana.
They have been giving more choices and alternatives in class while talking about the importance of the teacher empowering the students. Students hang on the teachers every word to be told what to do next, they are missing learning from the teacher within.
Powerful hey?
Of course, it is helpful to be shown a particular way to do an asana and the words of the teacher are important, but can you see how things swing too much one way.
We learn something in Pune and then we go home and say it is this way.
It is a western problem. We want a linear process and things fixed, certain, known and boxed and unfortunately this turns us away from understanding yog.
In the east, this is not how they operate. It appears to us that everything is backward and upside down, rather it is just not linear and yog is not a linear path.
I think looking at the roads and how we drive and how they drive is a beautiful visual of what I am talking about.