How to Practice: Reframing Method in Yoga
Awareness, Method, and the Quest for Invulnerability
Written By: Balraj Persaud
The only requirement for yoga practice is attention. Rather than helping us become invulnerable to discomfort, yoga exposes how the quest for permanent peace, security, or completion can itself reinforce suffering; practice, then, is less a matter of what [specific practice(s)] one does than of cultivating the awareness and receptivity to notice these habits before being consumed by them. And the only thing this requires is your attention.
Introduction: What Problem Does Yoga Solve?
Many turn to yoga for a greater sense of “inner peace”—a more settled mind, a quieter or more pleasant inner life, freedom from inner dis-ease. We want to be more settled because things feel unsettled—in our selves or our lives—not as smooth or reliable as we would like. Some of us feel that we’re lacking something we need (a better/perfect body, bulletproof physical/mental health, more recognition/status/fame, loyalty/love, financial freedom, joy, enlightenment, etc.); some of us feel we have too much of something we don’t want (anxiety, shame, numbness, guilt, trauma, sin, ego, etc.). Once we’ve permanently addressed the source of our discomfort, we believe, we will finally be “at peace”, and never feel compelled to strive for anything ever again. We will never again be made to feel exposed, dependent, insufficient (or anxious/unsafe, small/invisible, ashamed/unworthy, guilty/defective). Then, we will finally be happy.
Unfortunately, our desire for healing, enlightenment, recognition, etc. is often contaminated by the fantasy of finally becoming invulnerable—of becoming immune to the sources of our discomfort once and for all. This is, indeed, a fantasy: you could never step outside of your experience to author(ize) whatever shows up; you are forever “inside” of an ongoing stream of appearing/experiencing that is not subject to your will (within which you exercise your will). There is always [more] appearing, always more that shows up that you didn’t author and cannot have pre-decided how you will feel about. You cannot stand outside of your experience and decide in advance what will be allowed to arise. You can, however, train how you respond to what shows up. You can control what you do with what appears, but you cannot control the appearing itself.
Furthermore, this desire for invulnerability, apart from being impossible, actually reinforces the basic, background sense of dis-ease that we’re trying to eliminate—just as a stronger desire for money, fame, or status produces a stronger awareness of lack, obscurity, or powerlessness. In other words, striving for permanent freedom from our lack of control—from our [non-optional] dependence, contingency, and relationality—might be the very thing keeping us from our fulfillment.
(To be sure, progress is certainly possible—we can improve our health, earn more money, own more, do more, be recognized more, etc.—but when our progress is expected to do something it could never do, no success will ever feel like it’s enough.)
Ultimately, then, yoga practice cannot simply be another strategy for finally becoming secure, complete, or beyond discomfort/reproach. This means that our primary question about our practice is less about what practices we perform, and whether our practice is still serving the very fantasy it is meant to expose.
the practices of yoga are simple.
you always already have
the only thing you ever need:
your attention.
everything else is non-essential.
Yoga Practice: Awareness & Receptivity
In yoga, we cultivate awareness, so that we may become aware of—before becoming consumed by—the very thinking, feeling, acting, and perceiving that prevent us from seeing, among other things, how our efforts to acquire permanent peace might be reinforcing the very suffering we’re trying to escape. To this end, defining one’s goal—regardless of how you name it: “spiritual growth” or “enlightenment” or whatever else—is a particularly useful exercise: how you will know that you’ve attained your goal (or that you’re any closer to it); what will “spiritual growth” or “enlightenment” look/be/feel like?
The yogic response to relentless activity/effort—to fix/solve, to acquire—is the cultivation of a kind of receptivity—a willingness to recognize our habitual ways of thinking/feeling/perceiving/behaving, if only so that we do not turn every practice into an(other) effort to secure ourselves against the very conditions that allow us to exist and persist. Though this is always possible, it is more accessible to some than to others, and some patterns are more inaccessible than others—especially those tied to our deeper habits of self-preservation. This capacity is undermined by craving some version of permanent inner peace, keeping us blind to the structures that shape us, including those that position us to see ourselves as incomplete. Cultivating the capacity to become aware of our instinctive patterns (before becoming consumed by them) gives us choice (even if we ultimately decide that our habitual response is appropriate).
The Only Requirement for Yoga Practice
In yoga, what you do is far less important than how you do it. Any yoga practice pursued in order to permanently fill up one’s sense inner lack (to matter more, to command others’ recognition, etc.) or permanently destroy elements of one’s inner life (shame, guilt, anxiety, etc.) will only reinforce the problem that we were attempting to solve with our practice.
Ultimately, there is a sense in which the specifics of your practice don’t matter. Regardless of your means for realizing yoga—broad family or orientation (haṭha, jñāna, bhakti, karma, rāja, tantra, mantra, laya, kundalinī, etc.), primary method/technique (āsana, prāṇāyāma, dhyāna, mantra, noting, breath observation, concentration, self-inquiry, devotional practice, ritual, etc.), tradition/lineage or interpretive frame (Advaita, Sāṃkhya, Kashmir Śaivism, Zen-influenced yoga, modern postural lineages, etc.), text or scriptural source (Yoga Sūtra, Bhagavad Gītā, Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, Upaniṣads, Tantras, commentaries, modern manuals, etc.), philosophical framework (nondualism, dualism, theistic devotion, phenomenology, Sāṃkhya, Vedānta, Śaiva thought, Buddhist frameworks, etc.), religious/spiritual affiliation (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, secular, atheist, or hybrid/pragmatic forms of practice), intent/aim (self-awareness, liberation, composure, devotion, self-transcendence, stress relief, healing, invulnerability-seeking, self-improvement, etc.)—regardless of any of these specifics—any yoga practice ensnared in the process of securing one’s identity/ego and running from inner lack will only reinforce the very problem you are attempting to subvert.
This does not mean that every practice is equally conducive to yoga, nor that method is irrelevant. It means that no method, however traditional or sophisticated, is yogic when it is governed by the impulse to secure the self, eliminate vulnerability, or finally arrive at some permanent resolution of inner dis-ease. Any such resolution is a transformation in relating to what appears—not an exemption from the non-optional dimensions of experiencing.
The claim that what you do is less important than how you do it can be read as permission to continue what is easiest—what allows one to avoid discomfort; the meditator who avoids āsana, the “power”yogini who can’t sit still for five minutes. The “how” here is not a reference to method, but is closer to intent. And the intent is the cultivation of awareness, not the avoidance/pursuit of discomfort.
To practice yoga is not to perfect yourself, purify yourself, or become invulnerable. It is to become more aware of
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our habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, and perceiving—and especially our automatic habits of avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and/or clinging to whatever we think will destroy them—so that we might become aware of them rather than having our perception determined by them.
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the non-optional dimensions of experience (i.e., our irrevocable embeddedness in structures of dependence that precede and exceed us), including embodiment, memory, time, mood, other people, etc.
The practices of yoga are simple. You always already have the only thing you ever need: your attention. Everything else is non-essential. In fact, not only is everything else non-essential, everything else may be reinforcing the very problem that you turned to yoga to help you solve.
in yoga, what you do
is far less important
than how you do it.
Notes & Further Reading
FURTHER READING:
It is true that certain practices are more conducive to creating the conditions for the cultivation of awareness—meditation and breathwork were central components of nearly all traditions of yoga. Detachment is also central—so as to be able to see our pre-reflective patterns of desire without our seeing being a symptom of our desire; detachment here is not indifference or the forced elimination of desire, but is rather the practice of noticing how awareness is absorbed, preoccupied, or determined—including by mood—and in that noticing, no longer being fully consumed by it. Receptivity, awareness, and even detachment are not requirements in addition to attention, but names for what attention is doing when it notices experience without being fully consumed by it.
Perhaps the most significant element of what distinguishes the types/natures/lineages of yoga is that each path foregrounds a different means to undermine, so to speak, the self’s relentless striving to make itself self-sufficient. In different ways, these paths disclose how one’s individual existence is not a self-contained one, but rather “belongs”, so to speak, to something that exceeds and precedes it (including, but not limited to, “consciousness”, “God”, and so on).
That said, no technique/practice/path is immune to the destructive effects of the pursuit of invulnerability; practice can always—and often is—co-opted by the very desire that yoga is asking you to notice.