On Yoga Practice: What You Do vs. How You Do It

In yoga, what you do

is far less important

than how you do it.

COMMENTARY:

• Any practice—postures, breath control, meditation, mantra, devotion, inquiry—can be taken up as part of the attempt to secure oneself against discomfort, to become complete, pure, in control—invulnerable. And in that case, the practice only reinforces the very problem it was meant to solve—just as a stronger desire for money, fame, or status produces a stronger awareness of lack, obscurity, or powerlessness. Yoga is not the destruction of vulnerability; yoga is what remains once we abandon the quest to destroy our vulnerabilities once and for all.

• It remains true that certain practices are more conducive to the cultivation of awareness; in this way, meditation and breathwork were central components of nearly all traditions of yoga. Detachment [vairaḡya] 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 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.

• No longer pre-consumed, we are better able to see not only our personal, 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—but also 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.). In yoga, this is self-awareness—and self-awareness is self-transcendence. ​

  
  

FURTHER READING:

• Principles of Yoga Practice

• What is the Objective of Meditation?

• What is Vairāgya?