Inhabiting this vessel—this body and mind—is a gift even if it can sometimes feel overwhelming and lead to experiences of intense suffering. However, the invitation is there even then (maybe especially then) to turn inward and begin to experience the sacred source of being that flows through us, that is us.
What I want to talk about here is how considering this vessel can offer a fresh way into deepening our yoga practice on the mat. Often, we come to our first yoga class because we simply felt called to do yoga. Some inner prompting says, “You need to try out this yoga thing.”
Maybe it starts from a friend having a really positive experience at a yoga class, or maybe it begins with the feeling like we’re out of touch with the body. The everyday obligations of life seem to have somehow gotten in front of the part that carves out time to do something just for ourselves.
Whatever the reason for making that decision and then acting on it and pulling into the parking lot at the local yoga studio—and quite possibly experiencing a wave of resistance at actually following through and walking into the class— you enter anyway. Something shifts.
So, What Exactly Shifts?
The best I can come up with is that it’s something to do with attitude. For instance, I can remember the first yoga class I went to. There was a small sign, like those roadside political candidate signs, that read “Free Yoga on Wednesdays” on a road embankment near a Baptist church. I can remember that the road curved right where I would see the sign. I probably noticed it twenty times and, finally, for some reason, I thought, “I’ll go.”
What happened that twentieth time I passed the sign, I can’t say. There must have been the sensation deep down that, “I can do that” or something similar. Whatever had been resisting—not just the yoga class itself but more broadly to turning inward and toward this embodied existence—dissolved away. What I felt instead was excitement that I was going to do this.
That’s what I mean by a shift in attitude. It’s a letting go of resistance. Perhaps it’s a letting go of resistance to the flow, which in a way is like connecting with what the Bhagavad-Gita calls our svadharma, or our very particular path leading to our truest expression and freedom. If you feel called to a yoga class, I think there’s a pretty good chance that it’s coming from that voice deep within that encourages alignment with our purpose and deepest self.
When I attended the class, I remember our instructor was a newly minted yoga teacher offering free yoga classes. In one of those early classes with furniture moved out of the way for a half dozen or so yoga students, I awoke to being embodied.
It is staggering to think that for many years I’d existed in what must have been a kind of semi-ghostly state, giving only the bare minimum of attention to being in a body, to feeling this embodied life. Sure, embodiment isn’t the full story of yoga, but to climb a mountain you have to start at the trailhead–not up in the clouds.
What a wonderful (and seemingly rare in this world filled with distraction) gift that yoga teacher gave to me—an experience of landing in a body, in this body.
Meeting Ourselves on the Mat
By “landing in the body,” we intuitively introduce ourselves to experiencing the sacred vessel at the physical level. This is what yogic understanding refers to as the annamayakosa, the first of the five “sheaths” of our embodied consciousness. Annamayakosa refers to that body of flesh and blood, muscle and sinew; it is the that body lives on food and respiration, the physical body that is born and that eventually dies.
This beautiful, breathing body offers a gateway into the vast territory of yogic knowledge and experience. And one way to establish a relationship with this primary level of bodily awareness is through our practice on the mat. This can begin with noticing sensations, noticing when we are perhaps pushing too far and then backing up a little and noticing how that changes the experience of the pose. With each movement of attention we are, in a sense, getting to know our vessel. We’re also strengthening the vessel through our physical practice.
By coming back to the body, over and over, during our day-to-day yoga practice, we are building a home base, a strong center we can connect with at any time. Likewise, we are getting to know ourselves at the level of feeling. For instance, what do I feel in Crescent Moon? I bring awareness to the sole’s of my feet pressing into the mat. I bring awareness (reluctantly) to the belly, engaging muscles in the abdomen. Arching to one side and reaching out of the fingertips, I bring awareness to the side body and feel how it is opening and how it resists.
All the while, I try noticing what else comes up—Is my mind drifting? Do I feel a certain emotion highlighted? Can I feel energy moving through this shape? In each of these instances, I am coming closer to inhabiting a position of engaged observation, not fighting my body and not pushing past its limits. In a way, I am looking for presence in the moment-to-moment experience of embodiment.
What Presence Prepares Us For
First, staying at the level of the physical, of holistic exercise and agility, is totally fine. The healthy outcomes from a sustained yoga practice are myriad. A quick sampling would include benefits like: enhanced core strength and stabilizing strength, improved alignment that reduces strain, improved joint health, improved cardiovascular and lymphatic circulation, reduction in pain, reduced cortisol for lower stress, improved quality of sleep, and the list goes on. These are all valid reasons for enjoying a regular yoga practice—not to mention the boost to mood and enhanced ability to regulate emotions.
However, from the first experience of coming home to our embodied feeling in this moment and in this body, it could be argued—and I guess I’m suggesting—that we’ve begun to travel a path of, ultimately, radical transformation. Sound like an exaggeration, like what’s the big deal, it’s just a yoga class?
From the yogic perspective, this seemingly simple choice to practice (remember, we could have chosen to participate in all kinds of distractive and potentially harmful activities) is a choice to move closer to the capital T truth about our selves and our world. Of course, this isn’t something you should believe because I or anyone else is saying it. It’s something that with continued practice the path of yoga opens as a direct experience.
When we look at our yoga practice from this perspective, we are not only inviting all of the physical benefits listed above into our vessel, we are likewise preparing our vessel to experience more nuanced and evermore subtle and expanded capacity for consciousness and love. Even our initial re-connection with the body is one example of consciousness expanding in this physical form. This is just the beginning. From here we begin to experience for ourselves what makes the vessel sacred.
