The Secret to Starting a Successful Home Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell
In the traditional context of Yoga, students would meet with their teacher on a one-to-one basis and then go away and practice for themselves at home. The purpose of the meeting was for the creation of a personal, home Yoga practice that was perfectly suited to the needs of the student.
The teacher gives the student a spiritual sadhana: a daily discipline that they can actually do.
What’s more, the relationship that is formed in these meetings is a Yoga itself. The student is brought into the recognition that they are the power, intelligence, and harmony of Life itself. The teacher gives the appropriate tools so that student can participate in that most essential power. The teacher relates to themselves as that and so relates to the student.
Dear friendship is the model in which such an exchange can take place; it is never a commercial relationship.
Krishnamacharya was very dedicated to his students as you can see in the mood of these photos. He continued to humbly teach privately even in his elderly life. And private teaching remained his first commitment even when he was very busy as a known scholar and Yoga master in India.
When I was studying in Chennai, I was fortunate enough to sit with his son Desikachar as he met with individual students. These meetings were very informative to me; less in the actual content of what Desikachar taught and more in the bhavana (mood/intention) that he created.
I saw how he treated each of his students with absolute respect and affection; what he called mittra or loving care.
“I never call my student, student. I always say he is my friend. That is called mittra. I want to offer loving-care and that makes a huge difference,” he once remarked beautifully.
The teacher is no more than a friend and no less.
Desikachar was meticulous in his ordinariness. He was a humble, modern and natural man with no social strategy. He emphasized that the idea of someone being superior or inferior to anybody else is the problem itself that prevents Yoga transmission. He treated teenagers with the same respect as his adult and elderly students.
Ordinariness is the number one quality to look for in a Yoga teacher. Many teachers grossly or subtly maintain the idea that they are special in some way; more advanced along a socially contrived pathway of spiritual attainment. Hidden hierarchy and the model of the perfect person robs the student of their autonomy and keeps them seeking for a life that is alternative to the beauty that is there present condition.
Unless the social dynamic of disempowerment is deconstructed, this most basic idea of patriarchy — this chain of being — grinds on in the student’s mind producing real pain and an unnecessary sensation of lack.
Yoga is participation in what is Real. In Reality, it is not possible for anybody to be second to anything or superior to anything. We are all here in a vast horizontal relationship with one another.
“I have no one to beat/ I have no one to cheat/ you know I just need some room to unfurl” — Robin Williamson.
The popular forms of Yoga that are on offer around the world today are just another context of hierarchy. Teachers position themselves as ‘knowers’ who know something about Life that you don’t.
Many have recognized now that the methodologies of the founders of the major brands are intrinsically abusive. The practices that have become famous deny the feminine principle and impose gross, male ideals upon innocent bodies.
Even those critical of such patterning however, continue to teach the same fundamental tenets: one-size-fits-all routines, the absence of breath as the central purpose of asana, the use of intrusive adjustments that interfere with a person’s autonomous prana.
Instead of all that, you can have actual Yoga: direct intimacy with Reality. What is Reality? It is the power of this cosmos that moves your breath and sex and that brought you here in the first place and presently sustains you. You can have your very own practice that you can do daily in the sanctuary of your own home — a practice you can slip into like your favourite pair of jeans.
Now, it must be acknowledged that there is a universal resistance to starting a home Yoga practice: an actual, natural, daily and non-obsessive sadhana. If you find yourself struggling to practice each day, don’t worry and don’t take it personally.
We have all been born into patterned behavior of resistance, dissociation and reaction. It takes a little bit of sincere insight to see through the patterning and to participate in Reality as it actually is.
But I know that a daily sadhana of intimacy with body and breath is within your grasp because it is so natural. It is not to cleave to a future result; it is not the boring attempt to try and move up along a linear path of progress. Rather, it is to embrace the intrinsic perfection of your whole-body as it is, already. And your body is the cosmos!
Allow me to ask you to take a pinch of your extraordinary discipline that you already have in so many areas of your life and put that into your daily Yoga practice.
Desikachar was unambiguous in his insistence that his student practice what he taught them on a daily basis. He knew that the healing power of intimate connection afforded by Yoga is felt when it is practiced each day. He wanted that for his students.
Don’t worry if you have fallen off the wagon or have forgotten to practice. Do it again now. Inhale and receive what you need. Exhale and release what you don’t need.
*Come along to the heart of yoga online studio and receive a full Yoga education: everything you need to practice the Yoga that is right for you actually, naturally and non-obsessively.
