As stated in History, Recovery and ExTension Yoga defines a Western approach to yoga which is physically based; and when appropriately practiced, leads one toward a balance of body, breath, and mind. It is my both my personal and professional experience that movement toward such physical balance helps to promote an increased spiritual awareness.
I in no way claim to be a spiritual master, but instead merely a yoga teacher and technician of the body learning how the body's appropriate use of "yoga exercise and breathing" both promotes and enhances feelings of spirituality.
Accordingly, I asked Richard Miller, PhD, a western yogi; a proponent and expert in merging the spiritual arenas of east and west, to review my site. The following dialog is used with permission.*
Richard Miller
When first looking-over the site, what strikes this mind is that the approach is body centered and there is no inclusion of Consciousness (call it God, Awareness, Spirit, whatever) as the underlying principle. I don't agree with your comment that: "Muscles move our body." This cannot be the underlying principle when we inquire, what moves the muscles?
I wonder if there is a way of building into your site the underlying spiritual principles of Yoga. I assume you are trying to write for the average western reader. But I find leaving out this most basic movement of Yoga what keeps Yoga at the body level.
Sam Dworkis Replies
I totally agree with you that yoga's underlying principal goes well beyond the physical. However, until now, I've not incorporated “Consciousness” into this site because I've wanted it to be a pragmatic resource for yoga teachers and accordingly did not want it to be perceived as ethereal. I've felt all along that I should leave such discussions for other teachers and web sites more qualified than I.
On the other hand, my intention is to create a web resource that reinforces yoga-exercise so it maximizes benefit and minimizes liability; and in so doing, allows yoga to gently awaken and enhance the Consciousness that is inherent in us all. I tend to approach yoga's spirituality from the back door, so to speak.
Although I incorporate the Spiritual in my teaching, I usually wait until beginning students appear comfortable with asana before I introduce spiritual matters. In other words, I see my work as helping students discover spiritual awareness by offering an experiential integration of body, mind and breath. Once students begin to experience for themselves "the light of inner consciousness,” through their yoga, I'll facilitate their transition toward inner-awareness and spirituality.
I'm curious if you teach "Consciousness" from your very first student contact and if so, is that more because you already attract those who are seeking spiritual guidance rather than a person who is looking more for just physical fitness? In your early years, did you always emphasizing the spiritual first?
Richard Miller
From the beginning of my experience with Yoga, inquiry was always present. I could never separate the spiritual of yoga from its physical component. While there were years when I was engrossed in the physical aspects of hatha yoga, the meditative aspect of the practice was always close by.
In all the classes I've ever taught, there was always some reference to Yoga being more than the physical. While these were not always direct references to the spiritual, the hint was always there and my ears were always listening for the student who perceived the hint to go deeper into the inquiry of what lies behind the physical, what is the home ground of all movement, i.e. Awareness (or whatever name we give this unnamable).
These days (for the past many years) I unequivocally teach the spiritual dimension of Yoga to each and every incoming student. It is my passion and I realize life is too short to hold myself back from what I feel is this one's endeavor. I want to place it on the table squarely so that the incoming student can see it directly and know that he/she does not have to hold back in any way. If they are not interested, and what I have to offer does not appear appealing, I am equally unequivocally interested in steering them into the class that meets their interest.
What I often experience, however, is how starved students are for the spiritual. They have practiced yoga for years in the physical and are feeling the deeper pull but not knowing how to express it. When I met my spiritual teacher, Jean Klein, after moving from teacher to teacher and teaching-to-teaching, I knew what I was looking for but could not quite grasp it, as it was so intangible. In the first class I had with Jean, which was with the hatha as well as in dialogue, Jean pointed me directly to myself as Consciousness.
This direct pointing brought me to a standstill and the recognition of myself as That. I have eternal gratitude for his emphatic pointing out that instruction, which no other teacher had done for me until that moment. Of course when the student is ready the teacher appears. All teachers and teachings to that moment had each prepared me for my meeting with Jean. Some teachers had shown me a piece of the truth; others had helped me see what is not truth. So there is equal gratitude for all the teachers along the way.
I experience that we are each an expression of Consciousness. As such, we each express different facets of Consciousness. Consciousness loves knowing Itself in every possibility. This is the joyousness of life expressing Itself in infinite varieties of experience.
I think of it this way... timeless eons ago, we, as Consciousness, split ourselves into infinite pieces and scattered, or projected ourselves around the entire cosmos. Every thing and person we see is our self, looking back at our self. We are each going about taking these projections back into ourselves. And since there are an infinite number of projections of myself, there are infinite joyous occasions to take myself back into myself. Yoga, to me, is living this understanding that everything I see is myself. In this there is infinite compassion and love because we are always looking at our self in every manifestation.
We each are doing exactly what Consciousness wants because we are not separate. Physical, psychological, spiritual, we're all doing exactly what we should be doing at every moment. It's beautiful, this being alive.
Your site pulls responsive seekers into the teachings. My thought, in viewing your site, is to have some place in it where the person who is looking for Truth can go and hear (read) the direct teachings as well as the indirect. Then that student can come to you with their unequivocal need for spiritual awakening.
A question I keep in mind, as I hear you do, is how each aspect of yoga, be it hatha, pranayama, dhyana, etc. can bring the student to knowingly knowing themselves as Consciousness. Each piece of the discipline of yoga is a pointer to our infinite Wholeness. I like to point this out in the beginning so that those students are ripe can hear it from the very beginning. Those who are not ready hear something else. Joy to you. Your thoughts?
Sam Dworkis Replies
Thank you for engaging in this dialog. I feel we are philosophically closer than we are apart and you are helping me to clarify my thoughts. I'm now developing a page devoted to "spirituality" and will use it to explain in more detail how a physical approach to yoga is but another tool of conscious awareness; otherwise known as Consciousness.
Would you be willing to clarify your comment above? Knowing now that I am creating such a place, what do you mean by “…the direct teaching as well as the indirect. Then the student can come to you with their unequivocal need for spiritual awakening.”
Richard Miller
Yoga suggests a progressive teaching. The student slowly builds understanding through the eight-fold ladder of ashtanga yoga...yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, etc. The teaching unfolds progressively, step by step supporting the student to build the steadiness and insight necessary for the experiential realization that they are not separate. This is often called the progressive or indirect path.
Patanjali suggests, however, that the 'goal' of yoga is always close at hand because it is never the product of effort, which is a contradiction in terms with the definition of Yoga. In the direct path the student is informed from the very first moment that they are not separate, all is One and that it is only their striving to obtain that keeps them from this realization. All efforting and striving, from the perspective of the direct path is born in conflict and suggests that we need to be different than we are in order to realize who we are. This is a contradiction. Striving takes us away. When yoga finally empties of all striving and we rest just as we are, we stand not in opposition to gravity but instead at peace within ourselves.
These two paths are compatible and support each other as the progressive path of purification helps eliminate the misperceptions that keep the mind identified with its movements and prevent the insight of Oneness from being established. The direct path informs the student all the way along that who they are is already present and identification as an ego-I and striving for perfection is again a contradiction.
As I experience it, the physical asanas help empty the physical body into pure sensation and open the student to the deeper energy body. Pranayama supports this emptying process. Working with the manomaya and vijnanamaya koshas empty identification with emotion, feeling, thoughts and imagery, opening the body into its inherent and uncaused joyfulness of the anandamaya kosha. Then, through persistent inquiry into the nature of the witness, the body and mind merge into awareness without identification.
This is what I mean by the above statement. I like the five koshas as a map of yoga because they reveal the structures of identification (body, feelings, emotions, thoughts, etc.) that make up our sense of separateness. Dis-identification does not mean dissociation. It entails being able to feel and think, welcoming all the structures of personality, but no longer being captivated into them. Once freed to be, these structures then serve as pointers to the awareness that is always present in the background.
It appears to this mind that everything in the universe is an expression of Awareness. What, then, is there to repress if everything is 'me'? Who can I be angry with but myself. All, whom I love is 'myself'. This feels to me to be at the root of compassionate understanding. When everything is intuited to be me, the only response can be love. Asana, pranayama, etc. then appear as doorways into our infinite nature as Beingness, or Awareness.
Each inquiry of asana, pranayama, etc. can be paired with a kosha that we are investigating through the practice. Each step is inquiry into its true nature, which is always revealed as the next underlying kosha, which ultimately empties into awareness. This was a long answer but I hope it helps clarify what I meant.
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* Per personal correspondence with Richard Miller, April-May, 2001, edited for brevity. For an in depth study of spiritual and traditional aspects of yoga, I refer you to a list of "Spiritual Links" at the end of Yoga Links. Included are an array of important links to areas of study that are well beyond the scope of this website. What is within this website's scope is my knowledge and understanding of how an appropriate practice of the physical components of yoga can help us to maximize the benefits from hatha yoga and to minimize its liability.
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As a way of further clarifying my teaching style, the following selections are adapted from email dialogs and are used with permission.
Terri Corral; Certified Kundalini Instructor asked:
I wonder why you suggest continually asking "What is yoga?" Once you have defined it for yourself, why continue to ask again? However the question "How does it feel?" is ever so important to ask as it keeps us in the experience of yoga! Scanning one's body to "feel how you feel" provides valuable feedback to the student and aids in keeping one in the experience.
Sam Dworkis Replies:
It's all semantics; but how many of us westerners practice yoga more physically than spiritual? If, perhaps, the student were reminded that the practice isn't just a fitness program, but that there is a much bigger picture, might that be helpful? If so, perhaps a gentle reminder to consider what they are doing (what is yoga?) might help that student to explore more of the intrinsic benefits of the practice.
I appreciate your position about alignment and I appreciate your perspective that you are speaking for only yourself. During the past twenty-five years, I have taken classes around the world from master and minor yoga teachers from as many different disciplines as I could find. In addition, I have an accumulation of yoga books from all disciplines and from all perspectives. Most are beautifully produced and share wonderful messages about yoga.
As I remember back to the many classes I've taken and as I look through these many books, my overriding concern is that if the body becomes stressed doing asana, might our spiritual potential or even our spiritual desire become compromised? A yogi aesthetic who becomes injured during asana might say "Thank you God," and use that injury for a deeper spiritual meaning. But a normal westerner who becomes injured during asana might just be inclined to chuck it and go look for another form of physical (and perhaps spiritual) program. Ergo, my intention is to share with yoga teachers from all traditions how to maximize physical benefit and how to minimize physical liability and thereby enhance one's spiritual potential.
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Anna Edwards
The British Wheel of Yoga
Worchester, U.K.
Your description of life stages are spot on as I have seen both with my own students and myself. (I'm the same age as you) All injuries take longer to heal as we age and our bodies certainly "remember" long ago injuries and stresses whether physical or emotional. As teachers it is essential we take this into account and start from where the student "is" not from where they think they would like to be. Isn't this one way of beginning to introduce the Spirituality side of yoga? The Bhagavad-Gita says "Do thy work in the peace of Yoga and, free from selfish desires, be not moved in success or in failure. Yoga is evenness of mind - a peace that is ever the same."
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