Friday, April 20, 2012

Why I practice yoga


I find the physical movements of Hatha Yoga to be graceful and magnificent. Witnessing someone going through the movements of a vinyasa can be very beautiful and lissome, balletic, but there is an internal aesthetic that`s perceptible to me as well. The more absorbed I am in asana, the more apparent this becomes. There is a corporeal elegance that is imminent in it and yet also transcendent as ever more subtle nuances are endlessly being uncovered.

It is an internal and external adventure of discovery: A previously inexperienced lengthening, a twist, ease, or a glimpse of that which feels true and unencumbered. The travel is at a slow speed with unpremeditated direction. There is also a feeling of liberation as though all tethers have been cut, a busting out from the shackles of the physical body. Yet paradoxically, a keener sense of body cognizance occurs, a more intimate relationship with the body phenomena and a deeper familiarity, an exploration with sentience. The longer one has practiced, the deeper the relationship and the more effortless the expression. Yoga is transformative; ossification evolving into malleability, effort surrendering to stillness. It’s wide open, it`s focused. It’s liberating… but not as an escape from something, just pure freedom.

There is also the possibility that yoga can instill a speck of the unknown into the mundane, at least be a pathway to such or even an answer to the larger existential questions. I’m not so sure about that, but that’s a whole other discussion. Sometimes I think that the finality of settling on an answer is limiting, staying with the question however leaves the door open for wider potential of insight.

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