Deeper Still

Authentic embodiment for yoga teachers

John Stirk

• Publisher: Handspring Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781912085712
• eBook ISBN: 9781912085729
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Médecine alternative et complémentaire

Deeper Still is the next stage of an ongoing process and a consequence of further inquiry into the yoga experience from author John Stirk. Following on from The Original Body this book invites an even deeper immersion into the reality of practice and the totality of personal experience in accessing the power of our inner teacher.

As the theme of this book unfolds the reader is invited towards a sensory understanding leading to profound insight. Teachers using this book will be able to share with their students the clarity, mental space and basic wisdom that emerges as a result of their awakening physiology.We may frequently acknowledge that we are there with the group. Experience may tell us that 'there-ness' is not fixed, that it is based on an unknown element upon which all creativity is founded. Deeper Still goes beyond current experience and invites teachers to write their own story, develop their own script, ride the uncatchable wave that might be called yoga, and open up creativity to the next level.

Deeper Still enables teachers to take their students to a deeper dimension. It also:

• provides a basis for off the chart experiences
• appeals to the depth mind through a deepening physical experience
• invites a more profound contact with groups
• brings out the essence of yoga in students as a consequence of a deeper creativity
• highlights emergent insight as a feature of group work
• blends an ancient concept with modern western yoga
• draws attention to the relationship between soft tissue sensitivity and the quality of xonsciousness
• examines the potential for abundant resonance in group work and the so called 'universal experience'

THE REALITY 1

The reality of yoga is unseen and beyond shapes or extensions. The reality concerns an awareness of all that we are and might be. We are the reality.

The reality of yoga proposes that we are asleep and yet to awaken to an abiding sense of totality. Initially developed to transcend our conditioning, yoga demanded an austere approach. The exercises are effective but the problem of conditioned minds is deeply embedded. For some, the reality may be the pleasure of the bodywork, for others it may be a deepening sense of self, or a shift in habitual behavior. The philosophy not the bodywork has sustained yoga’s appeal over many centuries. At its core, yoga’s reality confronts and transcends our limits. We are aware of the physical limitations but generally unaware of the limitations of a conditioned consciousness. Addressing the problem of us takes more than bodywork, but our attraction to the sensory aspect can be used as a door to a deeper and sustainable transformation on other levels.

The classical yoga practitioners were primarily concerned with the quality of consciousness. An inner inquiry has encouraged individuals to engage in intense personal experimentation for thousands of years. We may be as much in need of this now as at any other time in our history. We may have tasted yoga’s depth, had light bulb moments, but a more sustainable change is possible. Can we provide an undiluted transformative practice? It is not surprising the West has embraced the physical aspect, as the Eastern approach is elusive and demanding. Much of the philosophy taken at face value is unrealistic.

We may not aspire to enlightenment, but class work experiences show that a deeper transformation is not far away from everyday consciousness. We can work with the body while giving the mind the attention it deserves and work with the mind while giving the body the same courtesy. We might acknowledge the Dalai Lama’s observation that unhappiness abounds in societies that appear to have most things at their fingertips and follow his suggestion that we might give more attention to our inner life. We can take the mind’s turbulence and the grip of the ego more seriously while attending to the body.

Distinctions between traditional and modern yoga do not change the fact that we can take the mind deeply into the body. Sensation opens other possibilities. The body as the way in distinguishes a bodywork class from something more profound. Yoga as the science of being helps us function from the present with a vested interest in the quality of our consciousness and internal behavior.

Yoga gives us the tools and the terminology to describe its scope and depth but its potential can be limited by its methodology and knowledge. We can call on anatomy, philosophy, or Sanskrit at any time, but in the thick of practice knowledge falls by the wayside and information inhibits transcendent moments. Avoiding the weight of knowledge involves dropping knowledge as it comes up. Space should remain open for inspired and creative insight to emerge. Information plays its role but also blocks the potential for lucid observations.

What if?

What if we had no choice but to follow our own experience? What if we had not heard of Iyengar, Freud, Jung, or Krishnamurti? What if there were no life sciences, philosophy, Eastern or Greek thought? What if we had not discovered the wisdom of Patanjali, Buddha, Rajneesh, and others? What if there were no books, courses, methods, or teachers? What if, in the first instance, we could only rely on personal investigation and then look at what others have said? What if we were our own starting point minus the expectations accompanying external knowledge? What if we only had our feeling, thinking mind and body as we perceive it? What if we were our only resource?

Would we discover our conditioning or dullness, awaken sensation, lucidity and consciousness, realize the value of confronting resistance and discover a new depth of understanding? Would we benefit from a personal practice undisturbed by theory, anatomical detail, or past ideas? Initial guidance is essential. We have all been guided, and we guide others, but the deeper we go the more obvious it becomes that the essence is realized by personal discovery.

Conditioning

We are all conditioned by our past. Conditioning is the camouflage that disguises our potential. It can be productive to discuss conditioning with groups. Conditioning expresses itself in many ways but is generally reflected by an unsettled mind and a need for identification and attachment. Some traits are inherited, but our environment plays its part in determining how and to what intensity we are conditioned. Conditioning is defined as a learned behavior built up into a set of responses that have become part of our general conduct (internal and external). Conditioning is influenced by culture, belief systems, family, education, and exposure to the influence of others over an extended period, particularly around the perinatal period and when young.

The fact of being conditioned is nothing new, but it is a matter of degree. At worst conditioning may instill irrational fear, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, or compulsive behavior. On other levels conditioning may inhibit personal freedom, ease, spontaneity, a sense of unification with others, and the ability to realize creative authenticity and insight, or an ability to experience the fullness of life.

Positive conditioning, such as socialization, is necessary and teaches us how to coexist with and relate to others. Negative conditioning creates fixed patterns that may go unnoticed and impede personal potential. We have learnt to inhibit reactive feelings and emotion. If instilled early enough, inhibitions sink beneath awareness. Observing our internal behavior highlights the fact of our conditioning.

Over many centuries, practitioners have sought to address conditioned ways of being. Turbulent minds, the incessancy of thought, and untoward internal behavior have been the focus of attention throughout the ages. We may condition each thought and feeling because they are filtered through a screen of conditioning, hence yoga’s focus on addressing the incessancy of thought and reinstating a calm and spatial mind. Conditioning is the calcification of the soul.

Practice acts as a lens, magnifying internal behavior and slowing us down, so that we may “catch” the mind as it veers and jerks from one thing to the next. This is made possible by practices intended to transform our way of being, as opposed to those with fitness as a primary aim. The first step is to wake up to the fact of being conditioned. However useful we are as teachers, we should acknowledge conditioning in ourselves and in those who come to us. We are all conditioned in one way or another, some of us more than others, and through no fault of our own. Some suggest that the consciousness of all mankind is negatively conditioned. Yoga practitioners, including teachers, may be conditioned by yoga. We may have a subconscious resistance to moving on from a specific mold or sustain an attachment to a practice that has lost its effectiveness. We may be caught in a method for security, convenience, marketing, or the feeling that it is what students want.

The need to address conditioning is accepted in the West as a factor in our quest for well-being. What may be less accepted is the extent of the grip that conditioning has on our minds and internal behavior. Enlightened individuals are aware of their conditioned responses as they engage with life and with themselves. They see things coming and have the timing to field certain aspects of their behavior. This understanding is a feature and a consequence of meditation.

Even when we recognize it in ourselves, we cannot always address conditioning directly. Due to its hold, conditioned patterning requires practices deep enough to release it. The conditioned mind cannot decondition itself by itself. Highlighting and transforming our inner state requires profound, focused attention and the appropriate bodywork.

We can address conditioning and open a door to something deeper. We can address the problem of us in line with traditional practice, by working in simple postures with a sensitivity that disperses habitual patterns. Basic positions have the additional advantage that students can stay in them for extended periods. Self-observation is made easy when we are not distracted by perfecting positions, but can use them as meditations.

We can inject physical work with a deeply focused and sustainably attentive mind. Light bulb moments are transient stages of deconditioning, temporary enlightening experiences during an ongoing process of change, confirming we are headed in the right direction.

Highlighting and transforming our inner state requires profound, focused attention and the appropriate bodywork.

Awakening

There are some who are awake even while asleep, and then there are those who, apparently awake, are deeply asleep. (Lalla in Feuerstein 1997)

Sleepiness refers to impeded clarity, dullness, lack of awareness, and habitual mental heaviness. A subtle closing down of consciousness may indicate a cutoff against unwanted feelings, a defensive response to one’s environment, lack of stimulation, ongoing stress, or a mind that just cannot let go of itself. Awakening has been the aim of spiritual practice throughout the ages. We are asleep and have yet to realize our true awakened nature. Awakening may appear unnecessary until we feel awakened. In retrospect we realize we have been enclosed in a shroud of limited awareness. Awakening the deeper fusion between body and mind awakens other areas. As the divide heals and we break out, we awaken attention, awareness, sensory appreciation, spatial sensation, and emotional sensitivity. We awaken lucidity, presence, consciousness, and an understanding of the profound nature of relationship.

The degree of awakening depends on the approach and how people receive it. It takes time to revitalize the sensory system. Understanding the nature of living tissue is relevant when we feel it. The fact that awakening tissue affects consciousness is due to the enhanced function of nerves and biochemistry, but the experience is beyond neurological or chemical understanding. We feel lucid because the sensory system wakes up. The quality of wakefulness is enhanced by being attentive to sensation, not by imagining the details of sensory conveyance. The sensory system is a continuum, skin to spinal cord, synapse to synapse, fluid to nerve, and tissue to tissue, but we work with feeling itself and are more sensitive when free from the clutter of physiological information and when we give ourselves to sensation.

As tissues awaken, we awaken personal attributes, creativity, and anything that could be described as a spiritual dimension. We awaken our experience.

Well-trodden paths

Habitual practice follows well-trodden paths that inhibit new discoveries. Habit restrains deeper exploration. At any given moment we can choose between covering the same ground in the same way or consciously entering deeper levels of experience. Choosing emptiness over thought, presence over anticipation, or calmness over flux is a practice. Following well-trodden paths is inevitable, but we can use familiar postures for going ever more deeply. Positions follow accustomed pathways, but we can use them to enter tissue more deeply and sink beneath familiar layers. How we respond to deeper inquiry holds the key to understanding, and bypasses recourse to any authority other than oneself. We tend to favor familiar paths because they work, but conditioning can draw us into habitual patterns. Conditioned patterns affect how we move, think, and behave and instil a resistance to change. We dissolve patterns by addressing resistance.

Resistance

There is a fine line between tissue resistance and tissue engagement. Regardless of range of movement, resistance in the body softens, opens, and spreads at the touch of the mind. It may take time for students to understand this quality and its effect on consciousness.

Resistance supports habitual patterns and features in all body–mind work and provides the focus for transcending limitations. The word resist means to withstand and the opposition offered by one body to the pressure or movement of another. Withstanding or resisting unwanted feelings or emotions employs physical pressure to inhibit the feeling. We have become resistant to sensations associated with unwanted experiences. Resistance is a central factor in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and bioenergetics. A period of resistance precedes the release of repressed feelings connected to past experiences. Emotional resistance runs parallel to the memories stored in the body and inhibits tissue motility and spontaneity. Resistance has many textures and nuances and differs widely between individuals. Resistance may pervade the tissues anywhere or everywhere. Addressing resistance involves engaging with it.

Teachers are well placed to understand resistance. We feel it in our bodies and notice it in our minds. A particular sensitivity is needed to discover and dissolve deeper resistances. Hidden resistance may involve past trauma, postural factors, habit, conditioning, or anxiety. Approaching resistance should acknowledge that consciousness opens with the body. Consciousness recognizes physical resistance as a part of itself. Patterns grip deeply and removing them requires an equally deep approach. Resistance is creative when we seek it out, engage it, and pass through it.

Addressing resistance is a transformative experience. Tissue changes texture, the mind clears, consciousness becomes more lucid, and conditioning dissolves. Doubt, anticipation, and anxiety disperse as we tune to the nuances of ever-changing tension. Creative engagement leads us away from our familiar selves into a deeper reality. The greater the depth, the further away we find ourselves. As an ongoing process, transformation moves from one state into the next. As each state consolidates,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword by Carol Nelson
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1. The Reality
• 2. Process
• 3. Embodiment
• 4. Dividing the indivisible
• 5. Sensing
• 6. Fields
• 7. Minds and hearts
• 8. Insight and wisdom
• 9. Authentic teaching
• 10. Unification
• References
• Index