The Yoga teacher, the Shaman and The Magician…

At the end of a yoga practice, just as folks are settling into final resting pose, or savasana as it is referred to, there occurs several moments in time where I have witnessed magic to enter. I’m not talking about the kind of magic that involves deliberate and colourful conjuring or spectacle. I’m talking about that expression of consciousness that hovers and entwines with the dream-state. That place in time and space that connects more to the metaphysical than the material. Historically, yogis have referred to this state of being as the parting of the auspicious veil. At this time the mind is pliable, suggestible and receptive. Some traditions involving the conjuring of this altered state refer to this period as trance. For a time the mind behaves more like a trusting child and less like a sedentary intellectual. Possibility and potential take up more space than our fixed ideas about what is and is not available to us. This charged space is much like the dream state that many Shamans have worked with through the ages and continue to work with today. In its most simple explanation, a Shaman is one who acts as conduit between the spirit world and the material world. Shamans conducting ceremony may hold a space for people to enter into this doorway of the mind for a time. These rituals are often referred to as journeys. Sweat lodge, drum journeying, fasting and chanting are some of the ways that these spiritual explorations may occur.

A Shaman acting with integrity and pure intention endeavors to maintain this bridge-like space with a sense of loving duty and mindfulness to sound and safe boundaries. For a time, a Shaman acts as metaphysical orchestrator to the communication that occurs between the spirit world, the material realm and those involved in the ceremony. S/he acts as a super-charged, high integrity container facilitating this multi-layered communication. This is what your yoga teacher does at the end of practice as you merge into savasana.

I’ve been practicing yoga for just over fifteen years. For the first half of those fifteen years, my practice was spotty and erratic (much like the communication twixt my mind, body and spirit.) A pivotal turning point in my commitment to yoga arrived about seven years ago when I was studying to become a dental hygienist. On Wednesdays, I attended what was called a ‘full clinic’ day during which student dental hygienists received and treated clients. Clinic day was a day of dread for many, myself included. The stress in the room was palpable, turgid and all encompassing. It was not unusual for one of my fellow students to burst into tears or visibly break down during clinic. One instructor in particular, seemed to target a few students with a harsh and destructive style of criticism. Many of us remarked after class that it felt like being set up on a wall in straightjackets while a posse of trigger-happy gun-slinging yahoos took drunken random aim at our sitting duck selves.

After clinic Wednesdays, I attended a one and a half hour kripalu yoga class. The class was fairly physically demanding. By the end of class, I found myself exhausted, and easily surrendered into that beloved final resting pose, savasana. Afterwards, I would notice a marked change in my psychology. At that time, I did not have the language or the contact to be able to make sense of what had happened during that final pose in class, but it was a powerful experience that lingered significantly. The barrage of contracting clatter and spin that comprised my pre-practice mind seemed further away and much less noisy. A kind of welcome softness slid into the interstitial fluid of my psyche. Some part of me was beginning to hook itself into an ether of pleasant other-ness, a space and time, not so stitched into the fixtures of (my perception of) material reality.

I returned to Toronto and began my first year of devotional, daily practice, attending class with various teachers at a studio that had recently opened in my neighbourhood. It was the trance-like experience of savasana, this elusive milieu that drew me back to class again and again. There was something profoundly nourishing, in that hover-like dreamy state that I did not find in my running practice, a most vigorous gym workout or any other exhaustion producing physical practice. This was the edge upon where my mind would perch for the better part of the lead classes that I attended. As a yoga student and ardent perfectionist, I would practice the yoga poses with a fevered and desirous gusto, often wholly disembodying myself in order to achieve and render a body fixed on precision, acquisition and perfection. My type A drive scrutinized the movement of the teacher, wandered jealously onto the mats of the other students and set her sights on being the highest-achieving yoga student in the class. Convinced that accurate alignment and perfect posturing were the only way to enter this delicious mind melt, I chased and craved, sought and grasped. Very rarely did I afford myself the actuality of present embodied experience of the poses. The majority of my practice was like a wrestling match, between my frenetic mind, stealthy will and stubborn body.

It’s no surprise also, that my initial relationship to yoga was via the doorway of its physical practice through the postulates of ashtanga yoga, one of the most physically demanding expressions of this ancient philosophy and practice. Living in a frenetically busy, urban landscape that valorizes production and acquisition logically supports a physically demanding and challenging style of yoga, such as ashtanga. Achievement junkies and over-achievers can find satisfaction making their way up the three-tiered ascension grid known as primary series one, two and three.

Towards the end of practice, my body appropriately stretched and shaped, I would begin to see the sweet end to the practice nearing. It was like I had been swimming up stream wearing a leaded vest, and finally realized for that brief window of time, that I could choose to remove the vest and surrender into the flow of the water’s movement. It felt as though I was temporarily occupying a place outside my visceral sense of being. Frequently, I would be startled when the teacher would ‘call’ students back into the room. In these glimpses of stillness, it was as if my body, mind and spirit had slowed effortlessly into the river of time. The pores of my skin ignited with aliveness, my body settled into a state of being instead of becoming. I felt myself to lean and merge instead of resisting and flailing. Sometimes there were whole nuggets of time where I forgot where skin ended and the environment started. My perception of what constituted self and other fractured into blessed splendor. This was that surreal shift that arrived time and again as the fruit of the movement practice. Most definitely, I became for a time addicted to this dreamy altered-state of experience of otherness.

The yoga teacher, guiding the class would often lead students into a deeper place of relaxation through guided imagery, soulful sound and sometimes intentionally chosen poetry/text. When done well, these tools can act as supportive facilitators of the savasana journey. The yoga instructor’s voice can feel like lucid honey churning the students’ subconscious towards permissive wander and exploration. The body finally surrenders into a place of rest and ‘groundedness’. The mind too, begins to loosen its need to narrate and control. It is then that the mind is ‘ripe’ enough to consider letting go into the deeper textures and layers that have been present all along. Many teachers call this transition a return to the ‘authentic’ self, or true self. There is an opportunity to ‘let go’ of thoughts and ideas about self and experience and just become the essence that lies beneath the surface of all of that narrated detritus.
Trust and integrity are fundamental cohorts in the creation of this gateway to other. The yoga practitioner needs to feel a sense of trust-worthiness in the teacher who acts as doorway into the experience of ‘altered’ consciousness. In these pre-savasana forays, the yoga teacher is most like the Shaman, guiding and leading the students through the gateway of thought via the field of felt experience to cross the bridge into possibility and expanded consciousness. Like a most benevolent shepherd, s/he holds this space with compassion, awareness and clear and present attention. Integrity, commitment, and experience are the cartographers of the teacher’s guidance.

As a teacher of this discipline, I can tell you that there is nothing more rich and humbling than seeing a room full of students lying in savasana. It’s like stepping into naptime at pre-school, but the children have been replaced by adults. There is a serenity and innocence that enters into the space. The texture of the room is languid, etheric and charged. The furrowed eyebrows that arrived to class give way to smooth skin. Fingers uncurl, lying in receptivity beside bodies surrendered to gravity. Breath becomes the omniscient narrator of collective experience. It is here that the magic shows up and transformation can occur. Magic, after all, is merely a shift in consciousness. In these moments of release, we are reminded that being is omnipotent, breathing; the most valuable currency, our innate nature; ever-present. Here, we temporarily suspend/dissolve the illusions we hold about delineated separateness, to transform into presence itself. Many times, I have wished for the opportunity to lengthen this scape of time, not wanting to draw students’ awareness back into the practice room. I would like to gift them a longer journey into the truthful and profound simplicity of their authentic selves.
“Inhale deeply, feel the body receive the breath,” I say speaking softly, not wanting to jar that dreamscape from which the students are returning. They re-embody themselves through gentle movement, re-connecting to the material aspects of their bodies, the practice room, the environment itself. They look like emergent, underwater versions of themselves having just discovered a new set of webbing that grew between their fingers. A new awareness accompanies them in this transition. Sometimes I will catch a flicker of surprise, as though that sense of deep peace, of connection to authentic self (some would call this source), arrived like an unexpected expression of cosmic delight.

Time,

space

&

essence in

this is how it feels...

crystalline harmony.

~ by lusciousoul on January 5, 2012.