Question. In recent years digital pranayama has been taught using both hands to control the opening and closing of the nostrils, whereas previously it was considered taboo. Is this introduction purely for the sake of evenness and alignment, should we be practising digital pranayama with both hands when doing home practice.
Abhijata: When Geetaji has taught us right and left, her intention, she made it loud and clear. She said for one: some of you might have an injured right hand, then you don’t have a right hand, you only have a left hand, you have to use that. But if your right hand is functioning for digital pranayama, always what happens, it is the thumb which comes on the right nostril, and it is the other two fingers which come on the left nostril. Now that makes the force of your thumb as such that it pulls you on one side, So to learn the alignment, she said try with the left hand also, so that the thumb comes on the left nostril and the other two fingers on the right, so the play of the fingers on the nose changes. So you make the nose more intelligent
Number two: this alignment of the shoulder is corrected, the right is always coming up. Let the right be quiet and work the left, so that the right can also enjoy the benefit of being down and quiet.
This right and left is purely for that purpose alone.
In classical pranayama, it is only the right hand which should be used, so understand the skeleto-muscular differences. To understand the behaviour of your, body you may try for a few times with the right and left, but not as a regular practice of digital pranayama.
Q. Apart from practice, what was the most important thing Guruji told you
A. He told me many important things, many important things on how to practice.
Practice yes, like the other day I told you the story of Marichyasan, habit is a disease. [Abhi talked about how Guruji had chastised her for practising Marichyasana the same way as she had practised it the day before.]
But that day Guruji changed my whole mental set up. He came and he said ‘what you did yesterday, you are doing the same thing today’.
One of the sessions I vividly remember he said ‘life is as dynamic as the River Amazon. As that river flows, life flows with that energy, hence your practice and your living, has to be so dynamic.’ That is one of the very important things that he said.
Each thing he has said is of course a gem, but when he says everything is dynamic that means you have to be alert to that dynamism at each moment. And he said your practice and living, they should both be so dynamic.
One day about 8 years ago when he was having lunch, someone had given Guruji a sweet dish called Jalebi. Guruji ate that and then I said ‘I don’t want it’. My mother was serving the food. Guruji asked me why. I said ‘because I don’t like jalebi’.
He said ‘the last time that you ate that jalebi you didn’t like the taste. You are different now, the jabeli is different now, so don’t brand it that you don’t like jalebis. Taste it now.’
This is a very important lesson, it applies to so many other aspects of living.
We admitted him [to hospital] a week before he passed away and when we admitted him we were all very sure that Guruji was going to come back.
What the doctors had been telling him, that you are 90 years, 92, 93 go slow, rest. But he never paid heed to it.
So when the doctors said ‘you are at home. We don’t know what your heart rate is, we don’t know what your pulse is, we don’t know your blood parameters, so you come to the hospital so we can at least monitor you.’
First Guruji said no, in the first week of August. Then in the second week of August he called us and he said ‘I now leave it to you. If you think I should go to hospital for monitoring, I am ready.’
So then we took him to the hospital. In the first two or three days the doctor said: ‘Guruji, your kidneys are not responding well, so let us go for dialysis. Because you are in a healthy state now, maybe your body will respond to dialysis better now. A week later we don’t know what the situation will be’.
So what Guruji told the doctors – the doctor told me this later – Guruji said ‘do what you want. I am ready for anything. If the time has come for me to change my clothes so be it. Don’t worry, go ahead.’
So this was his way of living. Never perturbed, never worried, never scared about what was going to come.
For those of you who have been to Pune, who have seen him, he never held himself back. Once about four or five years ago Guruji had a bad fall, it was a Tuesday the day of the medical class.
So the morning session Guruji taught us a lot, at 2.30 he was in the library. I went to the library and said ‘you don’t come, you rest today’. And he said ‘what rest?
I said ‘you had a fall, so please .. next week you can teach double!’
And he said, ‘my body is not well, but I am alright. The students come to me with love, and hope that I am going to help them, so I cannot disappoint them.’
So the nature, the way he was, not just in his teaching, the way he was, was in his living and the way he was, was exemplified in the way he died.
Because at the hospital even the doctors and nurses told us, that they had never seen a man die in this manner, not a worry, not worried about anything, not asking the doctor what has happened, what is his fate, what is going to happen, what is their plan, no questions. He was just there quiet for the one week that he was.
And then he passed away, he was absolutely peaceful.
So in my opinion Guruji, his teaching is exemplified in the way he lived and the way he died and that is something that yoga has to teach all of us.
Abhijata points out the four tyres of the feet
Q. Can you give us some advice on how to juggle family, kids, and a good strong practice?
A: I don’t know, I am trying. (laughs)
I remember again two years ago it was the month of May. I was going to go to Spain for a convention. In the month of May – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – the studio was closed. I practised with Guruji. I was going to leave on Monday or Tuesday, so on the Friday I asked him, ‘Guruji, I will practice tomorrow?’ He said ‘of course’. I said ‘OK. I have to pack so I thought if we are not practising I will stay at home and practice.’
His reaction, he changed. So I said, ‘no, no. If you are coming, I will come.’ Because in my head the calculation was, I would spend time with my family, I would do the packing and I will see the checklist. And he said ‘I am not going to take a holiday and you don’t need a holiday, so just come’.
So I don’t know if there is some golden rule on how to do this, I just think you have to prioritise and you just have to keep in mind that this is something which is important, so come what may you will devote a certain time slot for this, and you go towards that. And at the same time, this should not make you an indifferent person.
If something else needs you, you of course have to be there for that. Guruji of course practised, but when there was some family function necessity, he would either get up earlier and practice and come back, or he would practise in the evening.
So that flexibility should also be there. So they are both equally important
Q. Could you please explain where the centre groin in?
You should have asked me on the first day! (laughs)
This is the groin, inner leg it is facing each other. If I take it out, there is a front, there is a back, so whatever is in the centre is the centre!
When you are standing we roll out, so you have to measure the exact centre of your inner leg, exact centre of your inner leg, continue to the centre groin. So that has to go to the centre.
In this position where is your sense of its existence? Now I am standing here in Tadasan, if I stand with the groins coming forward, the groin have been displaced.
The centre of the groin may be in its centre, but it is not the centre of the body. It is not in the centre of its existence.
(Peter Scott demonstrated in Sirsasana)
You are able to see in Sirsasan. It is about feeling your existence. Forget his groins, look at his feet, arch to the heel, arch to the toes. If his legs come forward, arch to toes feels longer. Take the legs back, arch to heels feels longer,
Adjust the Sirsasan so that arch to toes and arch to heel you feel they are equal length. Whether the legs are forward or backward, you may say it measures the same, but how much of your mind occupies the front half, and how much of your mind occupies the back half is the question.
If the thighs roll out: Peter, where is your existence now? Forward in the groins or backward? Forward in the groins.
Now if he rolls extra where the buttocks come back, now he is more in the back but he is not balanced. Now he has to balance that, he has to align the groins such that he feels his existence in the centre.
Roll the thighs and the groins in that manner and feel the existence in the centre.
It is about your intelligence.
What I teach you, is about culturing the intelligence and that is what yoga is.
Q: How will we know if you are on the path towards the site of the soul?
A: I don’t know. (laughs)
There are two questions here, I will deal with them together.
How will be know if we are on the path towards the site of the soul?
For a secular western yogi how do we understand Isvara pranidhana?
Often what when I have been in sessions with Guruji he would point out this question has come from your brain, it is not from your heart.
I don’t know if this is one such situation. He has said that yoga is 90% an emotional subject and 10% only is the intellectual aspect of it. That is why a teacher has to teach emotionally he has said.
Now about seeing the soul in Isvara pranidhana. A sutra which Patanjali says is:
Tapah svadhyaya Isvara pranidhanani kriyayogah (11.1)
Tapas is burning vest, burning zeal. Svadia, study of the self, self awareness and
Isvara pranidhana, devotion to god.
These are the acts of yoga.
Now what is tapas? You know you work hard, you struggle, you have an aim, you go for that. But if you look at the definitions, what Patanjali says, you have to purify the body and the senses. You purify them, then you are on the path of tapas.
Now, what is to purify, what purifies the host? It is fire. Fire is capable of great purification, fire can transform, fire can purify. That is where the goldsmith uses the fire to change the gold, any purification that you want, you take the support of heat and fire.
So in our practice that lesson, for the fire of cleansing is tapas.
Svadhyaya is about being involved completely with what you are doing, in every aspect, physical, mental, emotional, where you see what is happening and you understand that.
Coming to Isvara pranidhanani. One of the things which struck me, when I had been with Guruji for demonstrations or lecture demonstrations, two things were always the same: one thing was the applause that Guruji got at the end of the show; the second thing was Guruji’s reaction at the end of it. Such a thunderous applause. Guruji would of course accept that very gracefully with warmth, you know his smile, he would accept that and then when it was over it was over. There was no living on the glory of it.
I saw an interaction with one senior teacher and Guruji. The senior teacher said to Guruji, ‘oh, it was a wonderful success’. And Guruji heard it all for 5 mintutes, 10 minutes and then he said ‘OK now leave it, start your practice’.
If you say Isvara pranidhana is dedication to god, if you idolise a god then you say whether I believe in god or don’t believe in god, leave that aside.
What is yours, this body you have, you have done nothing to earn it. The breath is there in the cosmos, so what is it that is truly yours? It is your action that you can claim is truly yours.
Your action is closest to you, so the philosophy of karma yoga where Krishna says ‘give up the fruit of action’ that is what it means. Give up that attachment to action because it is the action which is yours, everything else is not yours and that is very difficult.
Recollect an action you have done which has given you a lot of importance, glory, happiness, fame. Can you give that action? No?
I still love myself for the 20 minutes of sirsasan, I love the fact even today that I did 20 minutes of sirsasan. It is not easy to give up on that.
So Isvara pranidhana is to give up that action completely. That is why Guruji says practice and each day practice afresh. Every day is a new beginning because every day is new only if you give up the past and when you give up the past it is Isvara pranidhana because you surrender what is truly yours. When you give up that action, that action should no longer be there with you. You leave it in the recycle bin, in it is gone. That is Isvara pranidhanani.
If you think of a person, a god, then it maybe difficult culturally to accept that.
Think about it from this point of view of giving up your action, then you understand what Isvara pranidhana is, then you understand the philosophy of Iyengar yoga.
