In ordinary life it is very easy to become unmindful of the subtle balance that your mind and body maintain. Chronic imbalance in the body is the result of mental habits, which are the result of karmic habit, which in the final analysis has no meaning, since it is simply part of samsara. This can simply be abandoned. Yet, most people simply cannot do this. They cannot let go. They feel that they must “deal with it”; or that there must be “closure”. For example, they let go of this lover for a new lover. The new lover, of course, is more loving, more beautiful, more considerate, than the old lover, so all this is justified. However, they don’t let go of the habitual mental patterns that created the former problems, and so they repeat over and over the same patterns, continuously trading out partners, thinking this is some kind of path to happiness. All of this is grasping which leads to more karma, more drama, and in the end, must be abandoned for enlightenment to manifest.
Raja Yoga practice uses the asanas to teach how to let go of conditioned habit and to find spaciousness in which letting go can happen. There is no necessity to “deal with” anything that arises in this practice – the yogi simply let’s it go into the empty space of a fully awakened heart, and it is dissolved immediately. In this is freedom.
If your yoga practice doesn’t focus on this opening, and this letting go, then it simply isn’t yoga. It is calisthenics, or some other kind of physical exercise, which is fine, but it isn’t yoga, it will not lead you to awakened consciousness. It may include some pretty words, soothing music, and a few namastes, but these are all just window dressing. They don’t mean anything. They are essentially useless.
So, how exactly does Raja yoga asana practice help with letting go? When we encounter stiffness or some other form of bodily resistance to an asana, it is the result of some kind of habitual mental pattern that results in the stiffness. An experienced yogi knows this is primarily a mental phenomenon, and that to clear it requires a mental process of letting go. Simply promoting flexibility by repetition of the asana isn’t really enough. The true opening is in the mind. In the approach of Raja Yoga, we use simple poses that can be performed by anyone, at their own pace and level, that allows the yogi to feel from the inside, the movement of energy in the subtle body, and to mentally immerse in the feeling sensation of opening into the most satisfying way of stretching into proper alignment. In other words, the alignment is correct when the energy flows in an unobstructed way that results in an spaciousness in that part of the body that is the focus of any particular asana. This is discovered by the practitioner from their own inner experience of the pose, not from some objective preformed idea about what that pose should look like. Also, there isn’t some kind of progressive system that would lead one to somehow surmise that the ability to get into this or that pose means anything concerning true yoga. Remember, yoga is a spiritual and mental thing, and has just about nothing to do with the physical body. However, if one is lucky enough to have a functioning physical body, then it is a perfect vehicle in which and with which to practice true yoga. All too often, however, it is used in what is called yoga as yet another way for the ego to assert itself and get noticed.
Mind is continuous. Believe this, because it is simply a fact. When this fact is understood, the yogi sees that there is never a reason to rush into anything, but instead there is every reason to always perform every action with thoroughness and impeccability. This applies, of course, to asanas. In the so called yoga practiced by just about every studio in the world these days, there is a focus on physical alignment, as taught in some class or book. Actually, it all derives from quite recent works and yogis (for example, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and the line of yogis from Krishnamacharya such as Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois). Pattabhi Jois, for example claimed that his ashtanga system is described in an ancient text, which, conveniently has disappeared, and so the Hatha Yoga of today is not really connected in anyway with what Patanjali describes in the yoga sutras. According to the old way of Patanjali, “Yoga is the cessation of the fixation on the mental formations and movements of the mind.” What in the world does the proper alignment in Trikonasana have to do with that? The answer is, in and of itself, absolutely nothing!
Does this mean that in Raja Yoga we don’t pay attention to proper form in the asana practice? Absolutely not; however, we focus more strongly on letting go into spaciousness. This is the most efficient and certainly the easiest way to achieve the spaciousness of heart that will eventually lead to an awakening of kundalini, and the cultivation of compassionate wisdom that will then result, if one is sincere and practices diligently, with meditation, in enlightenment. This is the moksha or liberation that is mentioned by Patanjali, and is the perfection of samadhi.
Raja Yoga can help you to find the real, true nature that is always existent in you, and which is what you are, fundamentally, if only you could break through the obscurations of citta vritti, or the fixations of mental concepts that we generally associate with reality. These can all be let go.
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