 Occasionally we will hear that people feel worse after taking class than before. Maybe the body hurts, there's tension or there are negative mental reactions to what the body did or didn't do. It is so important that we don't ignore these signals.
When the body hurts we must listen. The simplest reason for this is that we will inevitably get more seriously injured if we push into what hurts. (At that point we will be forced to listen.) However, the deeper reason from a yogic perspective is that we are trying to deepen our connection with truth and understanding. When we ignore something on the physical level, we shut down our curiosity and openness. The action of ignoring pain suggests that we (or our ego!) already knows where we are going, how to get there and what is and isn't part of our journey. This is the opposite of yoga. In yoga, we should work to remain open to the path as it unfolds in front of us. We should remain humble and open to new information. If we ignore the signals in our practice on a physical level, we will have a very difficult time sorting through them on a mental or spiritual level. This is not to say it's easy or we will always be successful. We don't always know or feel pain accurately and sometimes we don't know how far is too far until we find too far. The only option we have is to do our best and then adjust as we have more information. If we have pain in our practice and we also have the desire to push through it, we really need to ask ourselves: What goal is worth harming our body? Most people today practice for reasons related to feeling better or better health, so the answer has to then be NO goal is worth doing harm. This leads to the next point which is: Don't beat yourself up! Regardless of where you are right now, it's where you are. All practice is part of the learning process. The body and the practice are both resilient.
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 This year, Ida will be speaking at the Kolkata Lit Meet. She is part of a panel talking about "Forgotten Foremothers" including Reba Rakshit.
If you haven't read Strong Woman Reba Rakshit yet, you can get your copy here. It's the story of a star, a yogi, a circus performer and stunt woman from the mid-twentieth century. Reba Rakshit was a student of Bishnu Charan Ghosh and Ghosh's Yoga College. She was one of the early female, physical yogis in India. For more details on the panel and the whole literature festival, visit this link: kolkatalitmeet.in/2025/  Are we doing the postures or are they doing us?
When we practice physical postures, it's easy to think that we are trying to accomplish a certain look. Even subconsciously, we practice in a way that is trying to get our body in a certain shape. We think (and have often been told) that if we are trying to find some perfect expression of the posture. However, practicing in this way means the postures are doing us. A posture is a set of benefits. Each posture is a set of contractions and relaxations that manipulate the body in a unique way. If we use the muscles correctly, we get benefits specific to that posture. Depth and perceived "expression" have very little to do with it. Let's take the example of running a marathon. Would we think that we had failed and received no benefit at all because we didn't run 5 minute miles like the winner? Probably not. We would still have run a tremendous distance, have used our cardiovascular system, found mental focus and accomplished a huge feat. When we practice postures, it's so very important to ask ourselves "Am I getting the benefits?" If we are practicing in a way that is using the body correctly, we are doing the postures. This means of course, we must know what we are doing in each posture! This requires that we ask ourselves, What is the purpose of the posture? That is a great way to get clear on the postures, the practice and allow for the benefits to arise.  Scott and Ida with (L to R) Srinjoy, Muktamala, & Shantanu Mitra - Taj Mahal, Agra India January 2025 (Photo by Gideon Elron) In 2015, we arrived in Kolkata, India and knocked on the door at Ghosh's College of India. We introduced ourselves as students of yoga and visitors to Kolkata. We were working on the Buddha Bose manuscript project with Jerome Armstrong, and knew essentially nothing about what we were getting ourselves into or how the yoga world and our lives would change in the coming years.
Now, ten years later we are celebrating a decade of connection, friendship and collaboration with the very people who answered the door that day: Muktamala (granddaughter of Bishnu Ghosh), Shantanu, & Srinjoy Mitra. We are here in India for the month promoting Strong Woman Reba Rakshit, and very kindly, the Mitra family offered that we all go visit the Taj Mahal together. It was a spectacular experience. Not only did we see one of the world's iconic monuments, but we discussed the current yoga landscape. We talked about what might be next in the yoga world, and how we can work to preserve Ghosh's Yoga College, which is over 100 years old and holds various histories of yoga across a century. Mrs Mitra works as the current principal of Ghosh's College. We all discussed how yoga may be changing (as it always has been) but how there is value in knowing where yoga has come from and learning specific methods like the therapeutic, prescriptive yoga of Ghosh's College that she teaches. Yoga has roots and has histories. Even as it changes, we hope people will remember and seek out an understanding of where it came from. |
AUTHORS
Scott & Ida are Yoga Acharyas (Masters of Yoga). They are scholars as well as practitioners of yogic postures, breath control and meditation. They are the head teachers of Ghosh Yoga.
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