The Diwali lights are still on the houses amongst the rice paddy fields even though the festival is
over and winter is coming to South India with a bit of a chill in the morning
air and daytime temperatures only like a good English summer!
I have just finished two weeks of
tantra-yoga at an ashram ( www.shrikali.org ) run by a tantra-yoga practitioner. This is rare as in
India tantra is associated with black magic and bad deeds so most tantriks are
very well hidden. He is a Kaula and
Trika practitioner; profound tantric systems with Trika better known as Kashmir
Shavism. For beginners like me, the
first few weeks are nearly all yoga with a few talks on tantra, yoga, Ayurveda and mantra and one puja. I have done about five
hours a day of yoga asanas and some pranayamas (breathing exercises).
So what makes this tantra-yoga different to the yoga found in most gyms, village halls and adult education
centres up and down the country? Recent scholarship shows that all yoga comes from tantra and there
are pictures several hundred years old of tantriks doing asanas and sun
salutations. The yoga we have today in the West; often called Modern
Postural Yoga and systems like hot yoga, power yoga, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Bikram
Yoga are recent inventions and locate it as part of the health and
fitness industry designed to improve us. The Indians who came to the West; like
Swami Vivekananda at the end of the nineteenth century wanted to impress the
West with their worthiness and downplayed their tantric roots (he was initiated
by Ramakrishna a tantric Kali practitioner). They were keen to present yoga as self-improvement
for the body. As a narcissistic society we are very keen on this. But tantra
says that at the deepest level you are perfect as you are and striving to improve
focuses us on an ideal and a future not on being here radically accepting as we
are.
Yoga videos
usually show beautiful young bodies in designer yoga clothes against a backdrop
of an exotic beach. Yoga leaflets often show bodies knotted up like pretzels into
improbable postures. Perhaps with enough effort we can be like them. I imagine
that there are yoga studios like dance studios with mirrors around the walls so
we can check how we look and if our asana looks right as the teacher or the video
shows it should be done.
As many
yoga teachers know, asanas are only a small part of yoga and Patajali’s yoga
sutras contain almost nothing on postures. It simple states that the purpose of
asanas is to prepare the body (asana means “seat”) for meditation. The first
yoga book with pictures and lists of asanas was published in 1938 and yoga in
the West really took off with Jane Fonda in the 70’s.
The problem
is that everything in the modern world is externally-focussed and we are also
fragmented so that we try and fix the different parts of us so that at least we
will look OK. The tantra-yoga approach
is to see yoga asanas as meditations for and through the body. They are not to
stretch or tone muscles or ligaments but to open the meridians and nadis of the
body. They are best done in a state of meditation; very relaxed, eyes closed
and returning frequently to the basic posture which is Shavasana or the corpse
pose where deep relaxation can occur. You are encouraged to find your bliss in each asana and to love yourself deeply in the practice. There is no right way to do the asana and your body will gradually adjust to your best version of it. You are encouraged not to compete, even with yourself. The focus as in any meditation, is internal not external. As nadis and meridians are opened deep relaxation is cultured along with a steady flow of energy. It is this energised and relaxed meditative state which is the basic state for the practice of tantra
