Untangling Body from Mind

On her blog ‘Shivers up the Spine’, Priya Thomas writes about her interview with Mark Singleton, author of Yoga Body: the Origins of Modern Posture Practice.  The interview was held before an audience (I was part of it) at the Yoga Festival Toronto a few weeks ago and was an exploration of  how we are framing and re-framing yoga as it moves more deeply into world culture.

Yoga’s relationship with language is an intimate and long standing one.  The Sri Yantra has the entire Sanskrit alphabet embedded in it.    The first letter,  ‘A’ , represents Shiva, the masculine principle.  The last letter, ‘Ha’, arrived at simply by aspirating ‘A’, represents Shakti, the feminine.  When ‘A’ and ‘Ha’ embrace, all of life is embraced too.

We can get physically tangled up in language though, bound tight by the cultural mind.  Asana practiced as an imposition of mind over matter is the patriarchal legacy yoga culture is struggling with, whether it’s delivered in terms of spirituality, religion or exercise.   In mind’s stranglehold, language loses its relevance.  It no longer expresses our experience but controls it.  Mark’s research documents the many permutations of mind’s imposition, present worldwide and through time.

An effective yoga practice untangles body from mind by digesting it.  Words dissolve, vowels and consonants vibrate in our very cells and we speak the truth.