Lecture Part One: Freedom As Balance
Rough Transcript:
As we have described throughout the training, the shoulders seek to be an independent functioning unit in our body, free to move independently of the axial skeleton. This independence is a product of postural balance, and as we have seen when that postural balance is lost, the arm line must be recruited to support the forward head and shoulders, which is the beginning of pain and dysfunction. For that reason you can think of freedom in terms of scales— when the scales are balanced we have the greatest freedom, when the scales are too tipped to one side that freedom begins to slip away. The scales we are looking at today are the front and back arm lines.
The front arm line is the team of muscles you use to grasp and manipulate the world in front of you. The muscles of this arm line correspond to the thumb, bicep, pecs and lats— these are the muscles that we literally use to hold and manipulate our the world in front of us.
Conversely the muscles of the back arm line are predominantly stabilizing muscles with less range of motion and more stabilizing insertion points on the spine, pelvis and sacrum. This line corresponds with the pinky edge of our hand, which we learned last week provides stability in our arm balancing positions— it follows a line of muscles from the triceps on the back of our arm, through the shoulder socket itself, and connects to our entire spine from head to tailbone. These are the stabilizing muscles that help us carry the load of our lives.
Our work in learning about these two separate lines is not to work with them separately, but to learn to feel how they work together to promote movement freedom. Because working too much with one arm line, without any conscious attention to its oppositional side, tends to produce the instability that eventually disables our arms independent functioning. This could be over the course of years, or simply over the course of many attempts at a single pose— without balanced awareness between our arm lines, we lose the independent function of the arms themselves.
Finding this balance is something we can study in our postures and anatomy, but you don’t experience your life in terms of muscles, you experience it in a much more subtle way— you could actually look at the arms lines as ways that we push and pull our reality, or as the yogic tradition puts it, accepting and rejecting.
YS 2.7-2.10: “The seed of attachment (accepting) is pleasure. The seed of aversion (rejecting) is pain.Fear of change is related to the survival instinct and the fear of death. Even the most wise and adept practitioners may selfishly cling to the status quo. The impressions enumerated above are subtle, and may be erased by transcending them as they occur.”
As patanajli says, these are natural human instincts. Without them we would get ourselves in a lot of trouble, and probably wouldn’t last long as a species. But those kinds of decisions don’t need to be our only interpretation of reality, because when we get too invested in our likes and dislikes, we tend to get bound by them. As the Shiva Sutras tell us, these coverings limit our understanding both of the reality outside of us, as well as the reality within us. They are so strong, that even when we encounter a teaching that can help us, we miss it because we are clinging so strongly to our likes and dislikes. The result is that we live in a subtle state of desperation, unable to tap into the blissful state that is residing right in our own heart. That is the state we are working our way out of with a conscious yoga practice, both on the mat, on the cushion and in our lives.
SS 3.3: “The results of your God consciousness (caitanya) being fenced in by the five coverings is that you act in a limited way, know in a limited way, love in a limited way, live in a limited way and possess in a limited way. Being attached to this path with your organs of knowledge and organs of action, you are guided to walk the spiritual path in a limited way. Your attachment to this path is such that even if you meet an elevated soul who desires to show you the correct path, you will not accept his guidance. Consequently, in your world of illusion, where you remain filled with insecurity and fear, these limitations are bondage. Here, being completely dependent on that illusive energy of knowledge and being without real knowledge, you are continuously doing right or wrong. So, being completely entangled in that fence you become just like a beast. (Tantrasadbhāva)”
The path of accepting and rejecting is the path of injury, or simply dissatisfaction in our practice. When we become bound up inside or out, how do we disentangle ourselves? External work alone just makes it worse, so we have to go a different route.
The path out of this entanglement is the practice of surrender. This is the middle path between accepting and rejecting. It is not a possibility of the mind, meaning that we can’t be told how to ‘surrender’ in a certain posture, or situation in our life, we can only apply our practice to the best of our ability, and through that practice begin to explore the experience of living/working in a more surrendered state. This concept is directly explored in Shiva Sutra 3.16, which states that the real asana is not a physical posture, but a state of awareness, and that this state of awareness cannot be revealed to you, but can only be revealed within you by you through practice.
“This state, which is the real nature of Śiva, is not revealed; this state is the revealer. This state is subjective, not objective. So the aspirant must be active in an interior way, not in an external way. They must be active in being aware of himself. That is real activity. Real activity is not moving about here and there. The revealed is not the point to be sought; it is the revealer that is to be striven for. And this state of the revealer is not separate from subjective consciousness. It is only subjective consciousness.”
The work of surrender, also known as the state of the revealer, is an active state of working with what’s possible your posture. It is a dynamic, vibrating, playful, way of being, depicted in the yogic tradition as the dance of Shiva and Shakti, a vibration of pure awareness. And According to the yogic tradition, it is this play, this dance, this vibration, that creates the universe we live in.
As Mukt. Teaches: “The wise regard this universe as a PLAY of Universal Consciousness, a vibration of Chiti (consciousness).”- Swami Muktananda
In terms of our arm lines, Shiva can be understood as the stabilizing force of the back arm line, and Shakti can be understood as the mesmerizing force of the front arm line. Shiva is the canvas, and Shakti is the paint. The canvas serves to contain the paint, and together they form this painting of reality.
More than a metaphor, this is literally how Tom Meyers, author of Anatomy Trains, describes the relationship of the front and back arm lines: “The Back arm line acts mostly to limit and contain the work of the front arm line”
That’s why Finding balance in your Front and Back arm lines is a great way to encounter the practice of surrender on your mat, as our arms are the primary players when it comes to ‘accepting and rejecting’— they pull in what we want and push away what we don’t— literally! Therefore as you begin to work with balancing the forces in your arms, you may encounter deeper patterns within yourself, which gives you an opportunity to surrender. For example, you may think to yourself— “if I just push harder here, can I have this posture like I want it?” According to the Sutras, you may have to push harder, or you may not— we just need to pay attention to where our awareness is being placed. Are you working to achieve an external shape, or are you using the external shape to achieve a state of surrendered awareness? If you don’t know how to answer that question, then the easier question to ask is “does it feel like a dance? Can you breathe? Are you Enjoying the process?”, all of these questions point to the experience at the heart of the yogic tradition, the dance of shiva and Shakti.
Because the Play of consciousness is not a metaphor, its the foundation of our reality. Our ability to stay supple and play within our postures is perhaps the most defining aspect of the practice of surrender. As Zen Master and Poet Paul Reps once taught— “Until its fun, better left undone”, because if its not Play, its not Conscious.
“Classically, Kashmir Shaivism teaches that pure consciousness (Shiva) divided themself into all sentient beings in order to go through the process and joy of re-discovering their true nature. In the end, we are all going where we are going. It is just how consciously we take the ride that determines whether it is fun or not…Rudi said life is for growing spiritually. If you feel good and are having fun along the way, then you are working correctly, but if you are always in confusion and turmoil you’re not working correctly.