Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

started his practice and his body told him to rest, he would do a double practice that day. He didn’t ask his body what to do, he
told
his body what to do. Perhaps there are times when an approach like his can be valuable—and it is safer in youth—but in a lifelong practice a more cooperative relationship yields better fruit. There is also another big difference in the two teachers. One is open-minded, willing to listen and dialogue showing humor, happiness, and self-actualization; the other is somewhat self-righteous, authoritarian, and irritable. I do not know which came first, the attitude or the approach, but certainly a rigid practice did not help to soften the second yogi. So I recommend that we learn to work with the balance of control and surrender, internal feedback and external information, and the myriad other polarities in life.

Strength and Flexibility
    An important aspect of working with physical polarities is to understand the interplay of strength and flexibility. Our bodies require healthy integration of both in the right balance to function properly. Whenyoga first arrived in the West, it generated an enormous fascination with flexibility, probably due to the exotic pretzel contortions the early yogis demonstrated. Even now, many people associate yoga with flexibility postures. When I mention that I do yoga, a common response is, “Yes, I do some stretching too.” Or conversely, “I can’t do yoga, I’m too stiff.” A yoga practice involves far more than merely being limber. When I first learned Hatha yoga, a great emphasis was put on flexibility. My teacher, a respected yogi from India, rarely emphasized building strength. Instead he focused primarily on attaining the difficult pretzel poses, which were said to have mysterious and mystical benefits. I was an athlete and already fairly strong, but I was very stiff, so the strange positions from India were attractive. We were taught about subtle energies and strange forces, and I didn’t think that the principles I had learned in sports applied here. Warming up was considered “stretching out” before getting into deeper poses. We rested and cooled down after each position. The major emphasis was “to attain the asana and get the benefits.” After a few years of practicing this way, I started to have back pains, neck pains, and eventually serious injuries. It took some time to analyze what was wrong and begin to correct it.
    As we have seen, the syllable
Ha
in
Hatha
means sun, which implies masculine energy and symbolizes heating, expansion, and strength;
Tha
means moon, which refers to feminine energy and symbolizes cooling, contraction, and flexibility. It is vitally important to bring these principles into balance. Too much flexibility and cooling can be as problematic as too much strength. Flexibility without strength leads to fragility. Strength without flexibility leads to rigidity. As you practice, become attuned to the relationship of these principles and aware of which principle needs emphasis. Women tend to need to work a little harder on strength, men on flexibility, but the balance of the two changes in each person each day. If I have been doing a lot of hiking and strenuous physical activities, then I usually have a softer practice with more flexibility work to restore equilibrium. When I have beensedentary, my practice is more vigorous and dynamic. Don’t hold your poses too rigidly, with too much
Ha
, or too passively with too much
Tha
. Watching the interaction of strength and flexibility is one of the things that holds my interest and keeps my practice fresh.

Heating and Cooling
    Watching the principles of sun and moon also teaches us to balance heating and cooling. My first teacher somehow omitted this important concept. He either did not know about it or, perhaps, being from the hot climate of India where properly warming the muscles is less critical, he overlooked it. On many days rather than warming up, we would start our practice by simply stretching cold muscles until they loosened, and then we would move on to stronger work. We were told to rest after every posture, which cooled us down again. When I began to see the problems caused by practicing cold and moving hard muscles too quickly, I learned to warm up properly and to stay warm, and soon discovered that it took less time to loosen warm muscles.
    Warm muscles stretch farther and easier with increased circulation, greater strength, and less risk of