To begin this post, I have to summon Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of the arts. They say when you articulate something so well it moves another, Saraswati dances on your tongue. She's the one that is with you when you drop all your stories, all your concerns about performances and judgements, and create in a way that it no longer seems like you are doing - instead, the muse is moving through you. She's present in paintings that pull you into their scene, in the lines of poetry that make your heart bleed, in the sound of a concerto or a drumbeat that make your heart thrum, in music that makes you want to close your eyes and abandon your limbs to the magic of dance.

Saraswati doesn't seem to have a place in yoga - not the rigidity of form that we might adhere to as we are instructed to 'step your left foot forward, turn your right foot in ninety degrees, bend your left knee no further than your left ankle, and rise into Warrior 1'. There is a precision of movement there that is designed to move you into a specific asana, or body posture - a twist, an inversion, a balance, a back or forward bend - and in the depths of yogic history, originally merely a 'comfortable seat' for meditation, as Patanjali's yoga sutras put it: 'a position that is steady and comfortable'.

In the 15th century yoga text the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and as far back as the 10th century Goraksha Sataka, there were 84 asanas. By the 20th century, responding to the presence of the colonial British who admired the gymnastics of yoga as a physical exercise, new teachers brought in extra poses and sequences of movement in addition, and in respect of, these 84 poses. Famously, Pattabi Jois (father of Ashtanga vinyasa yoga) and B.K.S Iyenger, both from the Krishnamacharya lineage, expanded these poses into hundreds more.

The 10th or 11th century Goraksha Sataka and the 15th century Hatha Yoga Pradipika identify 84 asanas; the 17th century Hatha Ratnavali provides a different list of 84 asanas, describing some of them. In the 20th century, Indian nationalism favoured physical culture in response to colonialism. In that environment, pioneers such as Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya taught a new system of asanas (incorporating systems of exercise as well as traditional hatha yoga). Among Krishnamacharya's pupils were influential Indian yoga teachers including Pattabhi Jois, founder of Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, vigorously linking movement and breath and B.K.S. Iyengar, founder of Iyengar yoga. Bringing it to the Western world begun a movement that continues to this day, with hundreds of poses added. These sequences of shapes had the aim of providing spiritual and physical benefits to reduce stress and alleviate disease, something that has become more and more popular in these modern times.

Yoga's tree has many, many branches. I think I'm post-lineage, whilst I still respect and love roots. Image Source

In the yoga world, there are yoga purists, respecting the teaching of Krishnamacharya and the great teachers of the last 19th and early 20th centuries, dismissing the modern 'shapes' such as reverse warrior. There are many yoga lineages and yoga styles - kundalini, kriya, bhakti - And then there's the more modern styles that have adapted, bringing in tai chi wisdoms and even those of Indigenous Australia in the wapaya warruk tradition, incorporating movement into a practice that aims to restablish earth connections. I'm into this fluidity over rigid form. Decades of research into the science of movement and the benefits of the somatic arts, and knowledge of anatomy and organ functions, add to the richness of the movement aspect of yoga, rather than steal from tradition and adulterate it, as some believe. There can be no right or wrong to body movement, especially in regards to diversity of our bone structure and the flesh around it that denies there can possibly be a perfect body for yoga, or an ideal body shape.

What are we actually doing in in yoga? Is it mere anatomical, physical exercise, or a way to access flow and divinity? Image Source

I was raised doing Iyengar, for many years. Without knowing how or why, as I do now, it connected me to grace and joy, even as a sixteen year old. My teacher was rigid - no laughing, no talking in yoga classes. I still fold my blanket with exactitude because of this early training. The instruction was precise, and some might argue militant. It's the same kind of attention to precise form I'd find years later in a Bikram class, who adapted the teachings of his teacher Bishnu Gosh as his own. Across America, since the 1980's, thousands of yoga teachers were taught precise ways to teach yoga because it was the most practical way to get the teachings out to the rest of the world. 'Jump your feet three feet apart, turn your left toe in ninety degrees' would start so many of the standing poses that I became obsessed with alignment. There's another reason for it, of course - it was to prevent as little injury as possible, but also that it aligns and works around particular energy centres - cakras - with attention to the central channel that runs up the spine. Not all yoga classes will have this as it's focus - Iyengar didn't teach from this perspective - but as one of my own teachers argues, this alignment is important. And so we don't just turn ourseles in physical knots, but mental ones as we grapple with what yoga is for and what we should be attaining here.

Iyengar in a 'perfect' ustrasana.

What's this got to to with Saraswati and art, though?

Because when I discovered that yoga did not have to be so rigid about form, that's when the real magic happened.

Excellent teachers gave me access to an entirely new kind of yoga - one that connected me more to 'flow' than ever before. Whilst initially confronted by poses that I had never done before - ones that you could not find in Iyengar's 'Light on Yoga' or the ancient texts - and often asked you to make choices about the shape you were moving into, I soon found myself enraptured by the possibility inherent in this kind of practice. Studying anatomy, it became easy to see that Iyengar and Pattabi Jois and many earlier yoga teachers may have been quite possibly wrong - with practice, you might never attained the promised perfection. Enlightement, perhaps, but never the perfect ardha chandrasana or malasana, because maybe your hip bones or your flesh simply don't allow you to go into that shape. The instruction that you should choose what shape is right for you or to only work to the limits of your body shape allowed all that worry to drop away - the discriminating mind is so judgemental! There was no longer a need to prove anything, or feel bad that you couldn't follow the teacher's instructions to the letter.

I love this view of 'how' to practice to, because it allows for diversity - of colour, of disability, of gender, of body size - we no longer have to mimic a idealized shape, but find our own. The shape is not important - the end goal of flow, and union with divine, is - of course with the added bonus of strength, flexibility, increased immunity and all the other physical benefits of yoga!

When music started to be introduced to yoga classes other than as mantra at the beginning or end of class, I again bristled. One should surely practice yoga in a quiet room, inside, with no distractions, right? In this way, concentration enables you to get into asana. How could I achieve peace with a banging soundtrack? And indeed, some yoga playlists grated on me, and still do. There's nothing like Bon Iver to kill the mood. Some yoga teachers are undeniably awful at choosing music to suit the flow, and some play it too loud or have different taste in music to me. After all this time, I'm good at tuning it out if the teaching is good, and if it's not, I don't go back to that class. But when it's good, it's extraordinary. Jivamukti Yoga, founded in New York in the 1980's, was great for this aspect of yoga practice - the 'nada yoga' aspect to their five pronged approach.

Tasya Vachakah Pranavah

God is Om, supreme music.

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras 1.27

Keeping this in mind, founder Shannon Gannon believed that the music should speak to the focus of the class, the lyrics helping express an idea or teaching, suggesting that 'Yoga teaches us that whatever is on our minds while we are practicing asanas will affect the direction the practice goes as well as the outcome.'¹. Using new music and old, a good yoga teacher adds music to enhance teachings, rather than just fill the yoga hall with pointless sound. Like me, Gannon also loved Krishna Das in a yoga playlist - she believed he 'was always a winner.... the name of God is a sure way to purify the atmosphere internally and externally'. It's to his music I often turn to if I am practicing at home, and don't want to cloud the practice by shifting from one beat to the next.

“Through music we can work wonders. With sound we can make, but at the same time break. So let all our actions and all our arts express Yoga. With the sacred art of music let us find peace that will pervade all over the globe.” - Swami Satchidananda.

I loved the way Gannon and her partner brought in the Beatles aside Ram Das or even the Beastie Boys! I loved the liberative aspect of dropping into flow listening music I loved, or music that spoke a lesson to me, or mimicked my heart beat. African music works for me too. One of my yoga teachers dropped this song whilst we were flowing once and it's one of my favourites to move to, or with, my vibrating body attuned with the vibration of the instruments, becoming part of a holy orchestra:

Yin, quiet practices too can have a soundtrack to match the soundtrack of our hearts and the vibrations of our souls. I'll never forget my cells opening in joy listening to Mazzy Star at the end of a practice on a rainy night in a darkened room, people breathing next to me in a kind of holy communion of souls.

When I taught yoga, the creativity of adding music to the teachings of a class was immensely enjoyable - as a woman passionately in love with sound as an aspect of beauty and thus divinity, I was beyond pleased that I could adopt the tool just as I could use breathwork and body shapes to drop students into flow.

Some of the most profound yoga classes of my life have included sound. Attending a Bhakti yoga class in Bali, I howled my way through 'Hanuman Bolo' and heart opening shapes, bringing our attention to the hearts centre and away from the rational, thinking mind. We move with the heart, letting it drive our actions and decisions, as Hanuman did. This mantra is known to open the heart and I found such cathartic release to it. Play this song in a class and I will cry in joy the entire way through. Mantra and six strings? Yes please.

Music thus helps us loosen the grip on our stories, on our perceptions of what we should look like, and how we 'should' move. Because it works on our hearts, it is an invitation to be guided by them. It helps us soften and let go, instead of focus on alignment. It gives us permission to customise and to find alternatives, to awaken and explore our bodies, just like dancing with abandon in the moonlight.

And so, Saraswati enters into this space, she helps us drop away from doing yoga and into being yoga - united with breath, body and spirit and the whole fucking magical universe in true creative flow.

Thankyou Hive account@artemislives and Hive account@neyxircn for your lovely comments on my last yoga post, and being an inspiration to write this one. May you always find flow, however you get there. I have set you a little appreciative beneficiary on this post. Namaha.