Coming back from the Abhyasa Abyss

It has become our habit, when I visit Kevin and Taialofa over the past two years, to pick a book to study to enhance my spiritual practice. This year it was The Secret Power of Yoga by Nischala Joy Devi. This book is unique in that it is the first translation of the Yoga Sutras by a woman. I highly recommend it.

Three of the sutras, 1.12-1.14 (pp 40-44) struck a very sympathetic chord with me. These sutras have to do with “abhyasa” or devoted practice and how our devoted practice can slip away.

After last year’s full month with Kevin and Taialofa, I had reached the zenith of my yoga practice (at the time) and was feeling very self satisfied with our daily, two-hour practice. It was easy, when I got home, to let daily responsibilities and commitments slowly seep in and displace my yoga practice.

The big issue was staying up too late (you know those sorts of activities: Evening fraternal organizational meetings, board meetings, that special, engaging TV show, that really interesting and engrossing book that you are reading… the list goes on).  The later I got to sleep, the later I got up. Eventually (and it did not take long) daily activities and indulgences crowded out yoga time entirely. I had fallen into the “abhyasa abyss”.

For almost nine months, yoga virtually disappeared! At first, I actually felt better because those little aches that lingered a short while after working the edges of my muscles to stretch them during yoga actually went away. Later, old, chronic aches began to return. An occasional attempt to get back into the two hour routine was soon derailed by staying up too late and not getting up soon enough to do the practice before the day’s activities and commitments began to intrude. Doubt began to creep in: “ I just can’t do it” “I’ve failed.” That doubt/frustration list got longer and longer too.

Kevin and Taialofa, to their sweet credit, never ever mentioned or berated me for my yogic failure (lesson) but simply had me go immediately back to my two hour practice. It was difficult to go back to two hours of yoga after nine months of only sporadic yoga but I was determined to try. Fortunately, my body and muscles remembered the joys of being more loose and flexible so that by the end of three weeks, I was back to where I was a year ago and very happy and pleased for the reprieve of not having to begin all over again from when I first began to practice yoga four years before.

Through studying and talking with Kevin and Taialofa, I began to understand and, more importantly, appreciate how to become dedicated to one’s practice. For me, getting up early automatically insulates me from intrusions of the day while doing my practice. No one is calling or demanding my attention at five in the morning. To accomplish this, I have to be in bed at nine at night. This can be difficult with board meetings that may run until ten at night. In that case, I might get up an hour later. Eventually, getting up very early becomes a habit and one actually yearns for their practice time. On rare days, I have had to do my two hour practice later in the day or even in the evening. None the less, I never miss a practice and, so far, have been able to maintain a two hour routine.  Does it have to be two hours? My body tells me what I need. I have even gone nearly three hours. Being retired and consciously working at lightening up my commitments has helped give me the time to make my yoga practice one of my highest priorities. My health, particularly as a sixty year old, depends on it, I have found.

From Kevin’s “Yoga Teacher’s Manual”  there is a chapter on  “Obstacles to Meditation”. Some of those could also be obstacles to your yoga practice. Cessation of practice (this is the big one!: “I don’t have the time!”), laziness and not enough sleep, complications of daily life, depression, doubt, fear, and pride are just a few of the impediments to yoga practice. I have learned that my key to a regular, continuing yoga practice is to make yoga an important habit. Taialofa’s mom, Josephine, once told me that it takes forty continuous repetitions to make any endeavor into a habit. Since I returned from Samoa, I am almost half way there. During this time, there have been some very pleasing milestones in my practice by being able to stretch farther than ever before. Like the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the founder of Transcendental Meditation) once said, “You don’t have to believe in it, just keep doing it and the results will speak for themselves.” May your yoga practice be reinvigorated too!

By Peter Ketcham