Back in December, I had the opportunity to take a weekend workshop with Kausthub Desikachar, the grandson of the great yogi Krishnamacharya who revived yoga in the nineteenth century and in whose teaching tradition I am continuing my study of yoga. The 3-day workshop, titled The Centered Self, went into many of the complex systems that yoga and Ayurveda use to understand the body, mind, and nature. Many of these systems I am just beginning to understand and do not feel that I am ready to elaborate on here, but what I do grasp is that each of these overlapping systems shares a root understanding that there is a fundamental connectivity between all things. Kausthub introduced this concept of connection by listing many we may recognize in our lives—those with our neighbors, our family, our earth, our body and the seasons, our body and mind, our heart and our mind—the list can go on ad infinitum. He continued by saying that the issue we face today is that these connections are not always healthy, that we are, at many of these levels, disconnected. However, although our awareness of these connections may be absent, the innate connection still exists, and therefore there is still an exchange, and an influence that occurs. To take an example from my own life, if I am typing emails while I am eating, it is likely that I am completely unaware of the sandwich I am eating and my relationship to it—it's taste, it's ingredients, where those ingredients came from, who made it. The relationship between me and the sandwich still exists, but I am disconnected in the relationship: perhaps I will not really taste my food and as a result I may feel unsatisfied and end up eating more than I need, or perhaps I will not pay attention to the fact that an ingredient on the sandwich is a bit toxic to my system and later on I will have indigestion, or perhaps I will be eating something whose ingredients are produced in a way that I would find unsavory and am unintentionally supporting something I find harmful, perhaps I will not remember to thank my partner who made me the sandwich and it will be perceived that I am taking him for granted. What Kausthub emphasized and what yoga understands is that there is a fundamental interconnectivity between everything, whether we are aware or unaware of those relationships. Along this same line of thinking, lets agree that some level of sensory function is innate to all living things: microorganisms, plants, animals, all these, including ourselves, are sensory beings—meaning that to function we sense our environment and respond based on the information we derived. We have probably all noticed how our house plant will sense the light and respond over time by growing towards it. To use Kausthub's example, imagine you are sitting in a restaurant with a very good friend and having a wonderful conversation that flows effortlessly. After a while someone enters the restaurant who you have some past difficulty with, no words are exchanged, this person does not even notice you, however you are affected by their entering and suddenly your conversation with your very good friend is altered. Or perhaps the person who enters is not even someone you know, their demeanor just seems a bit off, still you have sensed something that has made you uncomfortable and as a result the conversation you were having is affected. This was one of Kausthub's examples of how we are always sensing and responding whether we wish to or not because of this fundamental interconnectivity. So regardless of whether we intend to or not, we are constantly responding to our interior and exterior environments, and indeed these abilities are necessary for our survival. However, it is our responsibility to sense things as accurately as possible, so that we may respond in an appropriate way—this is one of the things that yoga, when used with discretion, can help us in doing. For example, my husband and I arrive home from a long day of work and begin discussing our days, I am hungry, and suddenly I am snapping at him for something he said which I find offensive, and from there it escalates, arriving at a painful silence, until one of us apologizes for our behavior. However, perhaps if I had been more aware of my tendency to be reactive when hungry, this confrontation might have been avoided. Instead of interpreting my husband's words as I did, I might have been able to hear what he was saying with less of my own distortion, or I might be able to say "Let me just eat this piece of toast so I am better able to listen." Yoga understands that the levels of ourselves and the world are all irreversibly in an exchange, and yoga believes that through addressing one layer of being, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, etc., we are influencing all levels. Through an appropriate and regular practice of yoga, we can help to defog our own sensory lenses and be responsible in our perception. Instead of being ruled by them, in time we are able to refine our faculties and therefore develop appropriate responses. As we refine our sense of perception we move closer to stability, to saatva.
