“Yes. Unequivocally. But not in the way you think there might. So do not be afraid.”
This means a lot to me, you know. I think going down this path means losing a lot. Kind of corny, but yoga strikes me as one of those “only by losing everything will we be able to gain everything” sort of things. I kind of feel like I’m going to break in a lot of different places I didn’t know I could. When we begin the journey of looking within ourselves, we become a sadhaka (seeker). In order to seek, we must explore our innate divinity. When you begin to explore your heart and mind, you are bound to encounter pain. By all accounts I have come across, this is normal.
Since pain is inevitable, asana is a laboratory in which we discover how to tolerate the pain that cannot be avoided and how to transform the pain that can…Pain comes only when the body does not understand how to do the asana, which is the case in the beginning. In the correct posture, pain does not come. To learn the right posture, you have to face the pain. There is no other way…
Pain is a great philosopher because it thinks constantly of how to get rid of itself and demands discipline…It is not that yoga is causing all of this pain; the pain is already there. It is hidden. We just live with it or have learned not to be aware of it…we must not glorify it. Where pain exists, there must be a reason for it.
Iyengar, B.K.S. Light on Life. 2005. pp 47-49
Striking the balance is ultimately a process. Discipline is a requirement of yoga and arguably the most challenging aspect of any sustained practice. Through consistent self-discipline, it is said the highest forms of practice will eventually become painless because yoga trains you to become adept at moving through and with life’s pains rather than against them. Disdain for pain feeds into our deepest fears. Only by facing them do we become the fullest versions of ourselves. This is why balancing and inverted postures are my favorite, because they’re difficult and it’s like moving through these micro-discoveries about yourself as you progress in your practice. As this redditor (u/All_Is_Coming) at r/yoga put it:
So we are here to participate in the universal dialogue using yoga and the body as an instrument so we can come to know the truths which lie within ourselves. To learn from ones self is a form of union we so vehemently seek. See you on the mat again tomorrow.