Mornings with Prashant - Day8

Yoga for stillness of the mind - bringing it all together

Today was the final class in Prashant's online series 'Revisiting the basics in Iyengar yoga'. 'Basics' is a pretty interesting word in the context of these classes. One would be forgiven for thinking such classes might involve beginner Asanas, or fundamental ideas such as alignment or the direction of muscle movement. These are not Prashant's area of interest. What Prashant means by 'basics' are concepts of yoga beyond the physical practice and outcomes of health and well-being. I have interpreted this as the yoga within, as yoga for stillness of the mind.

And 'basic' doesn't mean easy. I heard nothing in the past week that I hadn't already heard from him in two month-long study trips to Pune. I can only hope that I am perhaps a tiny, tiny bit closer to understanding what he means and how it lets us seek out yoga for stillness of the mind.

His discussions are based on concepts of yoga within you and the 'basics' are different ways or approaches to try and get to the yoga within you. Everything that he had us do over the past week was to try to illustrate this for us and to try to get us to experience it.

From my understanding, the basic premise is the interactivity and interplay of different elements and different processes, within themselves and with each other., and all within oneself.