Yoga and Science Part II: Layers of Utthita Trikonasana Siegfried Bleher and Jarvis Chen

PART II: LAYERS OF UTTHITA TRIKONASANA

BY SIEGFRIED BLEHER AND JARVIS CHEN

Siegfried Bleher Jarvis Chen Photo: Travis L. Kelley

Intermediate Junior III Iyengar Yoga teachers Jarvis Chen and Siegfried Bleher continue their conversation in the

second of three parts, this time on the many layers a practitioner can touch in Utthita Trikonasana. In Part I, they spoke about the different ways of knowing that characterize science and yoga, and whether there is a place from which the deepest experiences of yoga are amenable to scientific study. Next time, in Part III, they will consider whether the experience of Samadhi and the deeper changes in qualities of consciousness that emerge from the

experience of Samadhi are amenable to scientific study.

Jarvis Chen: I thought we should start by recapping what we covered in the last conversation: ways of knowing, ideas about the inward inquiry of yoga, in terms of our individual subjective experience of yoga versus making predictions about the everyday world around us with a more externalized inquiry. And we talked about that interesting experience when we are practicing asana, and having cultivated intelligence to a great degree, where there are flashes of intuition that we know what we know in a very deep way. Do you agree with that?

Siegfried Bleher: Yes, and I guess one thing I wanted to add to that is that we arrived at a way for making the conversation practical. In that regard, the topic for the current conversation arose. Even though we may focus on Utthita Trikonasana, on the different layers we can touch in practicing, we may still connect with what we covered in the last conversation, in particular, the different ways of knowing. For example, how do the different ways of knowing inform how we might practice Utthita Trikonasana, or any asana? One thing I would like to cover in our current conversation is how the practice of Utthita Trikonasana, as we’ll talk about it, intersects with the research question: Are the different layers that we can experience in the practice of Utthita Trikonasana amenable to research?

JC: Right. And what kind of research? And there is the way in which the practice of Utthita Trikonasana fundamentally changes the questioner. As we penetrate through the layers, and we go deeper into the subjective experience, we come right up against the fact that to even practice Utthita Trikonasana is to transform the questioner or the instrument of questioning. In some ways, that’s where the magic of yoga happens.

In all of the things we learn about points and precision— learning principles of alignment in the physical body that are observable—we find principles that can be translated to different individuals and bodies. For example, as the Iyengars teach us, how we turn the knee, how we plug the femur into the hip socket, how we elongate the spine, how the spine receives the actions of the arms and legs, in some ways replicates the idea that there are truths about the physical world. That the ways different parts of our embodiment relate to each other are in the realm of replicable physical phenomena. So we can probably conduct a study where we observe what happens to a variety of bodies when they do Utthita Trikonasana using the back leg in a certain way: Does pressing the outer edge of the back foot elongate the spine, or does turning the root of the thigh out of the front leg help to create proper articulation in the hip socket? And we can probably phrase questions about how those are done, and how they can be refined, that are replicable across a population of practitioners, even as they might be individualized as they adjust themselves to maximize the utility of the pose for them. These questions are still in the realm of physical phenomena that are observable, that can be correlated and replicated. So I think that’s the first layer, or these are the outer layers, and as we go deeper into Utthita Trikonasana, other qualities of experience might come to the forefront.

We are taught by more senior teachers how to see issues in students, and how to respond to these issues.

SB: Along the same lines as you describe, I would like to recall a study I participated in that Kimberly Williams designed on low back pain [published in Spine Journal in 2008]. In that study, we took every participant through the same 24-week protocol developed by Lois Steinberg. When we deliver the intervention, there is some responsiveness on the teacher’s part to the individual differences among the participants. Part of that flexibility in the delivery of the intervention is based on what is seen from the outside by the teacher, and part is based on a certain sensitivity to what the participant is experiencing subjectively. But even for a general yoga class, there is still the need for a mixture of observation of external information seen by a teacher and internal response from the participant. So, to some degree, we can distinguish between some generalized

characteristics that are related to the external physical shape of the pose and how the individual musculoskeletal system responds to that shape.

JC: My approach when I am working with someone therapeutically has to be very individual—I can’t think in terms of a standardized protocol. At the same time, the part of me that is an epidemiologist is saying, “Well, how can I evaluate the efficacy of these techniques without standardizing the protocol?” That’s a conflict I am always aware of, but at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a conflict. We talk about this in public health education—about the mind of the doctor/clinician versus the mind of the public health scientist. So what you are describing is very familiar to me. What it also shows is that it is a slippery distinction to think only about standard or population average versus individual effects: The population average is an average over individuals, so each is a separate lens for looking at the same phenomena.

SB: We are taught by more senior teachers how to see issues in students, and how to respond to these issues. And then there is your own experience as a teacher, where you certainly have one-on-one interactions with individuals. But the learning process does include an innate capacity to generalize—both an intentional process of generalizing that’s similar to designing a study and also a more innate process based on intuition built up from many previous experiences.

JC: This is reminding me of Bayesian statistics: We have prior experience, and we have current observation. We combine these two to make a posterior proposal about the world and then compare it with the observable data and our prior experience; we synthesize the two. That’s part of the process of generalization you are describing.

SB: And isn’t it true that this process of generalization is not always deductive?

JC: Right, it is often inductive.

SB: It’s inductive and intuitive.

JC: Right, and this is exactly what I think of when Guruji talks about instinct versus intuition. Instinct is the habitual response, based on our samskaras, whatever [tendencies] our embodiments have, but then by cultivating intelligence, we can replace our instincts with intuition. That’s the way intuition grows—it comes out of the synthesis of prior experience and some elements of discrimination and observation of our current experience. These enable us to transcend previous patterns. SB: As we talk about the experience of practice and teaching, it occurs to me that some of the terms we are using touch on the various levels of prakriti that Patanjali talks about.

JC: I was just reading a paragraph you wrote about the ways in which these levels are present in other levels—as we go further into the undifferentiated layers, their potentials are present in the more differentiated forms. Is that what you are referring to?

SB: Yes, it is. For example, when we look at a single student, and as you said, we synthesize our prior experience and the current presentation, we help the student have a positive experience. Part of that would be what Patanjali might say is the particularized level of experience (visesa) of the four levels. And at some point, we also fold in the unparticularized level, which is what I am calling the more generalized knowledge that we bring to the experience. These are both embedded in the moment, aren’t they? The ability to discriminate between these two levels has a practical value. It is not only that we bring to bear all these layers in our practice, but for a teacher, the ability to discriminate between these two layers is a part of growth in teaching as well.

JC: Right. This is also often true in therapeutics. One of the things I’ve often thought is that when there is a dysfunction or when someone has an injury, all the different parts of prakriti are a mess—knees, lower back, hips become jumbled in their relationships with one another. So we have to go through a process of differentiating in order to clarify all the different parts from one another—we have to evolve, and then we go back and involve.

SB: I would even propose that the faculty of discrimination is a key faculty that proceeds at all layers. In Kaivalya Pada, for example, the end of discrimination is discriminating between the most refined sattvic state and purusha. The final moment of enlightenment is the act of discriminating between what we might confuse to be purusha but which is still citta. Even though it may be the most refined state of citta, it is nevertheless citta. It might take many lifetimes to arrive at that, but that is the end of discrimination. I would even propose that the process of involution is, in fact, an unconscious result of evolution. As I evolve and discriminate between the “jumble” of the body and the mind, the mind automatically goes inward. And that is the hidden gift of the Iyengar Yoga method, I believe. There is such an emphasis on fine-tuned awareness, that that process itself is what brings us deeper inside.

JC: So that discrimination has to extend from every visesa particle all the way to align stuff that is behind the visesa. This is reminding me of Sutra I.40 paramanu paramamahatvantah

asya vasikarah: “Mastery of contemplation brings the power to extend from the finest particle to the greatest.” Now, to interpose for a second [and related] question: The elements are directly perceivable, but what about the subtle elements, the tanmatras—are we in the business of [exploring] what those are from a scientific perspective, or are they a different kind of experience to be only experienced from the inside?

SB: Fair question! But maybe that question is even applicable to the physical level. For example, if I experience my arm as this very concrete physical thing, and yet say the experience of my mind is more subtle and less tangible, that’s probably something most people can relate to. But on the other hand, I am still experiencing my arm with the same tools I experience my mind with. There is no [essential] difference; one comes from turning attention outward, the other from turning attention inward, but both are internal experiences.

JC: Then also, there is the question, “In what way am I experiencing my arm?” The moment we start to talk about things like “I experience the solidity of my arm” or “I experience the motion of my arm” or “I experience the feeling of my arm,” we are in the realm of the subtle tanmatras, and we are also in the realm of the subtle aspects of the elements. So, in Guruji’s methodology, this is our entry into experiencing the more subtle aspects of our being—via the senses. And to think about subjective experience through the senses requires an observer to be there. Otherwise, how do you have sense experience without someone to experience it?

SB: Well, this brings up the theme of the effect of observing on the reality of what is being observed. From a quantum perspective, observation is the reifying moment. And, until there is observation, whatever we consider to be present is not fully there. There is a complex object (a wave function) present, which exists partly in our normal three-dimensional space and partly in more of a subtle realm, the imaginary realm in a mathematical sense. The combination of these is called a “complex manifold.” Until we perform an observation, it still exists in a complex manifold—it is neither real nor unreal. Once an observation is made, this “thing” loses its connection to the subtle realm, and it becomes observable.

JC: It becomes fully “observed.” Observation reifies it, and it becomes fully observed.

SB: Yes. There may be some links between this description and the sutras. JC: We sort of alluded to this in our previous conversation when we said that most of the observable things in the physical world we study with the usual scientific method are things that have been “observed.” But when we are talking about yoga, we are much more in a subtle world than in the world of “observed” things.

SB: Well, we have an opportunity to explore a translation. We have a very well-mapped out cosmology from Samkhya philosophy, but very little of that cosmology has a modern scientific parallel. For example, I don’t know what a tanmatra is in terms of Western scientific methodology. [Perhaps a tanmatra is a quale, which is a term in analytical philosophy that refers to the quality of a sense experience. For example, the redness of the color red, or the sourness of something sour.] If our aim is to propose a study of, ultimately, Samadhi, then we can’t start there. Maybe we can start with something less subtle, like the tanmatras.

JB: Guruji talks about this in Astadala Yogamala. He talks about gross elements and their subtle manifestations, and sense perception as the pathway to the subtle. There is also an interesting sutra in Samadhi Pada I.35 visayavati va pravrttih utpanna manasah sthiti nibandhani: “By contemplating an object that helps to maintain steadiness of mind and consciousness.” That brings us to an interesting proposition: If we are embodied purushas, with consciousness, and our entry into the more internal world of the Self is via the senses and their more subtle aspects, can we come up with a methodology to study and measure those perceptions? Is that the way we can enter into this internal world, to ask the perceiver directly?

SB: A related concept is that of transformation. I recall Manouso Manos mentioned in a workshop I attended: If you are not changed by your practice, then it is not yoga. I took this to mean that there are clear signposts along the way that, to the practitioner, confirm they are or are not on the right path.

JC: This is also what I was getting at before about the practice itself transforming the one who is perceiving. I am reminded of some of Prashant’s teachings, where he says we are in the same physical body, doing the same pose, and yet can have dramatically different subjective experience. He uses the idea that water stored in a copper vessel has different qualities from water stored in a silver vessel—the water picks up the qualities of the vessel it is stored in. In the same way, we do the same pose and have the same breath, but then the breath is in a vessel that has other qualities we bring about by how we practice. In this case, the vessel is our embodiment and the content is our consciousness.

If I can’t make the sattvic quality real in how I interact with others, then the value of the spacious experiences isn’t present.

SB: So the scientific method is to learn how to distinguish copper from silver. Even though we know the observer is the practitioner, and the observer changes as a result of the process of observing, there may be changes that occur over a lengthy study—probably not an eight-week study! Can we design a study that can show there are systemic and systematic changes that take place after one year of practice, after 10 years, or 20 years, and that these are reproducible?

JC: Well, it would be hard to do a randomized clinical trial—you would have to follow people for a very long time, account for people who drop out. You could also study observationally without a control group, while controlling for variables that can cause the same changes but that aren’t related to yoga practice.

SB: What I would like to propose, in the context of practicing Utthita Trikonasana, is that we start by aligning the gross layer, the physical body, in the usual sense of instructions like “turn the front thigh out, move the back leg back, lift the chest, and stretch the arms.” These kinds of alignments bring awareness of alignment, which is probably new to beginners. Very quickly this brings awareness of the joints, which is a more subtle aspect of the physical body than the whole limb. So the joints are already a stage of discrimination. The next stage is the paired action. For example, “press the inner foot of the front leg down as you roll the top of your thigh out.” That does a couple of things: One is that it integrates what I discriminated earlier as the upper leg and lower leg; secondly, I suddenly have not only an awareness of my muscular layer, I also have awareness of connective tissue that connects all the way from my foot to my hip.

JC: I agree with you. We actually train teachers this way. First teach to the big parts of the body, then the joints, connective tissue, and relationships among different parts of the body. We also begin to have an energetic experience of the body, with subtle qualities like density, space, fluidity, solidity. There is a transition from the gross elemental body to the more subtle qualities of the elements. In Volume 8 of Astadala Yogamala, Guruji talks about how to adjust yourself more subtly. He talks about Utthita Trikonasana, about comparing the back leg and the front leg. Often what happens is that the back leg is too earthy, it is dead and inert. So what we have to do is bring the air element vayu tattva to the back leg. Then he says the front leg has too much of the water element ap tattva, or instability. So we are to bring the earth element into the front leg. When I practice this way, I bring vayu tattva into the back leg and reach it back. And the front leg that was watery, I stabilize it—I press the inner edge of the heel and tighten the knee a little more, which brings equality to the legs. And we have a different experience of internal space in the front or in the spine as a result. It took me 10 years to find this article and to read it, but this is where my mind goes: This is going beyond just the experience of the physical body in terms of its mechanical bits and pieces into the more subtle realm of the qualities of the limbs, which is related to sense perception.

SB: But now this brings up another question: Say you have brought more of the earth element into the front leg, and more air into the back leg, and experience the outcome of that in the trunk. Can you say a little more about the global effects of that way of practicing in the legs?

JC: There is a definite cause and effect relationship between this way of using the legs and the feeling in the trunk. Beyond that, there is a change in consciousness: Somehow bringing a sensitivity to the legs in this way and making subtle adjustments causes consciousness to spread.

SB: To connect with the sutras, there are the three parinamas (transformations) in consciousness: nirodha parinama, samadhi parinama, ekagrata parinama.

JC: And in the elements, dharma parinama, laksana parinama, and avastha parinama. [These are discussed in Sutras III.9-13.]

SB: What I am wondering is whether the way we are talking about Utthita Trikonasana lends itself to a close link with specific sutras and, at the same, to a kind of formulation that is amenable to scientific methodology. For example, consider someone who can subjectively report a change in their perception of space or sense of proprioception. Such a change can be tested in different ways, with a standardized inventory of questions, and also with brain imaging. Is there a physical tracer that corresponds to the subjective change in the person’s perception? And are there lasting measurable changes?

JC: There is also physiological response, as to stress. We have this sense that long-time practitioners respond in the moment to stress in a different way. These are some things we can look at from an external viewpoint.

SB: I would like to look at the changes in consciousness you mentioned when we practice Utthita Trikonasana: Why would someone want to have these, why have an expanded sense of consciousness rather than a grounded or concrete sense of awareness?

JC: What we are talking about is the sattvic quality. When our consciousness is more sattvic, we also have qualities like maitri, karuna, mudito, upeksanam and, according to Prashant:

…we have actually identified things we can study from the outside, even as we acknowledge that the experience of going deeper into our subjective world is a subjective one.

sublimity, purity, piety, etc. Qualities like compassion, friendliness, and so on come to the forefront when the mind is more sattvic. Also our subjective experience is of a mind less wrapped up with the ego, attachment, aversion, things that disturb the stability of the mind. This is certainly what the Yoga Sutra promises us, and it is also my personal empirical experience.

SB: A related question: Assume a set of practitioners show a higher score on qualities like friendliness or compassion. To what degree is the higher score a result of specific attempts to develop these qualities and to what extent are they the result of a movement of the consciousness toward more sattvic qualities?

JC: That’s a good question. So, if you were trying to design a study to distinguish these mechanisms, then you would have to try to separate those causal pathways. My personal experience is that the texture of consciousness has to change in order for those qualities [compassion, friendliness, etc.] to be manifested in a sustainable way, for them to be emergent qualities of our consciousness without our conscious effort to cultivate them. At the same time, consciously trying to cultivate them helps them to happen.

SB: Is it a guarantee that if you cultivate this change in, as you call it, “the texture of consciousness” that the four qualities naturally emerge? Are they, in fact, emergent properties of a particular texture of consciousness? Or does there have to be a synthesis of the change in the quality of consciousness and the intentional practice of those qualities? Is one type of change sufficient for the other or only necessary?

JC: Yes, which is a sufficient cause and which is a necessary cause? Now someone could come into this conversation and ask “Why does it matter which one it is? Why not practice both and whichever it is, it works out?”

SB: My response would be “Fair enough.” But this line of questioning is also a practice of discernment. My hunch is that the different things we are talking about happen on different layers of the being. The changes in the texture of consciousness take place in one layer, and the emergent [sattvic] qualities you are talking about take place in a different layer of the being.

JC: In some ways, I do think that one of the reasons they are not sustainable if they come from the ego is that they do have to happen in other layers. SB: I can get into pretty nice “spacious experiences,” but if I can’t make the sattvic quality real in how I interact with others, then the value of the spacious experiences isn’t present.

JC: I agree. If we can’t manifest these in our relationships with others, are they manifesting at all?

SB: Now, coming to the end of our second conversation, how would you summarize it?

JC: I like where we’ve ended up. We’ve come way past turning the front knee to maitri and karuna. We have arrived at talking about changes of consciousness as signs of evolution along our path. I like that. If we are making propositions about things that should change in the practice of Utthita Trikonasana, then we really can come up with things to study in Utthita Trikonasana. For example, an instrument to measure friendliness and compassion—that would contribute significantly to existing research. We haven’t just talked about the realm of inquiry in yoga as being purely subjective and not amenable to scientific study; we have actually identified things we can study from the outside, even as we acknowledge that the experience of going deeper into our subjective world is a subjective one. I also realized in our discussion that it is our senses which give us entry into the more subtle layers.

SB: I don’t know if you’re familiar with this work, but there is a psychophysicist, Robert Cloninger, who has developed a stage model of development based on a single scale that is inclusive of Piaget’s stages of early childhood development and Erik Erikson’s stages of adult development. He includes measures of compassion, as well as self-transcendence. So we wouldn’t necessarily have to invent such instruments from scratch.

JC: For years in my field, we have often had doctors who say, “Why don’t we have measures for positive things like compassion and joy?”

SB: Our final conversation will be on studying Samadhi, where you and I can be as the “blind leading the blind”!

JC: Or, as Prashant would say, “in a dark tunnel with a dim light…”

Jarvis Chen is a public health scientist, a social epidemiologist, who studies the effect of the social environment on health.

Siegfried Bleher teaches physics and studies nonlinear (chaotic) systems and their application to low-temperature plasmas.