Musings: What Is Enough? – Denise Weeks

WHAT IS ENOUGH?

BY DENISE WEEKS

I took my first trip to Pune to study at RIMYI in June. In the lead up to my departure, I read Anne Marie Schultz’s piece in the Spring 2015 Yoga Samachar that included this delightful quote from Prashant: “99.9 percent of yoga students who come here are heading toward disappointment.” Ever the sober realist, I shared this line with everyone who asked me if I was excited about my upcoming trip. Keeping expectations low seemed safe and wise.

Once there, like Anne Marie and many others, I kept a daily blog for the family, friends, and students back home who wanted to follow my adventures. On the evening after my first class with Prashant, I happily reported that I was among the lucky .1 percent—not disappointed at all! Confused, wide-eyed, sweaty, yes. But not disappointed in the least. I could report the same after my first class with Geeta two days later, and again the next week when I felt uplifted after having stood fewer than three feet in front of her during a Virabhadrasana I sequence without attracting any attention to my uneven hips. I was riding high.

This is not an “and then” narrative. Nothing happened later that put me into Prashant’s 99.9 percent. I didn’t like every class equally; sometimes my attention waned; I had stronger days and weaker days. But despite these normal hills and dales in mood and energy, I remained the opposite of “disappointed.” What would Prashant say? “Appointed”? Satisfied, in any case, and curious.

What piqued my curiosity the most was the paradox I observed at the heart of my experience. Even though Geeta and Prashant teach in very different ways, I noted how they both circled around a similar refrain of “you have to do this on your own,” “this can’t be taught,” and “you should already know this.” Right. I understood this as an injunction to take the practice inward, to stop waiting for someone to tell me what to do, to go back to the source. These lessons challenged me and made me wonder: By even being there, was I playing the part of a superficial consumer of yoga? Was I like the cad in this Christina Rossetti poem who gets rebuked, “Go, seek in haste: but wilt thou find?/Change new again for new;/Pluck up enjoy—yea, trample, too.” Compounding my confusion was the fact that I saw fellow Institute students taking classes offered by other Iyengar Yoga teachers around Pune. A Sunday class here, a Wednesday evening class there. Yet more excellent yoga, more skillful instruction. On one hand, I felt confident that I was getting the best possible experience from my six classes a week with Geeta and Prashant, but on the other hand, I found myself wondering, should I be trying these other teachers, too? Taking more classes, getting more perspectives, squeezing every bit of yoga instruction out of this Pune experience?

Perhaps it all comes back to what I should already know, as Geeta might say, if I understood abhyasa and vairagya more perfectly. Perhaps there is no paradox at all, only the truth at the core of this yogic pursuit. As Mr. Iyengar writes in his commentary on Sutra I.12: “Without restraint, the forces generated by practice would spin out of control... [but] vairagya without abhyasa could lead to stagnation and inner decay.” Is this my answer? Constant consumption without thoughtful absorption might lead to a chaotic rather than centering yoga experience, but without a little firm guidance every now and then, my practice could easily stall out. But what is enough?

Since returning from Pune, I’ve been asking myself that question in many different ways. How many workshops do I need to take every year to keep the fire of my practice burning without becoming superficial in my quest or losing track of my goals? How many YouTube videos do I need to watch and how many more articles do I need to read to perfect my understanding of various asana? How many more points do I need to work on in my Trikonasana when I still haven’t fully mastered a few of the foundational basics?

I think I understand now why people leaving Pune put down a deposit for their next trip, and why, for many, the space between visits is a year or two at most. For me, the receipt I got from Pandu for a return visit two and a half years from now is not a guarantee of future fulfillment or a sought after notch on the belt of yoga experiences one “must have.” Instead, it reminds me to keep questioning my intentions and goals and to not be put off by the paradox but to embrace it. And to keep asking (about yoga and my life in general), what is enough?