Approaches to Parinama: Sorrow, Sequence, Community, and Silence

T“ he seed that transforms into root, tree, flower, and fruit is parinama. The effect of seed is fruit, and the seed is again hidden in the fruit. However, the transformation keeps on occurring from seed to fruit and fruit to seed.”

(B.K.S. Iyengar, Astadala Yogamala vol. VIII, p. 255) As a way of introducing the concept of “ parinama,” letting its meaning sink in through the example of others, we asked advanced teachers to reflected on how parinama plays out in their own practice, in their teaching, and in their lives. Here are the responses.

Carrie Owerko Parinama is defined as “transformation.” The context in which we first encounter parinama is in the second chapter of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, in the sutras relating to sorrow— its cause and removal.

For me, these are very difficult sutras in many ways because life does, in fact, include pain or sorrow— and yes, suffering. If we are going to live and love fully and completely, we will end up feeling the full spectrum of human emotion (including suffering). One way to look at the transformative power of yoga is to look at how yoga practice enhances our capacity to frame, reframe, and ultimately find meaning in our experiences.

I read an interview in the New York Times recently that made me re-examine these sutras. In the interview, the wife of a man who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer asked her husband whether their plans to conceive a child during his illness might increase his suffering. She said, “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” He responded, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” They agreed that life for them was not about avoiding suffering. It was about creating meaning. This took my breath away. It was such a beautiful expression of what it means to be human.

How we frame the fact that life is change effects how we experience it. We can transform our experience of change and the suffering that comes from trying to avoid or deny change by finding meaning in change. So I try and encourage students to look at how the practice of yoga can help them live a fully embodied life, change and all. And asking questions seems to be really helpful. Such as: Why are we doing this? What is the meaning in all of this?

I find it helpful to keep living these questions because they are powerful ones that can be lived in a fully embodied way, in our practice. Perhaps by living these questions, we can transform our human sorrow into something beautiful and meaningful. And that meaning comes from the recognition that it is our love— and our suffering— that yokes or connects us.

Carrie Owerko Intermediate Senior II New York, NY

Aretha McKinney

Sutra II.15 points us toward the cause of suffering as the misidentification with the transient state of nature, prakrti. Recently in India at the December intensive, Geeta said that prakrti is the iron curtain that

covers the light of the soul, but she also said that prakrti is what helps us lift this iron curtain. While change can be the source of suffering if we wrongly identify with the fluctuations of the material world, gunas,

Aretha McKinney

the promise of change, also offers the hope that we can evolve our consciousness to turn toward the soul. Ignorance is what binds the consciousness wrongly to nature. Practice, as Sutra II.28 relates, cultivates the discriminative intelligence that helps cut through our ignorance. Guruji said once, “Change is not something we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in the world would ever move forward to become the person they’re meant to be.”

Transformation can be experienced over the course of many years, but it can also be experienced over the course of a class. Often in class, my teacher Patricia will have us do a pose, and then we might come back to the pose later in class and reflect on the changes that have taken place. Something as simple as Adho Mukha Svanasana done at the beginning, middle, and end of a sequence can inform this understanding. You can readily see the body’s ability to transform over a given practice, and you can also feel how, as the body opens and becomes more expansive, the mind likewise moves into the increasing expansiveness of its container, naturally turning inward. Geeta said in the December intensive that Pratyahara is the result of sequencing. We move our students inward over the course of a practice through proper sequencing. The last three limbs, she said, cannot be taught, but we can move our students in that direction. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give our students is this understanding and experience.

Aretha McKinney Intermediate Junior III Nashville, TN

Tori Milner Parinama, or transformation, is at the very heart of my experience of Iyengar Yoga. When I first started Iyengar Yoga, I eagerly treated each asana like a high-speed line toward selfimprovement, an avenue for me to apply my will to become perfect— perfectly symmetrical, perfectly pain-free, and well, just plain perfect to the outside view. And to a point, it was satisfying. I was 25 and perfectionism had mostly been an asset for me up until then, a refuge in a world full of uncertainty. During the 20 years since then, through births, deaths, loves, losses, body changes, aging, and maturity, I have developed more sensitivity, tolerance, and appreciation for life’s many changes, including those within me. So my approach toward the practice has changed, and I have shifted from not only “doing” to also “being”— feeling like I’m trying to perfect the pose on the outside to exploring how it is affecting me on the inside and who I am and how I am as a result.

I have learned to use the practice as a tool to resculpt, chisel, and polish my consciousness and not just my body. It has allowed my mind to become less angular and rigid, less black and white, less scattered and dispersed, to glimpse times of true focus and quiet and peace within— true contentment. Now, that source within is my refuge, and I don’t achieve it perfectly every day, which is why I think it is called practice.

I am struck by T.S. Eliot’s famous quote, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know it for the first time.” Each day, through my practice of yoga and what it means to be human, I get to keep starting over in a more skillful way, and that is a wonderful gift.

Tori Milner

Tori Milner Junior Intermediate III Brooklyn, NY

Peggy GwiSeok Hong For some time, I’ve been pondering the social, political, cultural, and economic landscape of Iyengar Yoga. Who has access to this profound practice? Who is missing from the room? Why?

Peggy Gwi-Seok Hong On one hand, yoga is

indeed timeless and universal. We know this in our bones; we experience this through all five sheaths of the kosa in every asana. The universality of yoga is so powerful, we need not “work” on it. Instead, what I feel called to question is the particularity of yoga in my local community.

What is the experience of Iyengar Yoga for bodies that have been marked by society as inferior? Dark-skinned, queer, transgender, or fat people? What about those harmed by poverty, police brutality, exploitative labor practices, lack of documentation/citizenship, or refugee status? Do those who have been pushed to the margins of society have access to the healing and transformative power of Iyengar Yoga?

Yoga may be the last thing on someone’s mind if they’re insecure about their next meal or how to make rent. But let’s not forget Guruji’s struggles in his early days. In his autobiography, he recalls that some days he had rice and water— some days, just water. Yet he poured himself into yoga, his only possibility of survival. Even— or especially— for someone experiencing stress and trauma, how useful could a few minutes in Supta Baddha Konasana or Chair Bharadvajasana be? A little Trikonasana can go a very long way.

I believe 21st-century Iyengar Yoga in the U.S. must address “Parinama of Community.” How do we expand our boundaries and transform our communities to be truly inclusive, safe, and welcoming for all? Even I, as an experienced practitioner, have sometimes felt silenced, marginalized, or tokenized in yoga studios, where I have often been the only nonwhite person. What might others outside of the typical yoga demographic be experiencing? Can we engage, explore, and transform ourselves and our communities to be truly welcoming?

Peggy Gwi-Seok Hong Intermediate Junior III Detroit, MI

Naghmeh Ahi Inspired by Sutra III.9: “Study of the silent moments between rising and restraining subliminal impressions is the transformation of consciousness towards restraint” (B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali).

Transformation is the gap between witnessing and doing. Transformation is the birthplace of reflection— that place in time where there is nothing being done.

Transformation is when I free myself from the boundaries of time by noticing the moments in between beginnings and endings. Like where the breath turns from in to out— and that brief khumbak in between.

The pregnant pause holds the possibility of transformation where there is no doing, only being in the now.

The stilling of the fluctuations is the transformation of the pause between moments.

The pause gives birth to the stilling of the fluctuations.

When the adjustments stop, transformation begins. At the end of movement, that space of stillness gives room for transformation to be noticed—where there is stillness and being and not doing.

Naghmeh Ahi

Naghmeh Ahi Intermediate Junior III Brooklyn, NY