Paradoxical

I’m going to be spending a lot of time, energy, and money in the next few months trying to understand why I’m spending so much time, energy, and money on this yoga practice I’ve already spent so much time, energy, and money on over the last decade and a half or so.

It remains endlessly fascinating, but I’m not sure why.

Some of my curiosity surely stems from simple nerdiness; in the same way the “completionist” record collector wants to have a copy of every version of his favorite band’s singles and albums, I keep trying to get that one more pose to complete my perfect collection of asanas; but what’s weird is that it’s completely obvious that getting the poses is not what it’s all about.

One of the meanings of yoga is “union,” which I think can be understood as meaning a uniting of opposites—the in-breath and the out-breath, for instance, or striving and surrender, or getting all bent out of shape (no pun intended) over the poses while simultaneously realizing that they’re not what the practice really is, anyway.

It’s paradoxical—which is to say, of course, that it isn’t.

We spent a couple hours today going slowly and painstakingly over the correct way to do all the motions and related breaths in the primary Ashtanga series; what’s confounding is that there is a right way to do everything, but at the same time, doing them the right way doesn’t really make any difference; it’s not I’m going to end world hunger by getting into Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana in a single breath.

It’s not even obvious that I’ll be even a little bit better person if I can, and in fact, I may be even more of an insufferable ass should I no longer have that failure staring me in the face.

I kept thinking about Socrates being told by the oracle that he was the one wise man in Athens because he alone knew he wasn’t wise; maybe I can be the one wise yoga student because I alone can’t do the poses.