The Muscles Versus The Mystery

When you see someone perform a magic trick, there’s always that moment of “How’d they do that?” The dove flies out from under the handkerchief, or the card you selected is suddenly, inexplicably, in your pocket. Something happened that you weren’t privy to, and it resulted in magic. But the moment the trick is revealed, the magic disappears.

I used to think this was how yoga worked. When I first started practicing yoga, my knowledge of the mechanics of the body was extremely limited. I think I probably knew that your hamstrings were on the back of your legs, and your biceps were on your arms, but that was about it. I couldn’t have told you the difference between a tendon and a ligament, and frankly, I didn’t see the need: I was enamored with the movement, the sweat, the opening, the psychological release, the mysterious power that yoga had to calm my addled brain.

I didn’t think that increasing my understanding of what was taking place would do anything for my body or my practice; and in the back of my mind, I carried some disdain for all those Iyengar yogis who would (as far as I could tell) spend 10 minutes talking about their big toe in trikonasana. Who cares about that? I thought. Let’s move!

I retained this attitude when I became a teacher, but I ran into trouble pretty quickly. Students would come to me after class concerned with knee pain or wrist problems and I would have little more to offer them than “Just don’t do that pose.” I knew it would only be a matter of time before my lack of study caused someone to injure themselves in class. If my motivation for becoming a yoga teacher was to serve people, I was doing them a great disservice by neglecting to adequately educate myself about what I was asking them to do with their bodies.

So I trained (and continue to train!) in different schools of yoga, and I came to realize that the human body is a wellspring of fascinating, mind-blowing, humbling processes. And I discovered that there’s no limit to how much you can learn, and that ongoing discoveries and advances in science mean that a yoga teacher can’t ever stop studying. I also discovered something about the magic of yoga.

When a magician performs a trick, the goal is for the audience to remain in the dark about how it happened. For it to be magic, we must be fooled by what we see. But yoga is the process of unfooling ourselves. It is a practice of uncovering, of discovery, and that discovery can and should include what goes on inside the body. Understanding the mechanics of Warrior 2 doesn’t detract from its potent effect on muscles and bones; on the contrary, knowing and applying the 72-second rule (that 72 seconds of healthy bone stress stimulates the osteocytes to create more bone, thereby staving off osteoporosis) can lead us to a practice that deepens our integration of all our body’s parts, that brings us to a place of balance, and that addresses our unique needs. Learning more about the importance of the oblique line in the body (and through my recent posts, forcing other people to learn about it!) has done amazing things for my practice and my daily physical and mental well-being.

Yoga isn’t a trick, and its enormous healing power doesn’t rely on ignorance and sleight-of-hand. It is a lifetime of learning. So become an expert in yourself, and trust that the magic will continue to work itself with as much potency as always.  And really, how immature of us to think that such an ancient practice would be rendered ineffective by a little muscle talk. We don’t have to take sides here: the muscles are the mystery, and we will never be done trying to find out “How’d I do that?” when it comes to our bodies.