LEARNING DEEP CONTRACTION IN YOGA

Articles In This Section:

· LEARNING DEEP CONTRACTION IN YOGA

· KNOW HOW TO KEEP FIT

· DEEP CONTRACTION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF YOGA

· SOEM YOGA MOVES

· GETTING THE BENEFITS OF RELAXATION AND CONTRACTION

After every action there must be a reaction. Now that you have the key to complete deep relaxation, the next step is to learn Deep Contraction. The two together will enable you to better utilize the full potential of your body and mind and gear them to working for you. Think of this as a preliminary mobilization of all your resources for approaching the more complex physical and mental routines you will be trying later on.

We already know that Yoga relaxation has nothing in common with relaxation as it is understood by most people in the Western world who equate it with rest, recreation or play. Similarly, Deep Contraction has nothing to do with various methods of "toning up" or "keeping fit" with which we are familiar. Nothing can be further from Yoga practice than subjecting the body to physical drills. Deep knee bends, pushups, weight-lifting—all the routines generally associated with physical culture—are the very antithesis of what Yoga tries to accomplish. For while such drills are fine for the young and the athletic, they encourage muscle tension in the average person for whom tension is usually already a problem. Realistically, too, they require more daily effort than anyone but an athlete is likely to be willing to make. But most importantly they tend to dissociate body from mind, while the Yoga approach is always to consider the human whole, treating it as indivisible.

The greatest of modern theatrical directors, Constantin Stanislavski, to whose techniques actors throughout the world refer with bated breath simply as "The Method," advised his students to learn from animals how to first relax, then "wind up" for perfect body control. "Watch the tiger," he wrote in An Actor Prepares, "watch his domesticated counterpart, the cat. See how completely they let go of every muscle, becoming a dead weight in sleep or relaxation. Then watch them as they wake: they stretch, yawn, slowly get to their feet and arch their back, changing from limp rag to coiled spring with no apparent effort."

What Stanislavski wanted to demonstrate was the tremendous economy of energy and movement which gives the feline its peculiar grace and power. Thus he was able to teach his students how to move, tireless, through taxing emotional roles; how to breathe so that their voices projected, without ever straining, to every corner of a great hall even if used in a whisper. It is not surprising to learn that he had studied the methods of Hatha Yoga.

Most of us will never be called upon to play Hamlet or King Lear eight times a week, to sing in Grand Opera or to go barnstorming through the country for a presidential candidate. Nor will we attempt to chalk up Olympic Games records. But we have it within our reach to learn quickly and all but effortlessly a kind of body control that even the fine athlete doesn't always possess since he too, unless he is either naturally lucky or has learned the secret of alternate relaxation and contraction, is likely to be laboring under much unnecessary tension.