SthiraSukham Asanam: The Postures Should Be Strong and Soft

My most recent offering is my theory about the postures. If you understand what is presented here you will understand how the approach to asana I present in classes is so effective.

upsidedowncarl

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SthiraSukham Asanam: The Postures Should Be Strong and Soft

Asana means seat, or connection to the ground. Sometimes the term even refers to a cushion you would sit on. However, most of the time, in the west, when the term is used it refers to the physical postures. What follows, in my opinion, are the fundamental details of what you would want to do, to keep yourself safe while performing the postures. These principles always work. If you are truly following these principles you cannot go wrong. The only thing is that these principles are quite a challenge to achieve and to cultivate these qualities you need to possess a considerable amount of awareness in your body/mind.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define asana as sthirasukham asanam, (Sutra 2.46). This translate roughly to “The postures should have the dual qualities of strength without tension and softness without laziness”, or “The postures are strength and softness”. Sthira means strength, stability, solidity, power and alertness without unnecessary tension. Sukham means softness, relaxedness, comfort, enjoyability without laziness. So a more complete translation would be “The physical postures should contain the qualities of strength, stability, solidity, power and alertness without unnecessary tension, and softness, relaxedness, comfort, enjoyability without laziness.

If this is truly happening it is not possible to hurt yourself. As soon as you start moving towards a position where there is a potential for injury to occur the body begins to tense up. In physical therapy manuals this process of tensing up to protect yourself from injury is called muscle guarding.

The problem is that many of us do not realize that the body is tensing up against the work we are imposing on our bodies until far too late. So part of the process of Yoga when working with the postures would be to try to become aware of these kinds of things. The issue here would be how to become aware of something you are not aware of especially when you are not aware that you are not aware of it.

The Yoga Sutras instruction on how to try and cultivate these qualities in the postures sounds simple. It says, “To find these qualities you need to look for unnecessary tension in the body and remove it and you need to look for unnecessary tension in the breath and remove it,” (Sutra 2.47). Again, this sounds simple but the question is how can you begin to become aware of something that you are not aware of: how can you become conscious of something that is unconscious?

In reality all we can do is try and understand that we are all human and sometimes our best efforts can be misguided.


Sutras 2.46 and 2.47 that I am referring to above are the only Sutras out of almost two hundred Sutras that address the physical postures directly. In just 2 short aphorisms Patanjali says just about everything that needs to be said and that can be said about the physical postures.

However there are other Sutras that have few insights about how to move towards that state called Yoga and to be in that state of Yoga your body would have to contain those qualities referred to in the Sutras that define the postures. Sutra 1.12 says practice without attachment to the desired results can bring you towards the state of Yoga. and Sutra 2.1 says that the discipline to practice consistently, self awareness while practicing and the understanding that there are things beyond your control and so a sense of openness and availability to the present circumstances of reality, a sense of surrender to the vastness of the universe and all that is beyond your control, is what makes up the practice of yoga.

So, if this sensibility is applied to the practice of postures, you might have a better chance of having those magical circumstances of sthirasukham falling into place. I think John Friend and others from the west might refer to this as grace; a beautiful concept.

All this being the case, I have a feeling that some images would be beneficial in helping to provide an understanding of this complex and magical process and of course I am using the term “magical” metaphorically.

When you see a beautiful dancer like Mikhail Baryshnikov he makes the amazing things he can do with his body look effortless; it looks like he could do these complex movements in his sleep. When you see a dancer who is not quite as graceful it looks like there is a little extra effort. You see hints of struggle and it is not quite as fluid and graceful. This fluidity, this gracefulness that appears effortless even when a movement is extremely powerful is sthirasukham.

What separates a great gymnast from the pretty good gymnast is that quality of effortlessness. In men’s gymnastics there is a move on the rings where the gymnast is trying to hold himself parallel to the ground while holding onto those two rings which are suspended by two ropes. The move takes an amazing amount of strength. A great gymnast will make even this move look effortless despite the amount of real strength it takes. That is sthirasukham.

Any great athlete has this quality as well. While Michael Jordan was playing basketball, when you would see him alone in the open court he usually looked so relaxed that it did not look like he was doing all that much. When you look at a lot of other players they look like they are working hard and going fast. And then when you would see Michael Jordan next to those players he looked like he was running circles around them. It was hard to tell where he was generating all that speed and power from because he looked so relaxed. He sort of looked like an adult playing with children a lot of the time. That effortlessness and power is sthirasukham.

I could say the same thing for the way Barry Bonds swings a baseball bat. The speed he generates is amazing. I personally don’t have an opinion on his use of steroids. It is possible that he obtained a certain amount of his strength from the use of chemicals. But the strength without the coordination would not get him very far and what I am interested in here is the coordination. When he swings a bat it looks effortless. There is no wasted effort. At least part of the power is not in trying. Someone trying to swing like Barry Bonds would never succeed. There is an innate knowledge that his body has. In many ways this achievement of swinging a baseball bat so that it hits a baseball at just that right point is an amazing feet in itself. A bat whose barrel is at most 4” in diameter is being swung at a very high speed, too high a speed for the batter to really cognitively plan the mechanics or where the barrel will cross the plate if he is trying to adjust the swing to meet a ball without knowing beforehand where the ball will cross the plate. The mechanics already have to be learned through years of practice. The bat is being swung at a ball that is usually going at a rate somewhere between 80-100 mph. The ball is about 3” in diameter. The precise timing and control needed for the barrel of the bat to hit the ball at just the right time and angle is pretty remarkable given all the variables. And when you see a baseball player who can really make that swing look graceful and effortless and generate that kind of bat speed and power, there really needs to be, no wasted effort.

You can see this quality of power and effortlessness in the animal kingdom clearly and quite beautifully. When I was working at the circus there was a leopard that did not perform but that would be exercised with the other cats. I have a photograph of this cat jumping and it was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The speed, power and agility that this leopard possessed was completely natural. Words cannot describe what this cat looked like while jumping. My memory tells me that it was about 15 feet up in the air and that its jump spanned 25-30 feet, jumping off a little platform and landing precisely on a matching platform on the other side of the ring. I can only imagine what it would be like to see a cat in the wild doing something similar.

It follows that in Yoga during the practice of asana, when you see someone who really knows what they are doing with their body, it is hard to miss. That balance of power and relaxedness, effortlessness and gracefulness are evident. The interesting thing about asana practice is that there are styles where you move and styles where you hold poses and styles where you combine the two. When someone is really accomplished in the physical practice the movements have this quality of strength and softness and that quality remains present when the postures are held. During the movements, having this quality would be an issue of dynamic alignment; keeping alignment while moving. Whereas in the held postures it would be an issue of static alignment, which is how alignment is most commonly taught in Yoga. But dynamic alignment is extremely important in the process of asana practice, even though it is often neglected. If your form in the movements does not have those qualities of strength and softness then you are not in a yoga pose until you find alignment while holding. If you have the form while moving, then when you arrive in the pose you already are aligned. I have seen people who have beautiful form in the postures but have horrible form in moving from one pose to another and you can tell there is something missing from their practice. And when you see someone who has that quality while moving, his or her form in the poses is almost invariably spot on.

A teacher trainee was recently watching me give a one-on-one session to an extremely accomplished asana practitioner and had the experience of how good her form was while moving and while holding the postures. It was like a revalation to the trainee. It was almost like she had never seen asana practice that looked like that, that magical dance of fluidity and grace that was not only reserved for the postures but was present in every movement. I would imagine there was some useful food for thought there, as though she was seeing asana practice for the first time, or with a new set of eyes.

Strength and softness are qualities that don’t usually just happen naturally, at least for adult human beings, so there are just a few things I have come to understand about the process of moving towards them. For human beings, these qualities often need to be cultivated from deep understanding within your body. They need to be practiced and learned. And they are the result of body intelligence, not an imposition of the conscious will, which is how people often try and achieve these qualities. All of what I am about to say is hinted above. The quality of effortlessness is by definition a quality where there is no wasted effort, no extra effort, no unnecessary tension. The amount of strength used is precisely the amount necessary; no more, no less. When moving the body or holding it in a position, if this quality of no unnecessary effort or apparent effortlessness is actualized, the movement or held posture will appear graceful, fluid, relaxed and alert, strong and soft. When a movement or posture has these qualities it will be safe, it will be beneficial, it will unlock the healing potential of the practitioner’s system. This is where the practice of Yoga postures can potentially become such a powerful tool for healing. This is where the magic is. It is not in achieving strange feats. It is not in a force of will on the body. It is in finding that magical quality of sthirasukham, strength and softness, effortless stability and balance, which unlocks the healing potential of our systems.

I think what I am about to say is one of the most complicated concepts for yoga practitioners to understand. Good alignment is not the specific position you place your body into; it is not what position your hands and feet are in. It is that, while you are in whatever position you are in, you have the dual qualities of strength and softness. There are thousands of appropriate versions of any posture. If you change the details of alignment in a posture it will not make it right or wrong. Almost any position the body can be placed in is a position where sthirasukham can be found. It is finding sthirasukham that would make the posture you are in useful and therefore, “good”, beneficial or appropriate alignment.

Again, since it is worth repeating, it is in finding that magical quality of sthirasukham, strength and softness, effortless stability and balance, which unlocks the healing potential of our systems. When you find that you will find stillness whether in movement or in a static posture and that is Yoga with a capitol Y.