Don’t skip the inversion poses

by Sam Glannon

If you are only going to read this brief paragraph at the beginning, let me summarize: The inversion poses and the finishing sequence in general is a necessary warmdown from the rest of the practice and can lead you into the internal side of the yoga we are doing. On a physical level, it's not good to conclude the practice abruptly after the main part of the sequence, for instance after the backbending. The inversions also have a lot of purely physiological benefits which you would lose by doing this. On another level, you are losing the opportunity to direct your awareness towards the internal aspects of the practice, and to bring the energy you have generated in the more physical side of the practice back inside and store it. That’s the very short version.

I have noticed that a good number of students are omitting in one way or another the shoulder stand poses and the headstand. Some are still doing the last three seated poses. Some of you are even doing their last pose in the seated series, finishing there, and straight up walking out the door. This is a formula for leaving the room feeling frazzled and ungrounded. I do not say this to reprimand you, but perhaps more in admiration of what settled, composed individuals you must all be to be able to do kapotasana and then walk out onto the street in Harvard Square five minutes later and still be able to function in human society. However, I would like to recommend against you doing this. Allow me to explain why.

You should think of the series that we practice as having a certain arc to it, the way a narrative would have an arc. Think for a minute of a work of fiction. It has a storyline which is developed in the beginning, and which leads to a climax perhaps two thirds of the way through, the main elements of which are brought to a resolution throughout the remainder of the work. This formula is by no means universal, of course. What I am observing is a matter of form - in other words, the structure of the piece, rather than the contents is in question here. Many different stories could all follow this same sort of arc, although the particular contents of each narrative would be different. This same sort of analysis could be performed with regards to longer musical compositions like for example a symphony, a suite, or, in modern music, a concept album. Roland Barthes, in ‘Image, Music, Text’ states:

“The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances - as though any material were fit to receive man’s stories. Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and other ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, spic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting [...], stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conversation.” - Roland Barthes, ‘Image, Music, Text’ p. 79.

I would suggest that there is also an aspect of narrative, and therefore of meaning and content, implied by or contained in the structure of our ashtanga yoga sequence. I would like to reiterate that I am talking here about the larger structure of the sequence, distinct from the means in which it is conveyed. It is probably apparent to you that different teachers may convey this material by saying different things, using different ways of speaking, different analogies, different languages or no language at all. This is analogous to the tone of a text independent of its structure or form. Or to make another analogy, two Jazz vocalists might perform ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’, but each with a different performance or with further improvisation layered on top. That’s what I mean by the form in contrast to the contents. The overall meaning is of course conveyed by both, but ignoring the structure of it one can never fully appreciate the meaning. You can probably imagine for instance that a yoga sequence which was exclusively reliant on tone, or on the performance of the teacher in their method of teaching, could well be devoid of any deeper significance in that the overall structure of the class might eventually end up at no satisfying or important conclusion. So too an overdone performance of a song without a profound meaning would likewise be lacking in depth. In that sense, such a yoga sequence might be lacking in content. For our sequence to be successful in its aim, it must therefore contain both structure and content, just as a good novel or poem must achieve a harmony of form and content. Likewise, if you were following a satisfying, well structured narrative, but you ended its retelling in the middle, that would fail to convey the overall meaning. I think that you can imagine how incomplete it would feel to read a novel until two thirds of the way through, right to the point of the rising action, and then put it down and never conclude it. 

How about if you go and see ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and precisely at the moment in which Juliet lies down, supposedly dead, you stand up from your seat, go out with your coat and hat and never come back? Sure, you know how it ends, but it will be unsatisfying. Or you could imagine that you begin reading Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphosis’, and at the moment in the story in which the main character is transformed into a donkey and begins the rest of his strange journey, you put it down and never complete it. That would not be a satisfying way to engage with a text, nor would you get to see the larger message contained in the narrative as the author intended. Wouldn’t you like to know what happens to him after he’s been transformed into a donkey? About two thirds of the work remains unknown to you at this point. How’s he going to get out of this one?

What I’m proposing to you is that you can analyse the structure of our practice in much the same way that you could analyse the structure of a text. You have been through the sequence any number of times, and you’ve probably heard me explaining to new students what the framework of it is. In case you’ve been struck by a sudden amnesia - we do surya namaskara A and B, then standing poses, seated poses, backbening, inversions, and then the last three seated postures, then take rest. You should also recall that our system of yoga is called ashtanga yoga, or a yoga system of eight limbs. These eight limbs are not just eight eclectic categories thrown together at random, but they are a progression of practice, a set of stages or steps, as well. Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga are, in order: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. If some of these words have no meaning to you, I strongly encourage you to familiarize yourself with the terms and the philosophical system underlying them, as I consider them untranslatable in essence. Not that we don’t regularly use their English language equivalents in common parlance (I will not be translating these terms unless they require further elucidation, and it is my belief that you should learn and internalize them in the original Sanskirt). I would also like to briefly mention that this is not the only way of dividing yoga into a system of limbs. There are other ways of doing this for instance into six limbs (here the last six are the same and the first two are assumed as prerequisites for the entire endeavor), or nine limbs (in this case normally with the addition of mudra as a limb preceding or following pratyahara), and so on. Yes, there are more. I would also like to mention, although I won’t go more deeply into this, that there could also be other successful ways of structuring a complete yoga practice, and I would put forward to you as an example the Shivananada yoga sequence, which is very different from - indeed almost the opposite of - our own, but is still successful and complete when practiced correctly.

In our practice, we are moving through these limbs as we go through our sequence, and you should keep the structure of Patanjali’s yoga in mind when looking at the structure of our sequence. The first two limbs are happening all the time, not just during the practice, and are preliminary to even doing the others. Asana is probably the most obvious, as it is the substance of our practice. Pranayama, many people will tell you, is also something we are doing constantly during the practice - this is in the form of the breathing. We are breathing with sound as we practice (whether you can properly call this ujjayi breathing is a topic of some debate among teachers, but let me spare you the substance of this debate for the moment) and we are controlling the breath in the sense that we are attending to it and breathing slowly and deeply. In addition - and this is more subtle - we are also practicing dharana as we do our moving practice. That comes in the form of the gaze. There is a looking point for each posture, and by keeping your visual attention controlled, you are also doing a form of concentration. So in that way, we are combining together the practice of several different limbs during even the main part of the moving asana practice. I want to have said this before I move on, but really, that isn’t exactly what I’m talking about when I speak of the structure of the practice in relation to Patanjali’s limbs of yoga.

With regard to the limbs of yoga, there is an additional distinction to be made between what is called Bahirangya Sadhana and Antaranga Sadhana. Bahir means outside (see also, for instance: bahir kumbhaka, or external breath retention) and antar means inside (so likewise: antar kumbhaka, or internal breath retention). The first four of the limbs, as they occur in the outer world, are bahirangya sadhana, or the external limbs, and the last four from pratyahara onwards, are antaranga sadhana in that they occur inside. This is a bit of a simplistic explanation, and is not as technical as it might be, but for the sake of understanding basically what I am talking about, consider it enough. Pratyahara means ‘withdrawal of the senses’, and in the technical sense, it means that the sense organs are diverted from their external objects and turned inside. At this point we enter into the domain of meditation, and this marks a movement from external awareness to internal awareness. You may notice that our gaze is always oriented outwards for the main part of the practice - that is intentional. Although you are keeping some of your attention inside on the felt sense of the body, you aren’t trying to withdraw the senses from the outer world during this part of the practice. However, as we go through the practice, the awareness is moving progressively from being more externally oriented towards being more internally oriented. By the time you reach the last three seated poses, your attention has become almost entirely inwardly oriented.

The medium for that shift in attention to happen is through the inversions and the final three poses. During the main body of the sequence, you are doing some vigorous things, and you should be paying attention to your body as you’re moving and doing those things. You probably realize this without me having to say it. If you stop the practice there, before moving on to the inversions and following, you’re precluding that change in the orientation of your awareness, and you are never entering into those later stages of the process of yoga. That’s missing the point. Keep in mind that if Patanjali is providing you a map of an interior terrain to be traversed, and you stop after having gone only half way through the directions he has given, it is only obvious that you will not arrive at the goal he has described. This is a spiritual practice that is meant to result in a state of conscious union of the individual mind and self with the universe. Having a deep backbend, while it may be great, is not what Patanjali was driving at. Only two of his slokas are directed towards asana at all, and those are quite brief. But he spends a great deal of the first two divisions of his text exploring different types of samadhi, how they can be reached and what the karmic result of doing so is. In other words, this is a system of transformation of consciousness to him, and even a system for the transformation of one's metaphysical state. He’s not worried if you can catch your hands in Kurmasana if you can unite your mind with the infinite.

If you kept reading Apuleius in the chapters following the part in which Lucian is transformed into a donkey, you would then get the chance to enjoy the section containing the story of Cupid and Psyche and at the end, the description of the procession of Isis. This is one of the main sources we have from antiquity from which to hypothesize about the contents of at least one if not more of the ancient mystery religions. In Apuleius, this represents the section which contains within it an implicit understanding of the relationship between the individual soul and the world. If you continue on to the inversion poses, likewise you get the chance to have the experiences of inverting your attention from the external to the internal, and eventually of the higher states of meditation. Just at the larger structure of the narrative in Apuleius leads the main character through a process of transformation which is meant to recapitulate the structure of the initiatory experience for an Isis cult novitiate, so to the structure of our sequence is meant to lead you through the stages of yoga practice, from asana through pranayama, pratyahara and into meditation. By stopping in that progression halfway though you are missing the culmination of that process.

By going through our sequence and practicing in the way that we do, there is also an aspect of making real that structure through the act of practice itself. This is one sense (certainly not the only sense) in which our practice involves an element of ritual. Rituals serve to make real, though a set of specific actions, a set of relationships between the individual and the world, between the self and the divine, or between the finite and the infinite. They serve to enact and make real those relationships. In other words, by going through the set of actions that is the sequence, there is an aspect of mimesis, of acting out, of performing, not in the sense of showing off or displaying but in the sense of carrying out, a set of realities underlying the practice. The practice therefore serves to make real for one's self these relationships, and by enacting it again and again, it is as though one were pronouncing again each time the reality of that set of beliefs. So too, by skipping the end of the sequence, it is as if you are making real the idea that the yoga practice is only for the sake of that part which you have practiced. To my mind, that is like saying that the purpose underlying your practice does not involve those later stages of yoga, but is only being done for the sake of asana alone. Please don’t get me wrong, that wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing. You might well still achieve a lot of beneficial results - you could probably still gain a lot of strength and flexibility, heal yourself from injuries, and prevent a lot of diseases by practicing this way. But you would be missing an even larger opportunity - the yoga practice has the potential to become something metaphysical and ontological as well, if one understands it in the proper way and goes about it correctly. Yoga as originally conceived is a way of knowing the world, of understanding the relationship between the individual and the universe, of gaining deeper insight into reality, and of having experiences beyond those which are normally possible for an embodied human being. But to do that, you do have to go further into it than just the standing poses.

Let me just note two things in brief here which are not the substance of this piece, but which do deserve a mention in connection with everything else that has been said here. The first of which is, I would observe that these inversion poses are being taught less and less, slowly over time, in the yoga world. That is partially because there is some, although not necessarily a great deal, of risk of injury, especially for people with some underlying health problems, like for example people with previous neck or shoulder injury, or people with blood pressure problems, heart disease, and there are more. But for the majority of even beginners in good health with good general physical ability, these poses are achievable with correct instruction. If you are reading this and you are a yoga teacher, I would like to gently encourage you to keep instructing these poses, not in a careless, reckless way, but cautiously and with all proper care. But we should not allow these to go out of existence merely because they are more difficult to teach in a large group setting, or because the potential for injury is there. That potential is at least as great if not greater in postures such as urdhva dhanurasana, which people are practicing much more often and with less care, at least as I perceive it.

Finally I would like to add that there is a deeper reality to these poses which brings in the topics of longevity, the adharas, the Ayurvedic concepts of ojas and bindu, the Vedic concept of Soma, the moon and the nakshatras in Jyotish, and a number of other very lengthy topics, which although they are related to this discussion, are too elaborate for a successful treatment in a piece which is not a great deal longer than this one is. If you are interested in Ayurveda, are an Ayurvedic practitioner, or are interested in the original understanding of this practice as a longevity practice, I can only tell you that there is a tremendous amount to be said about this - as long as this piece is, it would have to be perhaps ten or twenty times longer to capture the depth of that reality. But then again, nor am I going to explain to you the cult of Isis here either. Go ask Apuleius.