Become One Living

Taking a seat: Discussing Asana

• Jody & Dan • Episode 6

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Have you ever found yourself lost in the seemingly effortless yoga poses flooding your social media, only to wonder if there's more to the story? Together with Jody and her husband Dan, we unravel the true essence of asana, the art of finding a steady seat for meditation, and how it anchors us amidst the ebbs and flows of life. As we navigate the depth of yoga's physical practice, we challenge the contemporary misrepresentations that prioritize aesthetics over the purpose of the pose.

In this heart-to-heart conversation, we reveal how accepting our unique anatomical blueprints allows us to practice asana functionally, fostering personal growth while protecting ourselves from injury. We share stories of transformation, illustrating how yoga's physicality can cultivate mental clarity and serve as a conduit to meditation and self-realization. If you're ready to strip back the layers of performance and connect with yoga's true intention, join us for an episode that promises to reshape your understanding and practice of this ancient discipline. 

We would love to hear from you! Email us at becomeoneliving@gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram at BecomeOne Living.

Jody:

Welcome to Become One Living Tools for Conscious Living.

Dan:

My name is Jody Domerstad and my name is Dan Boises.

Jody:

I was going to say just Dan Dan.

Dan:

Boises. So we covered the yamas, we covered the niyamas Overview, of course.

Jody:

There are eight limbs of yoga, the eight limb path ashtanga. Ashta means aid, anga means limb. Eight limbs and we have spoken about how yoga is a complete system because it has these eight limbs. We discussed the yamas, the niyamas, and now the third is asana, asana, a hot one.

Dan:

It's a good topic. It's a great topic we all have a body.

Jody:

We all have a body and asana is what dominates the yoga world right now. All classes I don't want to use an absolute, most classes are asana focused and when we become too body focused we can forget why we're doing the practice. Asana, thousands of years ago, only mentioned the body or asana three times in the scriptures. So thousands and thousands of years ago. If you look back in the yogasutras, there's only three lines about asana and the word asana means seat, s-e-a-t Seat, steady seat or to take a seat.

Jody:

And when you look at the yoga sutras, the first one says about the body the seat has to be firm, steady but comfortable. Now, when you do that and you only put in just enough effort to maintain the pose, to be with it and breathe, you then yield these powers they say of not wavering between polarities and duality. So when you do your yoga practice, the physical asana, and you train yourself to be uncomfortable cold, stamina, strength, stretching, feeling the uncomfortability you entrain yourself to be with that uncomfortability to the degree and the point where you will have this ability to not waver when stress happens. You don't get pulled into the good or the bad or the hot or the cold. Duality doesn't matter. That's what the yoga sutras say, because you have this capacity now to be with what is, even when it's uncomfortable.

Dan:

Neat and the body is the tool, is the medium.

Jody:

The body, our bodies are just instruments that we're using in this eight limb path to get to know ourselves. The pose doesn't really matter and yet, all over Instagram, it's pose orientated and pose focused. Look at me in this pose. Look what I can do. My legs are wrapped around my head. I'm half naked.

Dan:

Yeah.

Jody:

I'm just thinking about the half naked part Only, because years ago the practice of yoga looked like it was done in a baby diaper, right A little short. Why did I share that? Because yoga is not glamorous and we're trying to take something and make it glamorous when you do yoga and you go in deep yamas, niyamas and then asana. It's kind of ugly, messy and sloppy.

Dan:

And you're doing the work. All the gloss and the sensationalism is really just that. It's the topical, it's just the surface. But if asana is the way in for people, if asana and shaking out the body and moving the body with discipline and growing that piece can take people inward, it's almost like they have to be careful because they could fall into the booby trap of one day being okay, there's got to be more to this, there's got to be more to this. And then one day, kind of like it could sneak up on some and next thing you know you're like all right, there is more to this.

Dan:

And then you're bringing your breath more into play with your movement. And then, when you bring your breath into play more with your movement, it requires you to pay attention a little bit more. And you pay attention a little bit more, you're all of a sudden you're being able to concentrate for a whole class. And then you're thinking to yourself I was just calm and quiet and moving my body and breathing for a whole class, and what happens is clarity comes to mind. You get clearer on your thoughts. You get clearer on what you want in your life. You get clearer on what you don't want in your life you have moments that give you glimpses, glimmers. A little light shines in as to what more you can do with the complete package of the system.

Jody:

That was beautiful. Dan just wove through all the eight limbs. I want to go back to the body, because Dan is also a body worker for many years and we share a lot in our discussions about space and making space. Asana allows someone to make space in their body so fluids can move more optimally, blood oxygen Also. Some space can also allow for the diaphragm to move more and if the diaphragm moves more and you can take a bigger breath, that breath can signal the brain. Hey, jody's taking a bigger breath. That could mean she's calm. So moving the body is not pose focused. We use the pose and the function of the pose to move our body, to stretch our body, to experience our body in what's being offered, to open it, to strengthen it, to make space for what rises, because pain alters not only the body but the mind and the soul.

Dan:

Indeed, pain Can occupy a lot of space. Pain can preoccupy your mind. If you're in pain and you're not at ease, well then you don't have the ability to concentrate on other things in your life as much as you could be, could, could if you weren't in pain. So pain is very it's a very big concern, it's a very big issue. It's a very big thing to address Right, if, if, again so if you're in pain and somewhere in your body You're not able to be present Right. So this is the importance. One of the important things about Asana is investigating and exploring, becoming Having a heightened awareness of your body and where it's achy, where it's not in balance, so you can bring it into balance, so that you can be at ease, so that you can actually have a clearer thought process and be clear in your mind. That's a lot of work steady, ease, full seat.

Jody:

That's what Asana means and is. It's a seat that needs to be Steady with ease. That's what our body needs to be. This flesh suit that we walk around in in our time in this world has to be easeful, and this brings up a personal experience and I feel my emotions welling up right now where the pain that I was in Was so debilitating that I wanted to die and yet, because of the very much that the sensation of the pain, not wanting to move, which experience are you talking about I?

Jody:

broke my jaw in Four, seven places, they're not sure. In high school I got hit with a softball 60 miles an hour, they said at least it had to be to fracture my jaw and face in the way that it did and I was wired shut for six to eight months and 20 25 years later I was in severe pain. After teacher training I Would come home and Dan would find me on the floor crying in a ball in Pain and he would have to hold me. Work on me. Dan does cranial sacral, so I mean work by working the bones in my head and releasing muscles.

Jody:

The pain in my jaw Caused me to not want to want to live and that very feeling of pain also Didn't allow me to move in my mind because I thought it would exacerbate the pain. When I finally started moving, the pain started to subside and of course I had to do some other things which we'll talk about later Another podcast, airway obstruction and a palette expander and mouth breathing, a whole lifetime of exploring, discovering, healing and thinking it's over, and then another thing comes into play.

Dan:

And another thing comes into the play. You know Asana is important for these specific reasons to explore, to discover. And you may say you know it's really just a workout or this or that. But when you have pain well, let me start here. So you say, like, why bother so to enhance your well-being and enhance your life. So what I see when people come to me is, oh, they say I'm fine, and once we get going we discover things, but before pain even happens. So pain enters the body two ways Repetitive emotions or repetitive postures, and physical blows to the body right.

Dan:

So it's that simple. There's two ways. So you have to become aware of your repetitive emotions, and doing Asana helps you do that. It helps you notice your imbalances. You know once you understand that it's not just right to pain. What happens before pain is a person is fatigued, they're tired, they have less energy than they would have if they were in alignment right, and then so a repetitive motion over time takes a body out of alignment and you feel exhausted. You feel more exhausted, you feel more fatigue and that then becomes like, for an instance that becomes bursitis, and then bursitis can get worse and then you have tendinitis and you're wondering why this is happening this moment. But it actually was happening and taking place, and taking hold over a period of time.

Jody:

And this is where Asana is so important, because stretching your body, your connective tissue, your fascia, the big trendy word right now.

Jody:

All of the connective tissue. Stretching that and pulling on that, holding the poses allows for this unwinding to occur and in that spaciousness things rise up and in space things can heal, things can come up and then you can start to see where you need to put your energy and focus, not in the actual physical pose but in the movements, the transitions, the movements, the shapes of the pose according to your body. Because what I also notice in teaching yoga is lack of understanding of where your body is in space and time. If someone doesn't even know where their body is in space and time, it's going to be hard for them to get with pain and to move through the pain or work with the pain if they don't even understand what's happening in their body. So it's a tool to understand, no matter what's happening, but to get to know this physical system.

Dan:

Awareness, awareness, body awareness yeah, it's really neat stuff. I believe so, steve. In my training I took a craniocacral training and one of the senior teachers essentially said this if there's one word that is helpful in curing challenges in the body, it's space. So we don't want to overlook when you're in your formative years, when you're younger and your teens and your twenties, you want to be a lot vigorous and physically active to develop strength. At a certain turning point you don't want to lose your strength, but what becomes more important is space at all of the joints, Space in your body. Space and flow in the body equals wellness.

Jody:

Space and flow in the body, equal wellness, and stay with this, because most people force themselves into these shapes, and forcing themselves into the shapes that they think the pose should look like could cause injuries and disturbances to their bodies, because everyone is built different.

Dan:

Totally.

Jody:

Okay. So now we're doing yoga, we're just cooking along, not creating space, just moving without consciousness and without breath. We're exercising, correct, I know it's so great. And then you add a great playlist. I love when someone says to me oh man, I have the best playlist. I look at them with a blank stare. I don't even know what you mean, because my friends, let me tell you this when I started yoga in my teens, late teens, early twenties, there wasn't music, no music. 15 years later, I had to work, for. I chose to work for someone after I sold my yoga studio and they told me you need a playlist. Now, thank God, I had met Dan at the time, because he had two iPods that I started to use and I used the same playlist. Do you remember?

Dan:

Yeah, for like five years. I think old angzine was on one of the playlist.

Jody:

Oh my God, I accidentally hit shuffle on the podcast, On the podcast on Dan's iPod. I accidentally hit shuffle on an August day, in a hundred degree heat, 3 pm on a Saturday in Glen Rock, New Jersey, I remember and that song came on. The whole class stopped and started cracking up. They're like what happened? Is it New Year's Eve? And I'm like why? What's going on? Because I don't even notice the music. But what happens with the music? It adds that layer of distraction. And now you're focusing on the music and you're flowing and you're moving and you're going to the beat. But what about the beat of the breath?

Dan:

And the beat of the heart and the flow of your flow.

Jody:

And the visceral flow of the fluids through the body. Yeah, wow.

Dan:

The breath and silence are where great things are born out of or arise from, and if we don't allow that space in the class and our practice, then we can't discover the great offerings here. Is it wrong, I mean? No, it's just a matter of actually, when your flower blossom is ready to bloom, you make a change no-transcript.

Jody:

The why, why. Why are you playing music?

Jody:

Why aren't you playing music? The gift of yoga is duality, is embracing both sides. Neither, like you said, is good or bad, or right or wrong. It's. What are you trying to get out of this? What is the purpose that you're doing this asana? One purpose of asana is to Use your body to calm down your nervous system so that you can Sit and concentrate in stillness and silence to meet yourself.

Jody:

The history of yoga isn't about asana. It's not asana focused. It only used asana and poses to Work your body, to work out the kinks physically, but also To calm down the nervous system, to almost shake it off, so that you feel so peaceful enough that you can sit, dan, in silence and stillness and not run. Can we look at yoga asana as a gift and a tool to know thyself and Not as something to obtain or perfect? And I'll share a little secret there's no such thing as the final expression of a pose, please, there's no such thing. Why? Because we're all built so differently that my expression of the pose on a daily basis Changes according to how I feel physically, mentally and emotionally.

Jody:

And the tightness or the openness of my body.

Dan:

Yeah, that's like if you have a regular, regular yoga practice. What you realize is that your physical practice can become a barometer as to how your day is gonna be. You're like, oh man, it's gonna be one of these days. Or, oh man, it's gonna be one of these days, yeah, it's. It's a great tool, it's a great medium.

Dan:

It's when Jodi and I do classes, offer classes or teach classes together, the offerings that we bring together. So my favorite offering, my favorite yoga, is chanting, and I do very simple chance. But when we do a workshop, I'm feeling the energy of the room and I only use chance to draw people in, to draw people in and and, and. And that's really, to me, the essence of asana. If you can move your body in a way and breathe with your movement in a way that draws you in, draws you in, draws you in, that's where you start to discover the real great gifts of this thing. And I'm not saying a great body is a great body. That's a great thing too, but, but, but there comes a moment, I believe, where you're ready to do, to use your asana, to use your body, to use that tool to crack open and shed, shed your next skin to the deeper, truer, more real, genuine, authentic self.

Jody:

I when we become pose-orientated, that doesn't happen Because we're looking to attain something outside of ourselves, and some people are willing, unbeknownst to themselves, to do anything to get a pose because they think it's the right thing to do.

Dan:

I've worked on some of those people Shoulders, wrist injuries. We've seen these characters come through.

Jody:

Just recently, Dan had a young girl who had cervical issues.

Dan:

No cervical curvature and I knew exactly what was going on Too many chaturangas.

Jody:

Cervical means neck. Cervical spine is the upper neck bones and she had no curve. It was straight and it's supposed to be curved. And Dan asked me Joe, what do you think? And I said she's probably also doing headstand and she's not built for it. And she came in, he worked on her and what did she say? I was doing headstand.

Dan:

And chaturangas.

Jody:

Yeah, yeah, Some people will never be able to do some poses. I'm gonna say that again and some of you listening you might not like it. Some people may never be able to do some poses.

Dan:

Because of bony deviations, because of the way your body's built, differently from one human to the next. We're different, exactly yeah.

Jody:

And if you don't honor that or know that and you keep pushing, that's when injury occurs, like lotus, sitting cross-legged and tucking both your feet in. If you don't know what sitting in lotus looks like, google it or hopefully one day we'll show you a picture. But when they sit cross-legged, not everyone's lower, first of all, not everyone's hips can externally rotate, turn out, and then some don't have torsion of the lower leg, movement in the lower leg, so all the stress goes into their knees. And yet in yoga, let's say, people are like everyone in lotus no, everyone not in lotus. So asana needs to become more of a study of your own body within these shapes, that these shapes actually have a function, and Dan and I may do a podcast on the function of these poses, or a course perhaps, because it's important to understand what's the purpose of these poses, not just blindly going into them with instruction or cues that are so outdated they don't make sense. Oh my God, don't get me started, you're getting me started.

Dan:

Yeah, well, here's the thing You're leading away. It's just natural for things to evolve. From independent businessmen figuring out how to get a rocket out into outer space I mean that's an evolution there used to be a whole governmental thing figuring out how to get rockets to space. Everything evolves and advances. So the diaper and getting everybody into positions, that was the time and we're thankful for that time.

Dan:

But everything evolves, and being here with all the neuroscience, with the ability to go to a cadaver lab and open up bodies and see for yourself, all these opportunities fuel the understanding and educate us on how our differences manifest, how our differences can make certain poses not available to certain humans the femurs, the shoulders and the more that we get underneath the skin we see most people have a psoas major, but not all people have a psoas minor, a particular muscle. Some people actually have five, what we call quadriceps, four muscles. Some people have five of them. So there's lots of variations, not just in bones but in muscles and the makeup. Our essentials are obviously our essentials. They're necessary. Everybody has the heart and lungs. We need those. But there are variations within all of us that make it for some not probable for them to get into a pose.

Jody:

And if we look at the eight limbs, the first few, we went through Yama's behavior in the outer world, which will reflect your behavior towards yourself and your inner world. That then leads into this limb, asana, because the way we treat the world and the way we treat ourselves is the way we treat our body. How you do anything is how you do everything. How you do anything is how you do everything. And here on the mat, this big physical dense thing that we're moving here is so gross and dense that we can connect with it a lot easier than we can with the next limbs that will go through later on, because they're more subtle. So this is where we add in the physical body and we're saying here to all you listening, get to know your body, get to know the pain, get to know the freedom, get to know the your senses, the touch, the smell. I mean when I started to learn these things in my body, I can feel things that the norm can't.

Dan:

Right.

Jody:

Just because of my connection, not because I'm special. That's important for you all to hear. There is no oh, dan, and I know more this or that. We just have a different relationship with our body and I gotta tell you all the injuries I've had and traumas I've experienced, if I didn't build a relationship with my body. I wouldn't have known how disassociative and disembodied I was, because there's an aspect of yoga and asana that can enhance disassociation.

Dan:

Yes, here's a note. I've come to believe it's a particular note about pain. I've come to believe that, essentially, if you don't create awareness of the pain in your body, what we do mostly on a subconscious level, sometimes on a conscious level is we adapt to the pain that we're experiencing in our body and that that becomes the raised shoulder or the twisted torso or the hunched over shoulders. We're adapting to pain. Now here's the cool thing if you are brave and courageous enough not to adapt to the pain but rather explore it and work with it, there is, I've come to believe, a threshold with which the turnover where the pain becomes, actually get ready pleasurable, because the reward that you're getting from easing that pain is going to begin to speak louder than the pain itself.

Dan:

And the reason that we experience pain again, I've come to believe, is that we all have a blueprint, a perfect blueprint for our health that we have coded in our DNA, and it's just like the pattern of a leaf on a tree, it's just like the pattern of anything in our world.

Dan:

There is a DNA blueprint, I've come to believe, but of all living things. So we have this perfect blueprint and then we're born and we have life happen to us all sorts of stressors, repetitive emotions over, well overwhelm of our our being, say mentally and emotionally, and these stressors take us off our blueprint. That equation equals pain of one brand, of another, one variety of or another. And so if we can go and explore our pain, get to know our pain, diminish our pain and work with our pain, we start to understand that pain can be rewarding and pleasurable and that's not twisted. If you take the time to work with your pain, you will discover a whole world within yourself and bring yourself to ease and be able to manage your body better and and so your life wow, that was beautiful.

Jody:

Pain is just a messenger. Are you listening? It starts as a whisper, and the whisper gets louder and louder and it starts screaming. And the screams keep going until you stop. And if you don't stop, then the pain gets louder and louder and the body then forces you to stop. I love to share with our listeners a bit about the functional approach to asana just a little so that you can see where we're going and what we love to share with you. Dan, speaking about pain, the body has an optimal alignment. That it where it functions efficiently and well optimally optimally.

Jody:

So it has an alignment. Shall we say that in this alignment you can move and function optimally and efficiently. And everyone starts off with this alignment. If you understand how the joints work, okay. So, if you understand, you have a shoulder joint, you have an arm bone that fits in a socket and it's very mobile and it does certain things. If you know those things that it does, you can then use that knowing in your practice to go to all your ranges of motion to understand where your limits are. If you don't understand the function of the body or how the body is designed to function example your knees are not designed to be locked. Just an example. Now, if you know that and you lock your knees in yoga, you'll start to practice unlocking them and see what that does for your whole system.

Dan:

The rest of you.

Jody:

That's what I mean by optimal. So there's certain things that your joints actually want and need to be to function well. We look at yoga that way. So the Q you hear teachers say, inhale your arms up overhead and pull your shoulder blades down your back. That's not a functional Q, because when you lift your arms overhead, your shoulder blades actually move up to the ceiling and your neck muscles pull your shoulder blades up.

Jody:

Now to tell someone to do the opposite could put them in danger of getting hurt repeatedly over time. Just going to go back to say this is asana, this is the limb of asana, it's the third limb, and we're discussing the body and how you can use the body to move, to disperse and down, regulate nervous energy, but also you get to explore your pain, your freedom, your strength, your weaknesses, so that you know what you need to work on so you can live with ease and health and longevity while you're on this earth. And so the yoga that we're going to offer you throughout these podcasts here and there is this concept of functionality how can you apply function to traditional?

Dan:

yoga poses.

Jody:

And please, please, please remember these poses weren't designed for performances or pictures. These poses, years ago, were used to get you comfortable in your body, pain free, so you can sit in meditation, still, silent, and quiet, so that you could hear your soul rise and discover your true purpose.

Jody:

And that, my friend, is a perfect time to end the eight limbs of yoga. They hold you, they support you. A framework will continue this conversation and if you would like to add to the conversation, you can email us at become one living at gmailcom, and find us on Instagram at become one living. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Dan Boisits

Co-host
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Jody Domerstad-Boisits

Co-host