I had the wonderful opportunity of taking 3 different backpacking trips in my 20’s. About 3 months total, visiting Europe and Asia, with only a Kelty pack on my back, traipsing through distant lands, hiking, staying in hostels, taking buses, trains, and boats, eating the local street food, sending emails from internet cafes and reaching out to our family back home with a calling card on a public pay phone. Can you imagine?? Those were the days. I was light, unencumbered, with few responsibilities and as mobile as the public transport system of that country.
Now, when I travel, our family of 6 is heavily weighted. The sheer number of people that we are responsible for results in an embarrassing amount of luggage. We’ve outgrown the stroller phase, but there was a time when we had multiple carseats, boosters, and strollers in addition to our bulging suitcases…we were quite a sight to see. The carseats and strollers may be gone, but our long line of suitcases is ever present, and I look forward to the day when each child is responsible for his/her possessions and we slim down a bit. However, I doubt that I will go back to the backpack. I’ve gotten quite comfortable with having more than what I can fit on my back and having the luxury of choice (like more than one pair of shoes!) on my journeys.
There is a bit of a metaphor here for my journey into my yoga practice.
Once upon a time, yoga equaled unrolling my mat and moving through my whole practice with nothing more than my limbs supporting me. Occasionally, I still do. But most days, it’s quite a different story. There is nothing quite like the joy of easing into my yoga practice with the luxury and support of my props. Sometimes, it is more of a slim practice, with a couple blankets to sit on, and support for shoulderstand. Other days, it looks like a bomb went off in my studio with every single prop out and scattered all over the place. What may look like disarray to the casual observer, is actually a well calibrated plan for learning, support and challenge. I love my props. I love the textures of my blankets, cotton or wool, and how they can form a firm support or unfold and swaddle me in comfort. I love the different weights and smoothness of my blocks, and how they can challenge me to work my arms, or stimulate my heart, or adjust my sacrum. I love how my belts can make my feet within arm’s reach, or offer compressive relief to my pelvis, or bind my arms and open my chest. I love the soft roundness of my bolsters, jewel toned and always ready to offer exactly the right shape at the right time. To be able to drape myself over the bolster and feel that I’ve received a hug from a dear friend in return. I love the sandbags that ground me. I love the versatile yoga chair that can function as literally anything you could possibly imagine (just ask Eyal Shifroni who has written two books on the subject of chair yoga!). They have become an integral part of my life, and now I cannot imagine what life or yoga would be without them. They offer variety, inspiration and yes, friendship.
Unlike a friend, however, a prop is neutral. It takes upon the identity that we, the practitioners, assign it. They embody the purpose that we bestow them. This makes us rather powerful. And with great power, comes great responsibility, to quote Spiderman’s Uncle Ben. We have a responsibility in our prop usage to be judicious. As we should in all of our practice, but as Iyengar Yoga practitioners, we can sometimes become overly dependent upon props, or take advantage of their place in our lives. They feature so prominently because they can truly be transformative…instructing us to achieve ideal alignment, making available a pose that would not otherwise be possible, challenging a simpler pose by adding intensity, sharpening a sensory experience, or simply offering a restorative way to exist in an asana. We are blessed to have the props system, to have the access, guidance and legacy of BKS Iyengar, the Iyengar family, and the senior teachers who have researched and investigated the numerous creative and therapeutic usages of our props. Though Iyengar Yoga is the most prominently associated with props, most styles of yoga happily use them to some degree. However, I find that I must be careful not to let this association define my practice. Yes, to some degree, it does. What can I say, I love props! But what I’m getting at is the danger of dulling our mind or our body by the habituated usage of the props so that we move out of the moment and into an unthinking routine. We are a dynamic species, and as our learning curve moves and adapts, so must our environment similarly be refreshed. Or at least our relationship with our environment.
I suppose that this is the core of connection to our props, it is a relationship. The depth of my relationship with anyone or anything is measured by the level of honest communication with them. We must constantly communicate, at least mentally, our intention in how we will relate to the prop at any given time. This requires a level of discernment on our part, a further development of the buddhi (discriminating intelligence) aspect of our consciousness, our citta. When am I using the prop as a crutch? Am I abusing the ubiquitous prevalence of props to cheat myself out of a fuller expression of asana in my practice? Am I using the same prop today as I did yesterday, instead of looking at myself as fresh and new? We use our memory to our advantage, especially in the earlier learning stages, to remember what worked before so we can more quickly enter a pose or support ourselves as necessary. However, as we become more advanced in our practice, we need to let go of some of those many deep associations and experiences, of our samskaras (impressions in our consciousness from our previous experiences). Even the positive ones. As they drop away, only then can I truly begin to experience who I am in this particular moment. This is difficult, especially as it may be asking me to drop away some of my attachment to my beloved props. I wrote earlier that we bestow an identity unto the prop; it could be that it is also bestowing an identity upon us. It is an interesting question to ponder…who am I without my props? What is my practice like without them? Does a feeling of insecurity arise? Is the body itself not the ultimate prop? Does my body even belong to me? All of this attachment and identity are also part of our consciousness, as our ego, our ahamkara. For me at least, at this stage, it is enough to ask the questions, while still using the props. Like I said earlier, I don’t think I’ll go back to traveling for months on end with only a backpack; but perhaps it is time to unpack a bit of the luggage, and see what needs weeding out.