Two Great Allies: Creativity and Ingenuity

When I first started practicing with Guruji he barely adjusted me. I started to become hyperaware of this fact. While I was practicing I would be aware of where he was in the room, who he was adjusting, and wondering when he was going to walk over and help me. There were days when I would leave the shala furious that he paid no attention to me. And then one day I gave up all hope that he would ever help me. I stopped looking around for him, noticing where he was, I dropped needing him. I went inside my own skin, breathed, and started to make my own creative choices about how I needed to proceed in my practice. Guess what? That was the day he started to regularly adjust me.

Creativity is the use of your imagination to produce a work of art. Ingenuity is to be clever, original and inventive.

Understand that the farther you go along the road to mastery of each aspect of hatha yoga technology the more you must rely on your own creativity, ingenuity, perceptions, strategies, problem solving capabilities, aesthetics, sense of propriety, discernment, arms, legs, spine, heart, center, and intellect. 

Every exercise in practice provides you with a microcosmic opportunity to advance along your solitary path to the macrocosmic pinnacle of yoga. Making tiny personal decisions in your practice each day, like discriminating between when to lift your chest or when to extend your legs in Urdhva Dhanurasana, are the servants that help you come to a state of Kaivalya, Aloneness of Seeing, and helps you to realize your Svarupa, Intrinsic Essence or Original Nature.

Therefore, remember, first and foremost, to consult yourself in every circumstance, know that the answer you seek lies within you even when you are confused, ignorant, clueless, in the dark, frustrated or confounded. Your teacher can help guide you but, even so, turning to yourself is the root of all your knowledge, and you come to it by diminishing ego and entering into your own exhaustive and fruitful process of inquiry.

Not Krishnamacharya, Pattabhi Jois, Iyengar, Rumi, Hafiz, Lalla, nor The Divine Friend herself, could ever describe what does or needs to take place within your body when you strike an asana, plug into the vast network of pranic circuits that electrify your entire body, and awaken the discriminative psychic faculty known as buddhi—intuition, intellect, or creative mind.

The best part of practice is that many indescribable, original discoveries await you, and you only. Yogis have the courage to go into the dark alone. We can journey far into our own ingenuity because we have faith in the invisible language of the heart and trust in the soul’s need to wander in the dark within the confines of our own bodies to find the light.