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Yoga, Beginners and the Media
an interview with Rodrigo Figueroa
by Diane Wanger
Yoga is the rage today. Madonna, Gwenyth Paltrow, Meg Ryan, Sting to name a few, all swear by it and they do look good. But do you need to practice yoga with a big name instructor? Do you need to do Bikram and have a body to die for to receive the myriad of benefits to body mind and spirit implied by the popular media?
Rodrigo Figueroa, a resident yoga instructor and massage therapist at Pura Vida Spa in Costa Rica talks about his thoughts on yogic philosophy, the Western yoga student and how one can derive the most from their practice.
Figueroa believes that the best way for a student of yoga to learn is by the experience itself, not someone else’s description of the experience. In other words, "to become a yogi is to learn to fly on your own. Yoga is more about experiencing your own body and understanding how your body can really perform the asanas . . . Instructors can give suggestions, but in the end you are the one who has to deal with your own reality, your own body and then perform what you can do."
Figueroa was first introduced to yoga while attending at the university in San Jose, Costa Rica but it was not a permanent part of his life. It was not until 10 years ago, after a back injury and emotional turmoil in his life, that he renewed his interest in the practice.
Figueroa understands that the asanas that westerners think of as yoga, (what Figueroa likes to call asana yoga to differentiate from the yogic philosophy of Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras), is only one piece of the puzzle.
Serious yogi’s want to learn the truth about themselves and their relationship to the world, "so the asanas become a tool, not a goal."
"Because of the popularity of things like Bikram, people think yoga is doing aerobics.
It is not. Bikram people feel very well and they calm a little the mind. [But] spiritual energy is not raised." Many yoga practitioners, particularly beginners and men, to a greater extent than women, obsess about their inflexibility . In doing so, they miss the point entirely. "When you go deeply into yourself you are practicing yoga""I am not an acrobat. I’m more flexible than a lot of people, but what about it? That doesn’t make me a better person. There can be dancers who are more flexible than me, but that’s not yoga. . . [Asana] yoga has a beautiful approach that starts with the physical and then goes beyond the physical. . . [Asana] yoga can teach you to move through your fear (in a pose) and as a result "the mind becomes more and more flexible. . . and then you can go beyond the mind. The goal of yogic philosophy is to "stop being under the control of your mind"
This ties back to Figueroa’s emphasis on the importance of experience versus what you are told [by an instructor] or what you believe. It is "one thing to believe, another thing is to have an experience about something. They’re not the same." Figueroa emphasizes having the experience and forgetting about your beliefs. "Beliefs are just something happening in your mind."
We react many times, and not just practicing yoga, according to memories. "Let’s say that I was in a relationship with a blonde and then I have trouble with the blonde and [I think] all blondes can be dangerous to me. We get very stupid ideas from the experiences that we have. We have a memory and then we have imagination and then we create a beautiful stupid story. We work on that level and that is why we suffer so much"
The pattern created by memories can be broken by going beyond your fear. In an asana, if discomfort arises "start observing if the pain that you may be experiencing is a real pain or is your fear of accomplishing something." Figueroa constantly invites his students to discover their body, but slowly, without pushing. If you are gentle with the body, poses that may now elude you will come, "because as you keep trying it and keep refining, at some time your body is ready to do it without strain."
Figueroa feels that books like Iyengar’s Light on Yoga "doesn’t give any light, because you can see what the master can do, but you don’t see what a 40 year old man who has never done anything", can do. "These books mislead you because they are not set for the level of a Western beginner. You force a pose that looks like in the book and the next day everything hurts and so you don’t continue." Figueroa prefers books like Erich Schiffman’s that starts in phases and shows that you can be here, here or here.
In summation, Figueroa sees the goal of asana yoga as not "to be an acrobat, or that flexible or powerful or a nice looking guy," although the practice "helps you improve your health and to enjoy life in a better way. You discover your body. When it is in balance physically and mentally . . . you have more energy available for whatever purpose you have. That’s why the [asana] yoga we see today is so popular, because you can see the benefits. . . You are never to old, never too sick, [it’s] never to late to start from scratch with yoga."