Ray Madigan demonstrates the Chateush Padasana pose for students at his Manoa Yoga Center, using a strap to help draw his body into a curve.
Flex!
Yoga’s secret lies in the
process of controlling ego
For Ray Madigan, an Iyengar yoga practitioner for 13 years, "The great thing is yoga has become popular, and the bad thing is yoga has become popular."
Popularity of the ancient discipline leaves it vulnerable to misinformation, incorrect practices and exploitation in the hands of newcomers looking for shortcuts, to reinvent the practice or simply cash in on its trendiness.
As co-founder and director of Manoa Yoga Center with Shelley Choy, Madigan encourages people to learn the correct postures and, if they wish as they progress, the principles and philosophies behind the practice.
To help people get started, Manoa Yoga Center has teamed with the Star-Bulletin to present a series of yoga exercises, called Yoga for You. Beginning today and continuing every Sunday, the center will present simple stretches and postures that will help ease body tension if used for a few minutes at your desk, to get started in the morning or unwind after work.
Madigan and Choy hope the postures will become the building blocks of a lifelong regimen rather than a quick fix, although they recognize that most who find their way to classes are usually sedentary and look to yoga for relief from aches and pains.
When done properly, yoga is a method of re-educating the body to function optimally, starting with learning to breathe properly to increase oxygen flow through the body, and retraining individuals to sit and stand straight instead of slouching or curling inward, techniques described in Iyengar yoga as "skillful action."
"That's the reason we want to do this," Madigan said. "People sitting in chairs at work get so many afflictions. I'm seeing so much carpal tunnel syndrome; it's like an epidemic and it's preventable."
After learning the basics, however, students find there's more to yoga than fitness.
"Ultimately, they find it's not about the exercises," Choy said. "It's the connection they get. Everybody really wants that in their lives. It's very transformative. We see it happen in students. They might come in very fearful and closed. Over a course of time they transform."
The exercises form only one of eight limbs on yoga's "tree of learning," encompassing mind, body and spirit, Madigan said. "It's a moral and ethical discipline that embraces non-violence, truthfulness, something like the 10 Commandments," he said, "But this is not a religion. We don't challenge any beliefs."
"I thought, 'What are these pictures?' As a young person I was very drawn to the dramatic stuff, and I was always athletic. Growing up in Sydney, Australia, I played cricket. I was into surfing and martial arts, but as a kid looking for information on yoga, I couldn't find anything. It wasn't until I traveled through Asia that I gradually took classes.
"Unlike a lot of people, I was into it not so much from a physical perspective, but as a mind-body discipline, because it's heavily influenced by Asian philosophy."
Choy was a dancer who also practiced martial arts before discovering Iyengar yoga. Her first impression was that compared to dance, it wasn't a challenge.
"I thought, 'This is so static,' and I was missing the music, but as I progressed I came to appreciate the stillness," Choy said. "We don't use music and mirrors because that distracts students from listening to the teacher's instructions. The eyes lead you out so you're more caught up with what you're seeing than the experience of what your body is doing."
If nothing else, a little knowledge will help students recognize newfangled yoga gurus attempting to reinvent the practice, which Madigan feels is a disservice.
"It's a discipline that's been around for thousands and thousands of years. People have built upon it and contributed to it, but in the West, people have the arrogance to say, 'I'm inventing a new kind of yoga,' " he said. "Without understanding the roots we risk turning it into our disease, the disease of the West, which is to say 'I want my yoga this way and we'll make it to fit you.' And that's not how it works.
"In yoga, you've got to change, not change yoga to fit you. In the West we poison things by making it digestible for everyone. That takes away from what it is, a discipline, and we're not used to discipline. We're not used to training our thoughts, our bodies, to go beyond ego. Our whole lives are defined by ego."
To understand yoga, it's necessary to divorce yourself from a Western notion of learning, including the idea of ever mastering yoga.
"It isn't a subject you study. It's a practice so it's always in the moment," said Madigan. "I'm always trying to learn and yoga brings in so much. (Shelley and I are) learning Sanskrit now because we decided we want to learn the yoga sutras.
"You're always presented with a challenge. If you master the ability to balance on one leg for a time, the challenges you used to think were huge don't have the same effect. With that kind of ability, things that normally faze you seem like nothing."
And Madigan learned over time how standing on one's head can make sense from a meditational vs. purely bravura pose. After initial fear that may cause one's heart to race, he said, the posture slows the heart.
"When you master this pose, your mind can take you to a very still spot. It takes a lot of physical and mental poise to balance on your head.
"It's not that you're becoming superhuman, although you will experience increased physical and mental power. What it should give you is the perception of what counts and what doesn't count, without getting caught up in ego-driven desires.
"It's about detachment. It teaches you not to cling. It might help you catch your breath, redefine your direction. When I think of the person I could have been ... let's say I'm less of a lost soul."
For Choy, the most important pose involves lying down and taking deep breaths for a few minutes at the end of the class. "That pose is so powerful because people never allow themselves to be still for a second."
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