same time to bear the physical pain without aggravating it. Without
certain stress, the true asana is not experienced, and the mind will re
main in its limitations and will not move beyond its existing frontiers.
This limited state of mind can be described as the petty, small mind.
I remember two students who were top ballet dancers. They could
achieve every position without encountering resistance or stress, so the
journey to the final posture could teach them nothing. It was my job
to take them back into the positions and show them how to create mo
bility with resistance in themselves so that they could work at the point
of balance between the known and unknown. When we extend and
expand our body consciousness beyond its present limitations, we are
working on the frontier of the known toward the unknown by an in
telligent expansion of our awareness. Ballet dancers have the opposite
problem to most people in that, because of their excessive flexibility,
their physical capacity outstrips their intellectual consciousness.
When we start practicing asanas, we experience both physical and
mental pain. Just as we must learn to detect the difference between
right physical pain and wrong physical pain, we must do the same with
mental pain. Right mental pain should also be gradual and allow us to
strengthen and not to snap. Getting up at six in the morning to do yoga
before you go to work may seem painful, but it is constructive and in
volves challenging yourself to go beyond your present limits. However,
we must remember to keep our practice progressive and gradual. If you
try to get up so early that this pain will cause your body to rebel, say
four in the morning, you will not be able to sustain the practice. In ad
dition, if getting up at four in the morning causes you to be short of
sleep and irritable with your family, you are being selfish and in addi
tion are transferring your suffering to others. We use right pain like a
vaccine against the unavoidable pain and suffering that life always
sends our way, but the dose must be correct. Asana practice is an op
portunity to look at obstacles in practice and life and discover how we
can c..:ope with them.
S T A II I I. I T Y T II 1'. I' II Y .\ I (' A I. Il l l ll Y I II .\ II N A I