The root word from which yoga evolves is ‘yuj’ which means ‘to join’ or ‘to integrate’, a phrase that is illustrative of a metaphoric fascinating journey. The assertion by India to claim the traditional knowledge of yoga triumphed with the UN declaration of 21st June as the International Yoga Day.
The pages on documenting Yoga have been one and many. Patanjali the ‘man’ instituted the knowledge in his Yoga Sutra (believed that it dates to 250 B.C). However, more than the historical factual reality of the man is the symbolism which he represents which begin with the myth of his origins.
The weight of Vishnu’s body becomes unbearably heavy for the serpent AdiSesh who bears his weight - the God is in the process of yogic unification as he watches the cosmic dance of Shiva. The body of Vishu returns to normal once the performance ends. Vishnu promises the serpent that the knowledge of Yoga will soon be imparted on earth.
The myth proceeds –Yogini Gonika, in meditation, prays for a son so that she can pass her knowledge of yoga. Suddenly a child with a snake tail falls in her cupped hands as she scoops water for the final ritual at the end of her meditation; in surprise, she drops the infant and thus the name pata-anjali (dropped from the cusped palms) to whom Gonika transmitted her knowledge.
The teachings of Patanjali were nothing short of mystical magic. The guru imparted knowledge from behind a screen in silence where the rules included that the disciples were not allowed to go behind the screen, and no one was to leave until teachings were over. Once, a young boy wanting to go to the washroom stepped out, and others looked behind the screen. The sage turned all except the boy who left into ashes. The boy was not entirely forgiven, while he was taught the entire body of knowledge, Patanjali turned him into a hanging ghost until he passed the science to one student. At the end of the myth, Patanjali, the teacher, pitying the boy becomes his student.
Multiple analogies emerge from the myth - the snake as a symbol of concentration, rejuvenation, kundalini, and chakra is what Patanjali represents in the idea of yoga. Secondly, the element of the unseen guru, and silence communicates concepts of complete dissolution of the self, and silence in the receiving of knowledge. Whether or not Patanjali was a person is thus not relevant, it is that metonymy that is important.
A potent tool
Over centuries, irrespective of which cultural group or class one belonged, various threads of yoga have been an inherent part of the long cultural tradition in India and has captured the imagination of the West. Starting with Vivekananda (in “Raja Yoga” in 1896) to inventor Thomas Edison producing the first movie (silent) on the subject titled “Hindoo Fakir” (1902 or 1906) to a league of spiritual gurus in the 1960s -70s, among whom was the ‘Flying Maharishi’ Mahesh Yogi of the Transcendental Meditation and guru of the Beatles, yoga is perceived as a route to anchor people, to provide a tool to counter human alienation, displacement, and depression. In recent years, the concept of yoga is equated with nirvana, inner peace, wellness and is a support against an environment where man struggles to the pressure of his inner battle to quench innate greed and thirst of power symbolised in material wealth, status and resource ownership; where the tools of development and technology in every sphere insert their presence making humans marooned in an existence of absurdity.
The mention of dance in the myth brings out the seminal connect of yoga with arts, imagination, and concept of creativity and engagement with levels of energies. Even before the declaration of the Yoga International Day in 2013, Curator Deborah Diamond at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC in 2013 presented Yoga’s dynamic history in an exhibit titled “Yoga: The Art of Transformation.” It was arguably the world’s first exhibition of yogic art where temple sculptures, devotional icons, vibrant manuscripts and court paintings created in India over 2,000 years were shown along with early modern photographs, books, and films revealing yoga’s mysteries and its profound meanings.
The amazing documentation collected from various institutions included ten folios from the first illustrated compilation of asanas (yogic postures), made for a Mughal emperor in 1602. The visual representation of yoga was no doubt brilliantly painstakingly curated.
Closer home, the symbols of yoga, the mapped geometry as Yantra or the Bindu, have been taken up by modern painters among whom Raza stands foremost; in sculpture in the Kandariya Mahadev temple in Khajuraho, the complex sculptural composition which appears sexual where a man standing on his head in the company of three women is decoded by art historian Devangana Desai as the Kamaa Kala Yanta, where the man is the central spinal cord and the women represent the three channels (Isa, pingla, sushumna) of energy so seminal to the idea of yoga.
In the journey of sound and Indian musical traditions concepts of naad, the eternal sound, shruti – the concept of listening becomes the goal of internalisation and captures all that is symbolic in the Patanjali myth and is vibrantly relived every time a musician is immersed in his art, and the final aim of rendering of any music is taking the audience into the realm of the world of integrated world of the void.
A dynamic process
Dance not only is innate in the myth but like in music the concept of yoga is a living tradition in transmission, internalisation and realisation. Since the art like yoga is a dynamic process where there is an integration of mind, body and spirit, Pandit Birju Maharaj says, “It is seminal that one submerges oneself and aspires to shoonyata or void, only then one actually performs.” Dancers like Chandralekha pursued from within the tradition of a dynamic yogic essence. She did not want a legacy (like the annihilation of the teacher in the Patanjali myth); her journey was about getting to an organic realisation of the energy represented through the body.
Odissi dancer Rekha Tandon’s recently published book Dance as Yoga: The Spirit and Technique of Odissi is a manifestation of an odyssey which involves an engagement with the ethos of movement.
So while the elements of mind, body, and breath were part of her training in yoga, her conscious relation to dance took her to study the Laban Movement analysis which in some way like yoga involves the study of emotions, thoughts in interaction with the idea of movement and awareness of which can improve output.
Ultimate essence
Rekha, who used her study of the movement of multiple cultural systems to train the gotipua dancers in Odisha, says, “In both dance and yoga, the body is the Mandala or Yantra where one explores energy enclosed in the body map. The route of sadhana or integration is primarily meditated in the manner how sound and movement move together… and where choreographic explorations tend to be spatially oriented and where textual passages have greater gaps and silences.” Yes, the ultimate essence then of yoga becomes the idea of silence and the submission of the self into nothingness, completely opposed to the journey of modern man.
