concentration and spirituality

I remember watching an episode of Penn and Teller's show "Bullshit". They debunked yoga as anything but spiritual, and in an unscientific way, because they did not first define what spiritual is.

The word 'spiritual' conjures images of middle-aged white women in the Arizona desert, wearing scarves and bindis arms raised and chanting--all waiting for some great revelation to bonk them on the head which will solve all of their worldly problems, with money, with men, their children. To many, spirituality is looking up toward heaven, asking for help from more advanced beings, and looking for a way out of this world and the pain which is inherent. Whatever it is, some notions of spirituality ask for something beyond the laws of nature.

Enter yoga. Yoga, in the U.S., is generally practiced as what is known as 'hatha' yoga to Eastern practicioners. There are traditionally, eight different types of yoga, the physical one being hatha, the one I'll talk about here. The other types of yoga are all different types of meditation, but with the same goal in mind--ultimate awareness.

I have nothing against people who practice hatha yoga to get their bodies in shape. They're doing the same practice I am. They're exerting the same amount of concentration and, whether they know it or not, are strengthening their minds as well as their bodies. There's nothing 'spiritual' per se going on, except what you are focused on and the degree to which you are focused.

Yoga means to yoke... or tie the body to the mind. The most important part is, especially for very cerebral people, to get out of their heads and feel what their bodies are telling them, maybe even for the first time. Your body is what guides your intuition and is a billion year old intelligent system. Like a gutter is designed to carry away the rain, you are designed to function in this world. Compared to the inner brain, the frontal cortex, the language center, is in its infancy. So, if you think you're smart and you're having trouble in the world and don't know why, that's why. You're not listening to your body. If you're always daydreaming and tripping over your shoelaces, and it's gotten a bit old, yoga might be able to help you.

Yoga is a ticket back into the body... and for those with the ability to focus and grasp what is going on--far beyond. (According to the yoga masters, higher levels of awareness do require contemplation.) And although yoga is about stretching the body and feeling good, it also about honing your concentration or Dharana-

-If you haven't tried yoga but are relatively limber... try this. Stand tall. Put your right foot on the inside of your left thigh. Lift your chest up. Now lift your left arm to the sky. Point your right arm, palm out, towards the wall on your right. Now shift your gaze to the right. Now hold this pose for two minutes and try to make the movement as perfect as possible.

Now, you probably fell before you reached the end. If you did not, good for you. If you did, here's why. First, your body probably isn't strong enough. Second, and more importantly, you didn't hold your concentration.

Yes, it's just like a Buddhist monk sitting in front of a candle staring at the flame for two hours. It is focus. It is concentration. And when you full concentrate, you might find, like Helen Keller, all of the outward stimuli of the world is engaged in one focus, but you are still inside. You are not the focus. You are not the chirping voice in your head. It's a razor's edge, I think, and I'm only starting to scratch the surface myself. But beyond the flame, is there a land of strangeness? Spirituality? I'm not sure yet.

Concentration is a key to success in life. It's what athlete's call being in the zone. It's the perfect balance of being there intellectually or aware, perfectly in to what you are doing, but not being self-conscious. What are the things that distract us from paying attention? Noises? Smells? Sounds? Yes, all external stimuli. And sometimes the voice inside us, chirping on about doubts, fears, etc. Whatever it is, what distracts us the most is the experience of discomfort or pain.

Yoga teaches you to experience discomfort and pain, to lean into it and experience it fully, and all the while, to maintain your pose and your focus. Some schools of yoga do not emphasize this path, but for me, it a the route of passion and commitment. It is my intent, through my practice, to be a better person, stronger, more compassionate. So, when I move through discomfort and pain, I keep my goal in mind. The process can feel ennobling, particularly when you are a person who feels much fear, like I do. When your muscles tremble, you breathe into them. When you are afraid in the real world, you breathe into it--you train for courage.

This depth of concentration carries over into the real world. Maybe you find you are no longer phased by blaring ambulances or gunshots. Maybe your significant other can no longer push your buttons. Maybe you overhear someone making fun of your yoga mat and you laugh it off (ha, I was seriously annoyed by that when I first started!). Seriously, the concentration, the ability to weather storms, comes with the concentration. It can take a sensitive person from incapable and weak to able and resilient.

Yogi also trains the self to wield the body. Yogis and monks have demonstrated that they can go slow their heartbeats to almost nothing, that they can survive extremes of temperature like sitting in the snow for periods of time not thought humanly possible. They can go without food or water. They are pushing the limits of what was thought possible of the body. Though I am a beginner, I can see how this happens. The yogi's mind becomes very close to his or her body.

So, spirituality doesn't have to be something otherworldly. However, it is an inner, subjective experience, and like psychology, we'll have to rely on someone's word until we find better ways to quantify the journey into inner space. And yoga doesn't have to be a drug for you or a means of escape. It can be a means to learn concentration and focus which empower you in this world. A warning though--yoga might start showing you patterns in nature that you hadn't noticed before, synchronicities which may be explained by math or perhaps by some underlying meaning or desired meaning to everything. That is part of the mystery of life is you choose to ponder it.