The reluctant wife has enthusiastically dragged me to hot yoga - the modern version of the Indian practice of stretching/exercise that is done in a room that is heated to nearly 100 degrees F. and 40% humidity. Not sure what to expect, but thinking it might be relaxing and improve my flexibility, I put on my gym clothes and tagged along. What a workout! I was drenched in sweat in no time and confused by how strenuous the simple act of doing this stretch and then that one could be. I was also confused, but intrigued, by the instructions from the various class leaders we would encounter over the next few weeks. There was a mishmash of languages - the poses were described in a foreign tongue, which I expected - but also directions that just didn't seem to make sense, like "relax the muscles at the backs of your eyes." Do I have muscles there? If so, do I have conscious control over them?
While not knowledgeable, by any stretch of the imagination, about yoga, I was not completely naive. I knew that it was more than simply a course of exercise - and also knew that it was being publicly advertised and presumably privately consumed as an exercise routine, like jazzercise or aerobics at the gym. I don't know this for sure because there is no talking before class - it is presented as a meditative activity - everyone enters the room and stretches out on their backs on a mat and waits quietly for the instructor to enter the room before continuing the practice with other choreographed poses (lying flat on your back is the first and usually the last or next to last pose), so I haven't talked to the other people in the class to find out why they are there.
And yet yoga is more than a physical exercise. It is a mental one as well - one that is tied to various religious practices, practices that have been deeply explored by psychoanalytic thinkers as they have compared Eastern conceptions of consciousness with psychoanalytic insights about the functioning of the mind. And this morning, my favorite instructor, Joe, who frequently makes the most bizarre recommendations, noted that the end point of the practice of yoga is not physical health, though that is part of it, but bliss.
What a goal! And is this the goal of psychoanalysis? The position that we analysts have patients assume, lying flat on their backs, looking at the ceiling, is similar to that first and last yoga pose of each session. We try to limit the physical stimulation that would interfere with a person being able to follow their thoughts - and we also try - through our silence - to limit the interruptions that our thinking, that our words, would impose on the free associations that would emerge in the mind and then make their way to the lips.
But our goal, psychological health, seems somehow less noble, less lofty. On the other hand, while we say that we are working towards health, there is evidence that our goals, too, are more far reaching. Analysis frequently continues after "psychological health", at least as measured by lack of symptoms, has been achieved. That is, our patients frequently feel satisfied by our treatment before we believe they have achieved our sometimes poorly articulated psychoanalytic goals. Now, all this said, I feel the need to say somewhat defensively, that one of the strengths of analytic treatment versus other kinds of treatment, is that treatment gains are maintained - in fact they continue to improve after the end of treatment. To what end? Is the truly psychologically healthy person blissful? Is the well analyzed person in a state of increasing bliss?
Well, my practice of yoga thus far has not been all that blissful. And I daresay that the practice of analysis - as analysand and then as analyst - has been filled with difficult stretches. Neither practice leads to bliss, if either does, in a day. Both require dedication over a long period of time to achieve whatever it is that the participant achieves - whether physical, mental or spiritual "health", or something grander, greater and more joyful; bliss.
What impresses me, as a novice practitioner of yoga, is the ways that the crazy statements of the instructors are beginning to make sense. Today, while we were in a pose that had our right thigh pressed against our stomachs, Joe pointed out that our breathing was more difficult. This was because our stomachs, and, indeed our chests, could not expand in the ways that they usually do. He noted that we could breathe through our left lung in a more normal way. And I'll be damned if he wasn't right. I could bring air with muscles on the left side of my body into my left lung - and not expand the right side as much. I have (limited) asymmetrical control of my breathing! Who knew? Now my guess is that if I practice this, it will improve. Amazing.
But the important experience in that moment was not about what was happening within my body, but the knowledge that Joe knows his own experience - whether through his own practice or as a result of being taught and retaining the information - that he knows and passes along to me as information about the functioning of my body - the ability of my mind to control aspects of the functioning of my body that, until that moment, and until being in that kind of position, I would not have been able to imagine or to comprehend - but in that moment, there is a sense that he knows something about my functioning because he knows something about his own functioning and there are two types of learning - one, that I can function in new ways, and, two, that others can know and apprehend this as well.
Now I think this is part and parcel of every moment of teaching, but there seems to be a different quality of this in the teaching that takes place in yoga and, I think, in analysis. In analysis, as in yoga, the goal is to be present to the present moment. To know what it is that is occurring right now. This state of being is an incredibly autonomous one. It requires being fully and completely immersed in oneself. In yoga, and here forgive my rudimentary understanding, using the body as a vehicle to transcend bodily awareness and to be present to something greater - a sense of the universal in this particular moment - something that is not determined by, but that is entirely dependent upon, the physical and emotional alignment of all that is in tune at this moment is the goal of the endeavor.
Freud himself started with the body, and a model of the mind that is based on a conception of the functioning of the nervous system as a stand alone instrument. He was trained as a neurologist. And then, when his neurological explanations for people's symptoms failed him, he started listening to people's (and his own) thoughts and he started writing about our subjectivity. And, at first, he was listening as a neurologist, and created models of the mind with entities (the ego and the id) and systems of functioning (one of his models of the mind is a hydraulic one), but, in his paper on Mourning and Melancholia, Freud noticed something paradoxical - that we, these individual units of functioning, are built to engage in relationships. In many ways, 20th century psychoanalytic thinking was about coming to grips with the ways in which relating is integral to the functioning of the mind.
And analysis, from very early to the present, has been about creating moments between the analyst and the analysand that are alive. Moments in which they are aware of themselves and each other in profoundly deep, but also very direct and immediate ways. Much as Joe was aware of the capacity of my lungs to function in a very different way than I had ever imagined, an analyst is able to help an analysand appreciate that his or her mind can function in a very different way than he or she has ever been able to realize, and to do that in this moment in the context of this relationship.
I think this may be why the three part system of training psychoanalysts is important. We must undergo our own analyses, read and go to classes, and be supervised in our work. The function of being a student, but also a teacher, of being supervised but also supervising can help keep alive the sense of what it feels like to be on the couch, to be following our own thoughts - to have our metaphorical thigh up against our chest and to discover that we can breath with the other lung. Many of my peers go into second and even third analyses, partly, I think, to address issues that they have not yet addressed, but also, I think, to keep sharp and in practice with being in the driver's seat - of being an analysand, of practicing this craft that we practice on others, just as I'm sure that Joe practices his craft and just as I'm sure that Joe knows about the functioning of the lungs not just because he has been taught about that, but because he has engaged in the practice of breathing, and of relaxing the muscles behind the eyes, something that, with practice, becomes easier and easier. Whether it leads, through joy to bliss - and whether psychoanalysis is a parallel path is something that I am open to, though also aware, at least in the psychoanalytic community, of a tendency to idealize what psychoanalysis can achieve. How often does yoga, psychoanalysis, or living in whatever manner lead to bliss? I'd love to know...
Postscript: It is now one and a half years later (August, 2015), and Joe is leaving town due to family obligations. I have continued to "practice" yoga - generally going to class once or twice a week - and on vacations we sometimes are able to be in class every day. I do yoga stretches before and after other exercise during the week, though it hardly feels like "practice" - more like stretching. That said, the quality of my appreciation of my stretches is significantly different. I can feel separate muscle groups where before I simply felt a general stretch. I am also able to function differently in games - enough that the people I play with have commented on it.
Joe has continued to be my favorite instructor. His sense of the internal experience of the practice and his ability to guide us through the practice has been excellent - he has also given classes on anatomy that have explained what is happening on a muscular level. I have learned, in these classes, concretely what he is trying to help us achieve when he gives us particular directions.
Joe has taught us that the point of yoga is to prepare us to meditate - to sit for long periods of time - 2,4,6, or 8 hours or more - in a deeply meditative state. I have not engaged in this part of the practice - other than at the beginning and end of the active yoga - but some points of incompatibility between yoga and the meditation that is being described and psychoanalysis have emerged. The goal of yoga, in my primitive understanding, is to achieve a thoughtless state. To allow the breath to fill our consciousness. The goal of analysis is to follow our thoughts. To learn to articulate experiences - including those that have been inchoate - wordless. Yoga puts nothing where words would be while analysis puts words where nothing has been. These are very different but hopefully complementary processes. I assume that they come together in the experience of clarity - clarity of thought and clarity of being. Both processes, I think, contribute to this goal.
There is more to read about this - I have not done much reading. I will continue to practice with the other teachers at the studio. But I will miss Joe. Unlike in the psychoanalytic relationship with the "teacher", Joe knows relatively little about me as a unique individual. But there is a sense of connection that has been gained as the result of allowing his words to guide the exploration of my body and thoughts. Of course, others have been in the room with us as well. I assume that others feel the connection. I know that the reluctant wife feels it, too. It is a shared experience that each of us experiences uniquely. When I was at a Hozier concert, I couldn't quite figure out who Hozier reminded me of - his stage presence evoked someone. And it was Joe.
Today was a typical class. Joe lead us through a series of poses, helping us position ourselves within each pose, helping me to concentrate on what needed to be attended to at each moment. I wished that I could record it, but also am aware that each class is unique. I have puzzled over this, and then remembered that, in addition to our taking our cues from Joe, he takes cues from us. I see him adjusting the posture of one student and hear him instructing all of us in that shift. Just as a group interpretation can have some meaning (see a note on that here), so our functioning as a group is related to our individual functioning. We become a weird collective organism (again the Hozier concert comes to mind). Recording and sticking with one routine would leave something vital out of the practice.
And today was the final class with Joe. I rediscovered, for the umpteenth time, something that I learned in my own analysis - that life is better lived when we get to live it than when we have to. Since it was Joe's last class, I wanted to savor it - I wanted to have the class stretch (as it were - unintended pun). And, unlike the typical Saturday morning class that I wanted to race to the end of, I wanted to soak it in. And so it went, ironically, much more quickly than usual. Rather than feeling relieved when the final floor stretches arrived - relieved and exhausted - I felt more invigorated and energized than I have in a long time. I will try to hang onto this feeling of engagement as I work with the other instructors, while also remembering, as best I am able, the instructions of my master teacher.
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