Practice, practice, all is going…

“Youth is wasted on the Young” – Common English phrase.

“I am not young anymore” came the realisation, softly arising midway through a recent Ayurvedic retreat in India.

Coming by themselves, tears of release rolled slowly down my cheek together with a sense of mourning for something passed. Following this came the relief, the letting go, the realisation that I didn’t have to try anymore to be something I wasn’t. It was, I imagine the culmination of a number of years of holding on.

Then, a gratifude arose, a thankfulness for gettting to witness so naturally and clearly this transition from one stage of life (ashrama) to another. There were no initiatory rites of passage, no elders waiting to welcome me with banging drums and dance. I went into the consulation room to meet the young doctor. “Yes, you are becoming a Vanaprastha,” he said nonchalantly.

Unlike our culture which tends to recognise childhood, ‘so-called’ adulthood and finally obsolescence, the Indian culture recognises four stages of life, each with their own unique attributes and qualities, no one more important than the other, each respected on its own terms (in theory at least).

The vanaprastha (path to the forest) stage is the stage wherein one begins to gradually withdraw from societal material involvement, passing on what one has learned to the next generation. The ambitions of worldly attainments and status are reliquished.

We live in a culture that, instead of celebrating the natural cycles of life, celebrates only one of them – youth. While the seasons pass one to the next (spring, summer, autumn, winter – in case you forgot), we imagine that we can live in perpetual spring.

The industry machine (including the yoga one) thrives on and promotes this addiction to youth. But this addiction while it may seem to promote life and vitality is in actual fact anti-life, for we, like life, have our seasons and pass through them one to the next.

Instead many cling desperately to youth digging fingernails in, refusing to let go, living in an illusory shallowness and self-deception. In holding onto youth passed its time something is lost - the letting go, the maturing into the wisdom of life’s cycles., the natural beauty of graceful aging. There is nothing to be ashamed of in getting older, in moving towards becoming an elder. This too is worthy of venerable celebration.

Even when old age is celebrated in our culture, however, it is usually in regard only to how much youth has been retained. “Look, this 70 year old can still do this!”.

This PeterPan-ism, the absurdity of the boy-who-never-grew-up, is something observable too in the world of yoga. I felt a little dismayed seeing recently the hastag ‘Stayyoungforever’ beside an older man performing camerasana.

Forget about authentic wisdom, in the social media platforms it is the ability to posture that is lauded and applauded. Glorified is the notion that even as we age we can continue to religiously practice forms of physical culture originally developed as exercise routines for young Indian boys.

Let me tell you a little secret. Enjoy these forms while they last because they are not sustainable. Those who have invested their self-esteem and reputation on the ability to do x,y and z with their body will likely torture and damage themselves well beyond the time when it is appropriate to do (or at least pretend to), encouraging their audience and followers to do likewise in the process. You don’t get to see the other side of the camera lens. The pains, the struggles, the vanity.

If we listen to the body’s intelligence, however, as it ages there is the opportunity to maybe even start doing a little yoga (if such a thing were to exist). We might begin to hear the body’s own authentic voice instead of imposing on it museum piece cultural forms, inappropriately emulating Instagram ‘stars’ or blindly following the dictates of some Guruji’s ‘correct method’.

Yoga is not a tool for staying young. It is a tool for meeting oneself where one is, how one is, whatever stage of life one happens to find oneself in. The magic comes from paying attention to what is, not from the attempt to manipulate what is to get it to go where you think it should go (an idea that could only ever be an external imposition anyway).

Many of the older Ashtanga practitioners I have spoken to talk of their relief at finally being able to let go of the rigid adherence to sequences and principles that were no longer appropriate for their aging bodies. One spoke of how he starts each practice with his legs up the wall and takes it from there. Another says she starts at the beginning, finishes at the end and allows the middle to be whatever it is.

These are not lazy yogis, these individuals were the among the vanguard who gave everything they had to yoga and paved the way for a next generation of which I am a part.

These are the honest ones. I have also met others who wish to maintain an illusion over uberyogliness in claiming they still practice whatever series (as if it really mattered).

Nowadays I am finding many shifts too in my own explorations of embodiment (I don't consider the word 'yoga' really appropriate or useful - except in advertising!) which now increasingly deviates from the ‘classical’ forms of Ashtanga to something more Ashtang-ish.

I’ll admit that sometimes I feel a nostalgia for being able to do with ease certain things with my body (particularly when I see younger folk perform effortlessly what is now a little more difficult). Mostly, however, I am feeling a sense of relief at finally giving myself a break, knowing that I no longer need to put myself through those intensive, exhaustive practices that often left me wiped and burned out. I no longer need to be young.

I like to think that through this letting go something else is now beginning to bloom, something that might be called ‘wisdom’. I guess I still like egoistic conceit as much as the next guy !