Frances' Blog - 'Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured' BKS Iyengar

This has long been one of my favourite quotes from Guruji (our teacher BKS Iyengar). Yet it is only in the last few years that it has opened up into new layers of meaning for me. In this last year in particular, I and all of us have had to endure situations that we could never have imagined possible and find ways to deal with them .

Recently I remembered being in a class with Jeanne Maslen, one of the first Iyengar teachers in the country and co-founder of the Manchester Institute. Someone asked her why it is that, in our system of Yoga, we hold the poses for some time, rather than flowing or jumping from one to another. She said that, in part, it helped one to learn how to endure; to face stiffness or discomfort and not immediately turn away from it to the next thing/ posture. And that since we can’t control what Life throws our way, this was a useful thing to learn.

Her answer did not impress me at the time. I was young and flexible and my joy in Yoga was being able to stretch out, easing away the effects of a day of sitting in meetings at work. I had little interest in this pearl of wisdom.

I came across Guruji’s quote when starting the Therapy class at the Centre and it became a kind of mantra. We as a team had many instances of students coming with a sore knee , neck or painful shoulder, and following the tailor made programme devised for them, could then go back to their regular class. Cured, you might say. Yet there were those who joined us because of a long standing or degenerative illness - M S, Parkinson, Ataxia, bi polar syndrome, for whom there is no current cure. What we needed to offer here through this ancient practice, was a means to endure. And within that to soothe, restore, balance and give a different perspective that enabled this person to carry on.

Nothing teaches like personal experience. When my husband Mike was diagnosed with an illness that cannot be cured, we lived through the pain of that reality and I realised a few things about endurance that I must have gleaned from all my years on the yoga mat. One crucial thing was the power, in fact, the necessity of living in the present moment. We chose not to look at prognoses of further down the line and embraced an attitude of doing everything possible to make his quality of daily life the very best. Since he defied all expectations, that was clearly the right call.

Yet in the end endurance has also to contain an element of acceptance, of courageous surrender to what is. Here yoga philosophy helps in teaching us that the body/ mind is not all that we are and that our innermost spiritual essence can actually grow and evolve through the way we face these challenges. We are invited to address our Vrittis, the wandering mind and find ways of bringing it to stillness. In the present. Not that this is easy but at least we can know not to turn away from the discomfort of that.

Now as we glimpse an emerging end to lock down, we are being cautioned that there is still a way to go and that we may need to endure limitations for some time. Perhaps we can employ what we have come to know, on our mats and beyond, to give us the courage to be with each day and each moment, knowing that we are growing stronger in ways we may not yet understand. And certainly can’t control.

With love

Frances