The Animal Body
Have you ever wondered why Yoga āsana are named after animals?
We have a whole bunch of them: the cobra, the peacock, of course the dogs, we also have a camel, a fish, and a dove…
When I started with Yoga over 20 years ago i never spent a lot of thoughts on this. I giggled a bit when I heard them the first time, but I didn’t really think about it. After getting used to their names, I put a little effort into pronouncing them correctly in Sanskrit, but that was it.
A few things led to a thought, or feeling, that maybe the names were chosen intentionally. And here is a web that I knotted together over the past years which I’d like to present to you.
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I think of an ancient YogiNi as someone who was deeply One with nature. Because there simply was not much ‘civilisation.’
We were living in wilderness. All over the world.
Life must have been nothing like what our lives are now.
Time was measured entirely through signs in nature, like sun cycles, moon cycles and the cycles of life such as the seasons.
I once listened to the great living Yogini Angela Farmer as she talked about her thinking on ancient YogiNis. In her opinion, a YogiNi didn´t think of the yogic techniques as a theoretical construction, like, “i think my second chakra doesn´t flow, how about inventing an āsana that can bring it into flow and i will name it…hmmm, let’s see… chakraflowāsana”.
She suggested that ancient YogiNis might have somehow imitated different behaviours in nature in humans, (kaphalabati—a toddler having a tantrum?), in animals, or something they saw, for example sitting at a riverside, listening to the trees and birds, they might have noticed that the way they were sitting was nice for different body parts, relaxing and opening up tissues, imitating the sound of the wind or the movement of animals… and afterwards someone named it.
So if we assume an ancient YogiNi was sometimes imitating animals— what could be an explanation for this? Why would they do that?
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A few years ago I was attending a lecture. The mind was wandering around by itself and I sadly didn´t get everything said in that specific moment…
But then the speaker quoted somebody (and I apologise, I can’t find the source of the quote in the whole world wide web… so please let me know who said it) and it was something like this:
“you have to become a tree if you want to understand a tree, you have to become an animal if you want to understand the animal…”
Do you know those moments when something is itching in the back of your head and you can actually feel your brain working, because it has stepped on something precious? That was one of these moments.
I love them.
I love when different themes somehow get tied magically together and the web of the mysteries of life gets connected.
And you simply know.
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So let us assume an ancient YogiNi felt this principle and wanted to learn from nature in a non-theoretical way, through becoming it and embodying certain qualities.
Then consider how people all over the world have always had their totems, or consider how clans dedicated their lives to a specific animal.
In ancient times, fighters would transform into their animal totems, embodying them (like the german “Berserkers“ dressing in bear and wolf furs, acting and living like them, imitating them,, probably to gain their strength and skills). Or remember the werewolves — humans becoming wolves on fullmoon nights. Or Shamans, guided by spirit animals, consulting their wisdom and sometimes transforming into them, letting their spirits act through the shaman’s body.
Our histories are full of stories of humans shapeshifting into animals.
So, what if ancient YogiNis found a brilliant way to step into the world behind thought patterns, behind the sight, behind the veil, behind the curtains?
A world much more deeper than our mind can capture.
The true nature of all beings, connected with each other…
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Let me take you a little further, a few years back.
I had an appointment with an osteopath. We had a lovely chat about bodywork, Yoga, prāṇāyama and how it all fits together.
While we were chatting, my mind was wandering around. You know, when you think of stuff, processing and digging into memories to relate to.
As my mind was wandering, so were my eyes. Nothing special, just thinking and eye movement expressing brain movement.
I heard myself saying, “That´s fascinating, isn’t it?”
Then, exactly in that moment, my eyes caught sight of a book in the bookshelf with big letters written across the back of it.
It said: “FASCIA”
And it hit me…
Do you know that feeling when you feel something truthful, but can’t yet grasp, can’t quite find words? Sometimes you don’t need words, but they can help us to go deeper into the topic, once the mind understands.
I searched the world wide web to learn more about fascia. There was a whole lot of theoretical stuff about the anatomical function. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. What caught me was the hypothesis that the fascia is a sensing organ.
What if this was true? If our fascia actually is a huge sensing organ?
The fascia is One interconnected tissue, like a web…and that’s a good reference image, really. Imagine a spider sitting in a corner of its web, thinking of nothing special (maybe what nice work it has done), when it suddenly senses a vibration transported through its web.
The fascia is said to be an important element of proprioception (the sixth sense, the capability to feel oneself in relation to the surrounding area).
The German researcher Martin Grunwald explains so beautifully in his book Homo Hapticus, that the feeling sense is the first sense which an embryo develops. It helps the embryo get orientated, and even if the embryo is stressed, it will touch itself in the face.
(I love to imagine myself swimming in a perfectly warm ocean, floating around and feeling the touch on my skin…)
“Your baby begins to develop on a sensory level from the moment of conception. The first sense to develop is the sense of touch, emerging at three weeks gestation — before you knew you were pregnant. By the twelfth week, your baby can feel and responds to touch on his entire body, with the exception of the top of his head, which remains insensitive until birth.”
So our capability to actually feel and sense the world is older than our capability to think about it or express and judge. In our original form as babies we were all deeply feeling living beings. Understanding the fascia could actually shift our capability to feel the world, to sense it without analysing it. To embrace things far beyond what our minds are capable of capturing.
Like how a bird can feel disturbances far away.
It is a knowledge, a wisdom you know with your whole being, rather than something learnt through books (although I really do love books).
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When I play around with a word I am fascinated with, I like to look up where the word originates from. When you type ‘fascinating’ into Wikipedia, this is what it says:
From the latin word fasciare, meaning
- spellbound
- euphoric interest
- the act of fascinating, enchanting
- an act of binding
…so is it in its original sense something mystical?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as something that “will hold you spellbound.”
The fascia is one huge web of tissues throughout our bodies and covering it. It is interconnecting every inch of our body, binding it together and enabling us to feel the world.
Remember the spider web?
All we have to do is activate the body — the animal body.
But how do we do that?
Simply by letting our animal body come alive, so that our bodies no longer are vehicles, carrying our mind, but are recognised for their deep inherent wisdom. By recognising the intelligence of the body, we awaken our feeling sense.
You know that feeling when you enter a room and you can simply feel something is wrong? Or you can feel someone walking behind you? Or you feel when someone is watching you (I actually woke up one night, because my dog was looking at me so intensely).
We all have this feeling ability. Conscious or unconscious.
So firstly, we have a definition of Yoga from the ancient sage Patañjali:
“yogas-citta-vritti-nirodhah”
meaning: “Yoga is to stop the whirlings of the mind” or as the famous T.Krishnamacharya would explain it, that Yoga is to direct consciousness via the mind in a direction of choice with continuity. You can find an elaboration on this Sutra here: https://markwhitwell.medium.com/what-does-yoga%C5%9B-citta-v%E1%B9%9Btti-nirodha%E1%B8%A5-mean-mark-whitwell-on-patanjali-yoga-sutra-1-2-cf2555dd6331
In my experience, this Sutra is not a goal in itself, but a step to something hidden behind our minds.
And what happens when Yoga is doing its magic, when the mind becomes quiet?
We feel.
And the mind can serve the body…
Second, we have the anatomical knowledge of how to let the fascia, the huge sensing organ, come to life.
It happens through relaxing and stretching — softly.
In the German language we have a specific word which somehow the English language doesn’t seem to have, we say “räkeln.”
This means an act of stretching softly with slow and soft movements. Like a cat, lying in the sun, relaxing and simply enjoying its movement. Let’s stay with the image of a cat…Imagine a relaxed cat, walking through the woods, instinctively, with a quiet mind, stretching gently and FEELING the web of the world throughout the web of its tissues.
This is something that in fact every human is capable of.
We just have to learn the act of relaxing again, stretching softly, enjoying our bodies and allowing our thoughts to serve the body, rather than vice versa.
We could start by practicing Yoga in a more relaxing, soft way without ‘correct’ theoretical alignment, without strong stretches, and without the need to “master” any āsana.
We could just enjoy our postures, with soft movements and stretching, letting the animal body come alive again, moving instinctively, learning from other animals through imitating them, becoming them and letting our body lead us into the interconnected stillness of the world.
Because frankly, we all are animals.
We are Nature, we just need to remember.
And your fascia just might be the key to unlock your animal body.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
“Of course, at this point I could list all of my training and my professional career, like a résumé — but what does that tell you about me as a person?
I am a person, always at home between worlds.
I was born and have lived in Papua New Guinea — how do wild roots behave in a ‘civilized’ world?
As a teenager I was certainly rebellious (and I still have that part in me), it took me a long time to find my place in this world. Full of dissatisfaction, unhappy with myself, doubting the world. This place has become Eibelstadt, Germany, where I have lived with my husband for 18 years. This place has become yoga, a life that helps me to unite opposites and to reflect things better. It is my love for dogs as soul guards and ambassadors. It is nature, the mother of us all.”
Read more at www.naukayoga.de