Ive always understood Yoga to be a question of perception. About the way we view the world and how we are prone to interpret events through the lens of our fears and desires.
What I found amazing with I first went to study with BKS Iyengar in 1983 in Pune, India was the way he was teaching asanas to develop a clarity of awareness. We were not merely perfecting asanas but culturing the consciousness. The following article on Viveka has filtered through my years of practice
‘Discrimination is often misunderstood. In common language, it can suggest prejudice or exclusion. But in the context of yoga, to discriminate is to discern—to separate that which is entangled, to see with clarity the distinctions that ordinarily pass unnoticed. Viveka is to discern the real from the unreal; that which is enduring and reliable from that which is transient and illusory. To discriminate is to perceive clearly.
For the practitioner of yoga, this capacity is essential. In the physicality of the body we learn to discriminate. Without discrimination, practice remains generalised, undifferentiated, and imprecise. It is through discrimination that the practitioner begins to identify not only the quality of a sensation and its location, its origin, and its nature. Where a sensation begins and ends? What is the difference between effort and strain? What is the subtle divide between the breath that expands and the breath that distorts? These are not academic questions. They are embedded the texture of daily practice and lead us into the more subtle realm of studying the consciousness’.
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