Problem areas. One of mine is the hamstrings. If you have been practising yogasana for fifteen years you are supposed to be able to touch your toes, right? Right?? Well I can’t. And it doesn’t matter. Stretching, breathing into, relaxing the muscles is the important thing. Devarshi, the instructor on the Kripalu Teacher Training course has a good point. He said that the health of the body doesn’t come from the limbs but from the torso. This is because it holds all but one of the major organs, the nervous system, spine, and you know, all the main stuff (apart from the brain box). The impressive yoga postures do fancy things with the limbs. Everyone asks a yogi: Can you put your foot behind you head? Well, no I can’t, and I don’t really want to. You look daft doing that, and it doesn’t do you that much good. So on I go, gently manipulating the torso, the organs, the spine in different ways, getting healthier. And yes, the limbs get a nice stretch too.

Hittleman is talking about smoking today, but one can substitute any habit:

It is very difficult to overcome any habit through the application of will power. This approach is fraught with a continual inner conflict, and failure usually leaves a person feeling guilty and inadequate. The practice of yoga frequently decreases and eventually eliminates the desire for smoking. This occurs in a natural, subtle manner, often hardly noticed by the student. One day she discovers that, “I’ve lost the taste for it.”

Krishnamurti:

Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship-in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception.