When your body is difficult, when you have a stiff body, you can get resistance from the mind. You reach a point, even if you want to learn, where the body becomes sensitive: it doesn't want more. What does that mean? How do you have to practice to go beyond?
You see, the stiffness is in the body and if you are doing in the body, you will feel the stiffness. But you are not stiff in your cells, because each cell is an independent body. And therefore, if you start working cellularly, you will not feel the stiffness. The trouble is that you visualise that a final pose is a complete pose.
Suppose someone does Vrchikasana and touches the feet to the head and another person does Vrchikasana and there is a gap of six inches. What do you think? You say, "this person has done better," because he has touched. It is not necessary; the other person might have done better. Because touching the feet to the head is not essential in Vrchikasana. Getting the action on the kidneys or the organs, getting the action on the spine, getting the access to the mind is important. As a matter of fact, a simple thing is that the following: in the fellow who has not touched his head with the feet there is humbleness, which is positive; the other fellow, who has touched, will create room for pride. So he has done Vrchikasana but has not done yoga.
When you get stiff or when there is resistance, you need more will power, and more and more...
Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and it is not necessary that you should consider that a stiff body is not qualified and is full of obstacles.
Sometimes, you feel like you are becoming fluid like piece of chewing gum.
That is not yoga. That is what I said, chewing gum is not yoga. It is not necessary that you should be touching the feet on the head in Vrchikasana.
Is not fluidity in the body, freedom in the body ideal?
Freedom in the physical body, taken as flexibility, is not freedom in the mental body. So don't look at the asana just as physical postures. They are meant to give access to the mind and if they have done the job, there is no question of your stiffness. If Janu Sirsasana has done what it should do to you, there is no difference as to whether you have brought your head to knee or shin or ankle. It is absolutely irrelevant.
At one point, we think that if we can go further in the pose, we will have different effects.
Yes. You can go further to strike the effects, but not go further to reach your foot. In Janu Sirsasana, you can be aiming to go further to get greater effects but you need not be aiming to go further to reach your foot, head to the foot. And when you are going for the effect, it does not matter whether you are at the knee or at the shin or above the knee. You have to know what the effects are in the pose and what the effects are that you are supposed to be getting. And suppose your internal geometry improves, then you are going to get better effects; but if you are not getting them, it is not necessary that you will not get the effects by non-reaching the shin in Janu Sirsasana. Janu Sirsasana will give you its results if you have done proper psycho-dynamics, proper frame of mind and proper bio-dynamics, physio-dynamics. It is irrelevant whether you are at the thigh, or at the knee, at the shin, at the ankle or beyond the foot!
You only have to strike the internal geometry of the pose, through external geometry so many factors are influencing. Your spine might be short, or the spine might be very, very long, your leg might be short - all those things count. So, internal geometry is important in asana and internal geometry is there to strike the mental state of the pose, to strike the organic input, mental input. And to strike the internal geometry, external geometry is an instrument. That is why I said many times that asana are not to be "photogenic." They have to be "organo-genic."
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