Can you tell us about the external and internal (organic) technology of asana and about techniques of doing, staying and concluding asana?
For example, you know the techniques of Tadasana, Trikonasana, how to observe your feet, legs, spine, chest, arms, hands, fingers and thumbs. You know that there are anatomical techniques, skeletal, muscular techniques; how your skeletal, muscular body should be, how your joints should be. Similarly, you can understand that if you know the position of the sternum and position of the chest in Tadasana, you can merely imagine that there is a position of intestines, colon and liver in Tadasana. Or in Trikonasana, if you know that the spine should be like this, then the chest, or the legs should be like this; it also means that as you think about the position of your legs and arms, you must also know that there is a position of the inner, organic body, as this is also part of the asana. And, therefore, you create certain actions to do the pose, and you do certain actions (you are supposed to do) to maintain the pose. Because this is not just exercising, like aerobics, you create movements, successive movements, or isometric successive movements. But here, it is not just movement, you have got to breathe there, you have got to stay in postures. So there are certain actions which have to be carried out not just for doing the pose but to maintain the pose, and there are some actions to come out of the pose.
So, there are three aspects in asana: doing, staying and maintaining, and coming out. You may be very scrupulous about going into Trikonasana; you adjust your hip, your buttock bone, your groins. Imagine you are on the right side; now, you know how the right buttock bone should be moving, how the right groin should be moving, but when you come out of the pose, do you observe those things? When you come out of the pose, you just come out. You are analytical, slow, meticulous, careful in going into the pose, but you come out of the pose in one stroke when the teacher says, "come out and do this." But when you go down, you go by stages. At every stage you observe the different movements of the different parts; but when you come up, you don't observe so much. Asana, not being just movements like isometric exercises, are states. Asana are states. You have to stay in asana. If you have to stay in asana, it implies that you have got to go to the pose. You have got to go to the asana and you have to come out of the asana. There is commencement, the state of asana, and conclusion of the asana. All three have a set of techniques. And, therefore, the technique of going down has a particular scope; and when you stay in the pose, there are so many things to do, to adjust the pose, because the moment you take the right hand down in Trikonasana it is not done and over.
After taking the right hand down, left hand up, you do so many other things like turning the waist, turning the back, stretching the spine, opening the chest, rolling the shoulders back. All those things are done after you go down to the pose. After having gone down, you continue to do something by rotation, opening etc. So still you are doing. But then what happens? You come out when the doing is over, when you can't think of the next point; when you think that all the points are exhausted and you do not know anything, then you immediately come out. That is not proper. You have not stayed, you have not done. You are doing there, you are doing and doing and doing; and now, you have not stayed!
And therefore, having completed the doing aspect of Trikonasana, you must stay there. That's when the pose starts and not when the right hand goes down and left hand goes up. The pose starts when you have done all the checkpoints known to you. If you have done them, then the pose starts and then you are supposed to start staying in it.
So the timing concept is also wrong with many of you that you keep a timer: Trikonasana one minute on the right side. You go down and see the timer; maybe until fifty-nine seconds you are doing and doing and doing, and the sixtieth seconds you come out: where did you stay? When did you stay? You took fifty-nine seconds to do the pose, and the sixtieth second you came up.
When you are staying in the pose, you continue to do something to maintain the pose. Because, now, you do not know the next point, you have completed all the points. And now, you are maintaining those points in the asana, whatever they are. When you have done the pose, you have to maintain it and the timing starts there. And that creates the circulation of the pose, the pranic circulation, the psycho-mental circulation, the awareness circulation. Trikonasana is composed and you have to stay in the pose. Then, when you are going to come out, meticulously, scrupulously, carefully, you have to observe certain points: how to recover and not collapse, not lean forward.
For example in backbends, Rajakapotasana. Beautiful Rajakapotasana is done! Beautifully photographed! Now it is clicked, the photograph is taken, then what happens? Hops! Hands and legs suddenly let loose and come on the floor with a bang! Rajakapotasana or Padangustha Dhanurasana, imagine the pose. How do you come out of it? When they do the pose, when the pose is over, what happens? They release the leg and they bang on their hands. So where is the control?
So that is why, how you have to come out of the pose is also a very important thing, it helps you in developing a stage. See, you have done Padangustha Dhanurasana and you have come out with a bang, you have created total disturbance in your consciousness. Whatever formation has taken place in the mind is totally disturbed with your bang. Therefore, you have to take care in ending the pose: how to end without disturbing your consciousness. As a matter of fact, you should build up the effects of the asana even when you come out of the pose, or at least maintain the effects and never lose them.
That is how we have to observe the three aspects in our system, these are part of the technicalities: how to go into the pose? How to stay in the pose, or to maintain the pose? And how to come out of the pose? Then, there are actions to do, there are actions to stay, there are actions to come out.
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