Kino MacGregor - The Yogi Assignment: A 30-Day Program for Bringing Yoga Practice and Wisdom to Your Everyday Life

Welcome to the Yogi Assignment

I am about to ask you to take a yoga journey with me that may be the most challengingbut also the most unique and fulfillingpractice adventure that you have yet experienced in your yoga life. Its going to require you to be patient when youre not, to let go of negativity when youre simmering with anger, to quiet the voice of judgment in your head toward yourself or someone else, and to exhibit kindness and generosity when you feel unable to do that. Between traffic jams, travel delays, dirty dishes, barking dogs, screaming babies, bills to pay, laundry piles, and the thousand other things that are on your to-do list, it will not be easy to focus and systematically embody the values and precepts of yoga as much as possible in your daily life. But that is what Im asking you to do.

Most people associate yoga practice with asanas, or postures and sequences, and that is a key part of the tradition. But it is just one part. The benchmark of yogic values and precepts is set in Patanjalis Yoga Sutras. Writing more than two thousand years ago, the sage Patanjali outlines the path of yoga in its totality over a series of four books and 196 aphorisms. There is a wealth of information about the inner journey of yoga, but not one sutra discusses asana technique. Instead, Patanjali presents yoga as a spiritual path of awakening that leads to the goal of a steady, calm, and equanimous mind. The name Ashtanga Yoga comes from the second book of the Yoga Sutras, in which Patanjali outlines the eight-limbed path of yoga. Ashtanga is formed from the Sanskrit words astau (eight) and anga (limbs). The eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga are as follows:

Moral and ethical guidelines that define the yogis relationship with society (yamas)

Moral and ethical guidelines that define the yogis personal observances (niyamas)

Physical poses (asanas)

Breathing (pranayama)

Sense withdrawal (pratyahara)

Concentration (dharana)

Meditation (dhyana)

Ultimate peace (samadhi)

Beyond that, the yamas and niyamas each contain five subcategories to form a holistic foundation for the yogis life. The yamas are defined as

Nonviolence (ahimsa)

Truthfulness (satya)

Nonstealing (asteya)

Sexual Restraint (brahmacharya)

Nonpossessiveness (aparigraha)

The niyamas are as follows:

Purity (saucha)

Contentment (santosha)

Discipline (tapas)

Study (svadhyaya)

Surrender to God (Isvara pranidhana)

So, within the traditional presentation of the values and precepts of yoga, asana is merely one limb of the eight-limbed path.

After nearly twenty years of Ashtanga Yoga practice, I now measure my success by how long Im able to keep my emotional center spacious enough to be genuinely kind. By comparison, its almost easy to get on the mat and bend and twist your body. In daily life, it is much harder to maintain a kind and generous heart in the face of adversity and stress. The purpose of every yoga pose is really to present you with a microcosm of your lifeboth the positive and the negative experiences. We need just as much training in how to be at peace with difficulty as we do in how not to get too attached to happiness. The brave heart of a yogi is defined by actions that make the world a better place. All the effort you pour into asana is really just a testing ground for the effort you will have to exert to apply the yogic values and principles in real life. Yoga is a physical discipline with a spiritual intention. The power of the postures lies not in their masterful execution but in the journey on which each asana takes you. Each pose has a lesson to teach, and that lesson has very little to do with the flexibility of your hips or the power of your lift. Instead, the spiritual lesson of each asana is always about being kind and generous in spirit.