“The most important things cannot be seen or touched.”

When I do yoga practice, or teach yoga, I always think about two square blocks. The bigger block is our upper body and the other, smaller block, is our pelvis. Inside the big block sits our very important organs such as our heart, lungs, kidneys, stomach etc. Inside the smaller block sits the other important organs, such as our intestines, urinary organs, reproductive organs, and so on.

All of the yoga postures we practise need to keep both blocks as beautiful squares. As James consistently mentions, we need to refer to Tadasana, the ‘Mountain pose’, for all postures. If we don’t maintain this ‘squareness’, our organs are squeezed on one side and stretched on the other. The organs on the side being squeezed might be shouting, “Stop, don’t do that.” This action violates one of Yoga’s core philosophies, Ahimsa — ‘No violence’. Maintaining the blocks in a square state and stretching both left and right sides, or twisting evenly, is the correct way to do postures. Practising this will make our organs healthier and stronger.

The way we keep our blocks in the correct position is by using our limbs. Typically, we tend to move our limbs without considering our two blocks. For example, when we enter Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (the Standing Leg Balance) stretch the leg as high as possible instead of dropping the femur bone or do Virabhadrasana II (the Warrior II pose). Stretching your arm too far forward will distort the big block (your upper body) into a diamond shape. Simply stretching our limbs without caring for our organs might stem from our ego in an attempt to feel good. The likely reason for this tendency is that we can see our limbs, but we can’t see our organs. To solve this problem Yoga has a very useful tool called, Drishti. According to Knoff Yoga ‘Principles of Practice’ Drishti is, “…directing of the eyes to specific focal points in order to assist with concentration within the mind. But you are not really looking at anything because the point of the technique is to turn the mind inwards. So the Drishti is used externally 20% to direct the eyes and internally 80% to focus the mind.”

If we use this technique properly and internalise our focus 80%, we can check the two blocks and hear the voice of our organs. It enables us to understand the posture deeply and recognise how to use our limbs correctly.

Once we apply this technique in our asana practice, we will intuitively begin to apply the same awareness towards the things in our daily life; The most important things cannot be seen or touched. Instead of reacting to the things that we see, we focus on the things we cannot see in order to understand the meaning deeply. Then we can stay calm too. For example, when we run a fever, instead of immediately reacting to the thermometer reading (visible thing) by taking Panadol, we should instead focus inwards to understand that our body temperature is rising in order for our natural defences to effectively combat the pathogens inside our body. We don’t need to be disappointed with, or complain about, the poor taste of a gift from our loved ones if we consider that they were really just thinking of you. If the leaves of your plants don’t appear healthy for much of the time, it is possibly caused by something happening in the roots under the ground. We don’t need to react by being angry at a teenager’s behaviour, but instead should think about what they may be feeling inside. If we focus inwards and listen to our inner voice – the voice from our stomach – we will probably avoid eating too much.

This is a very difficult thing to do, sometimes, but if we realise that the most important things cannot necessarily be seen or touched, we may come to understand solutions that lie beyond our immediate instincts and reactions.

I remember a quote from my favourite book, “The Little Prince” by Saint-Exupéry —

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”