So then, you come to an 8-pronged fork in the road

With all the in-class hype about the eightfold path reading and its importance, I am expecting some fairly heavy material. I had some decent guesses about the content of today’s reading and many of my guesses were correct.

The Eightfold path includes Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyhara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. I will try to briefly define each of these qualities.

• This seems to be the quality of ‘being a good person.’ It encompasses nonviolence, honesty and general morality in one’s actions. I use the word action because it seems like Yama specifically refers to actions and not thoughts/emotions/intentions.
• This quality deals self-discipline over one’s spiritual/mental self with an emphasis on being devoted to God and the divine.
• This is physically doing yoga, right? That’s why the syllabus lists ‘Asana practice’ every day.
• Does this have to do with the ‘inner winds’ and the ‘becoming light’ mentioned by Friday in How Yoga Works? The wording is a bit strange and I’m not sure I completely understand this concept.
• Seems to be saying that materialism is bad. Cutting ties with frivolous or luxurious objects/material possessions.
• Meditation? Focus? This quality and the next one seem to be the same thing.
• Again, not sure what differentiates this from Dharana. Both seem to say that meditation is good. Does this one just place more emphasis on meditating on the divine?
• I can’t even begin to guess on this one.

Last week, we practiced crossing our legs up in our laps. This was extremely difficult for me, particularly as I finally managed to get one side into the pose, and then utterly failed to get the other side. Even laying down, I was unable to complete both sides. What poses would improve my flexibility in these areas? Also, at one point, I felt a slight ‘give’ in back of my left knee. It didn’t hurt, so I didn’t think much of it until I tried to stand up at the end of class and almost fell back down. Putting weight on it  hurt for the rest of the day, but it now seems fine. I’ve been injured a few times over the years, and this doesn’t feel the same; it went away too quickly for me to be too worried about it. I’m unsure what exact muscle it was that hurt, but once I’m stretching out, I can describe it/point to it. Off the top of my head, it feels very stretched when we have our leg out to the side with the stretch bands.

In my outside practice, I think I have come to discover the root of my difficulties doing yoga. My hips are extremely tight. I can’t even hold my legs straight in the air with my toes pointed. If my knees are bent, it’s easy, but as soon as I start to stretch out, it becomes extremely difficult. Further, in Tree Pose, I find it very difficult to raise my foot any higher than I already can. When opening the knee in tree pose, the hip of whichever knee is up will almost always feel like it is being poked with a needle. Is this normal? If so, how do I overcome it?