Talent in yogasana

I was inspired by Lilalia’s amazing collages, and made an attempt to make one of my own. This is the picture I took of Aliya, one of my shalamates. He and his wife Rayna are wonderful yogis and became my good friends. As a background I used a lotus flower photograph by Bahman Farzad with his kind permission (check out his stunning gallery).

This photograph brings me to the question of talent in yogasana. In a way, this is a politically incorrect topic, because yoga is not a competition, one is not supposed to compare and so on. But we do compare. And we see that some people’s asanas are beautiful, while others – not so much. I wonder why is that? I guess, like in all athletic endeavors, the brain-muscle coordination matters. I bet the anatomy is very important. Such aspects of it, as the depth or shallowness of the joints that is just right, allowing lots of freedom of movement, but stable at the same time. Or the proportional length of the limbs (as well as the relative length of the bones in the limbs). Or number of accumulated injuries and imbalances in the body, both physical and psychological. I also noticed (and I might be completely wrong here) that the vast majority of people with beautiful asanas have a vata constitution of the body (or vata-pitta). Among kaphas or kapha-pittas I know very few (Andrew Lappa comes to mind, or Erich Schiffmann) with inspiring practice. I guess the vata lightness of the body is one of the aspects that make asanas beautiful. On the other hand, it is possible that being a vata is not so good for the meditation practice, and kaphas, with their innate groundness and ability to concentrate, have easier time in meditation.

Anyway, you might have guessed by now that I am an unbalanced kapha with short limbs and shallow joints, lacking any stability. To improve my asana practice, based on the above-mentioned considerations, I decided to increase vata vaju in my body. My ayurveda teacher ones mentioned that his experiments with raw vegetarian food increased the lightness in his body tremendously. In addition, Rayna also told me that it helped her practice. So here we go, a copycat as I am, I started eating raw vegetarian. The results are not very encouraging. Vata vaju (wind) is definitely increased. A lot. In my belly, that is. So the legendary kapha power of concentration is now mostly channeled on trying not to share vata vaju with the rest of the shala. Probably I should just come to peace with the conclusion that we, kaphas, are not meant to fly?