The idea of yoga is that your body becomes a possibility, not a barrier. If that has to happen, everything within your system should function with least amount of resistance, with least amount of friction. Even according to our understanding of mechanical sciences, we know that we will call a machine truly efficient, only if it has least amount of friction. The more friction it has, the more inefficient it becomes. If it has no friction, it will be the ultimate machine. If you minimize the friction itself, the wear and tear comes down phenomenally. So, if the wear and tear of this body has to come down phenomenally, the first thing is to see there is no friction between different dimensions of who we are.
You have a physical dimension, which is an accumulated dimension. You have a psychological dimension, which is also largely accumulated dimension. Physical dimension is purely accumulated from this life. Psychological dimension you have acquired or accumulated from many lifetimes. And there is a karmic dimension, which is a much larger accumulation and much more complex. And there is energy, which is grown from within, but given to us from the process of life, which happens within us. And there are dimensions, which are purely cosmic in nature, which are not physical.
If we want to make sure that this being or this mechanism, which is a combination of all these aspects, is not in friction; there are many levels on which we have to lubricate it. One thing is the basic friction, a very rudimentary friction that people are experiencing everywhere. They’re talking about stress. Stress is a very rudimentary thing. It is like you are trying to run your engine without lubrication oil and you are complaining, ‘my car is not going anywhere.’
This is just like that. ‘I am stressed out’ means your mind is in a state of friction, psychological friction within yourself. This is the most fundamental level of friction, but there are other more complex levels of friction or deeper dimensions of friction within us. Your karmic body and your physical body, if it doesn’t fit, there will be a different kind of friction. Otherwise, your energy body may not fit into your physical body. This may have something to do with culture. This may have something to do with the general atmosphere, maybe pollution levels, maybe the land itself, the kind of memory the land carries. There’re various aspects to it. There may be other kinds of frictions, which is your psychological structure and your physical structure are not going well together. Like this, every part of you, every dimension of who you are either can run smoothly or can run with a lot of friction.
The idea of Hata Yoga is to knead the system – not just the physical body – to knead the whole system in such a way that all these frictions are smoothened out in such a way that after some time if you sit here, there is absolutely no sense of friction within you. You have only the outside to deal with. Nothing else. Only if it becomes like that, can you deal with the outside with a phenomenal ease and capability.
~ Adapted from Isha blog