Then Roger took the class over again and said, “Or you can just do this.” He dropped into the pose and said, “Do this.” Everyone in the room dropped into the pose immediately and perfectly. 

Yep, everyone will just mirror you and you don’t have to explain anything if you are demoing the pose right. 

It really isn’t that hard to get your point across.

Metaphors can be helpful to explain something difficult to understand, and to make mundane things more interesting even, but at the basic level nothing about the actual physical movements of yoga should be particularly difficult to understand.

Actually I take that back… I watch yoga videos on youtube and I don’t understand how these people are moving their bodies in the way that they are :)

HOWEVER, and this is such a beef with me, he used to talk all the time about moving bones. Like, tilt your tailbone in. Draw your kneecaps up. It could be difficult to follow. Okay, YOU CAN’T MOVE BONES!! You can only move muscles. How much easier would it have been to understand his point if he had talked about contracting the buttocks or inner thighs, about contracting quadriceps? It took me forever to understand what he was trying to communicate because of this nonsensical approach, which is typical of Iyengar teachers.

It is very very hard to find teachers who are careful with their language, even the ones who don’t really talk about chakras and kundalini (good concepts but not necessarily the most helpful for a beginner). 

I think I still have a lot of learning to do. Philosophy etc. has always been a weak point for me.

In yoga, chakras, for example are just a way of organizing personal phenomena for easier introspection, just like the four elements of Western alchemy are a way of organizing all phenomena. The masses take them literally, but the philosophers who create the ideas or at least understand them, view them as metaphors. One might have hoped that, with the spread of science, the masses would have figured out that the metaphorical underpinnings of religion are meant to be viewed philosophically, but no such luck.

I’m genuinely curious and I’m glad you replied because I know you’re a yoga instructor and someone who explains things really well. If you do a beginner’s class maybe I’ll go out there some time and take it :)

I understand that it can all be thought of as metaphors for real stuff, but I’d much rather hear about the real stuff than try to figure out what the metaphors might mean.

Try to explain any intangible without using a metaphor. You can’t do it.

I know I should just go to a class, but the thought of that makes me anxious. So I’ve been cruising youtube for yoga videos, of which there are thousands. If you look hard enough, you can find people who don’t talk about the mystical stuff too much. 

I mean I really don’t mind it and I don’t care if it’s meaningful to other people. But from my perspective, it’s just created a lot of noise, obscuring the reality. I understand that it can all be thought of as metaphors for real stuff, but I’d much rather hear about the real stuff than try to figure out what the metaphors might mean (metaphors are usually meaningless to my mildly aspie mind regardless of context).

Anyway… all this is to say that I’m glad that people are writing books like this from a relatively BS-free perspective. Hopefully this attitude will spread.

Yet, you believe that what you perceive that you are seeing is real.

I have been practicing Yoga for 25 years and professionally teaching it for 15 years. Thank you for your reading recommendations. I have read most of the Bihar books and they are a good source of income for the ashram. Repeating and embellishing what your ancestors wrote and what your teacher passed on does not science make. I have done many of the practices contained in the books and some of them I love and continue to do.

Sill not science. 

A lot of yoga practitioners conflate sensation with reality, though. Just because you feel like energy is moving through your body doesn’t mean it literally is. However, that is what many people believe because of their own experiences. They don’t understand that energy doesn’t need to be need to be “real” for someone to perceive it – look up at the XKCD cartoon posted above to see how deceptive our perceptions of the world are. 

Working with a teacher who sees her body in terms of chakras and nadis can be wonderful; a teacher like that can take you out of your normal way of looking at the world and get you to tune in to sensations you may typically tune out. It can be helpful to indulge in the belief that these concepts are true, just for fun. Don’t ignore people who are swallowing the horseshit, just see if you can figure out a way to filter it through your perspective.