udāna-jayāj jala-paṅka-kaṇṭakādiṣvasaṅga utkrāntiś ca
udāna-jayāt  jala-paṅka-kaṇṭaka-ādiṣu asaṅgaḥ utkrāntiḥ ca
“With artful practice of upward energy, one rises above water, mud, and thorns. They do not stick.”

The Vibhūti Pada (Ch. 3 of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras) contains much beautiful imagery. It moves from the microcosm of the human body to the macrocosm of the sky, from centers of energy within to the forces of nature around. It is full of marvel and wonder.

Today’s sūtra is a great example. From the practice of upward energy (udāna), says Patañjali, one rises above such impediments as water, mud, and thorns. They don’t even stick (asaṅga).

Udāna is one of the five vayus (winds), which as a group govern the vital processes of the body. They are prāna (pra-, “forth,” + an, “to breathe”), which describes the life force generally and, here,  the function of the heart and lungs in particular; apāna (ap-, “down,” + an, “to breathe”), downward energy, including the function of the legs and the organs of elimination; samāna (sam-, “with” + an, “to breathe”), a connector energy, the gastric fire, also an organizer of movement; udāna (ud-, “up,” + an, “to breathe”), upward energy, lift, movement up, also speech; vyāna (vi-, “out,” + an, “to breathe”), circulatory system, energy that pervades the whole body. (The locations within the body vary a bit depending on the source.)

This sūtra is about rising. Ud (ut- when prefixed to a hard consonant) appears twice. Metaphorically, water, mud, and thorns, are a perfect expression for life’s adversities. Getting mired in mud or stuck with thorns are ways to describe how we may tend to get fixed on past miseries, relive past hurts. We share about our moods by saying we are “up” or “down,” difficulty “flattens us,” and chronic sadness is felt as a weight pressing down–depression.

The spiritual path itself is often described as a movement upwards. We wish to progress toward enlightenment, toward lofty things. We seek to be “above” life’s miseries. We consider better things to be “higher.” The Bhagavad Gītā teaches that “those established in sattva go up” (XIV.18). Episcopalians begin their liturgy with the priest calling out “Lift up your hearts.” The congregation answers, “We lift them to the Lord.”

For those of us who practice āsana, ud may be the Sanskrit prefix we are most familiar with, as it is embedded in āsana names (uttanāsana, utkaṭāsana, utthita trikonāsana), as is the adverb ūrdhva, which means upwards (ūrdhva hastāsana, ūrdhva dhanurāsana). 

However, as practitioners know, there is no movement up without down.  Teachers start at the feet for instruction on how to stand. One must feel the feet and press down to go up, to stand tall.

It may seem that mastery of udāna might mean no contact or non-concern with natural elements. In my experience, this is not the case. Just as I must start with my feet in tadāsana (mountain pose), must go down to lift up, so does grounding, literally, connect me to vital force, to what is beyond me. The natural world, for me and for many others, is itself balancing, restorative.

I grew up in a big modern city, and I know firsthand that urban people don’t have a lot of  direct experience of water, mud, thorns.  We may not have been cooled by a creek, nor gone barefoot on earth. And we may not have harvested thistles or picked blackberries. Perhaps this has led me to have an anti-hierarchical sense of up and down. There are many gifts to going down, looking down, feeling with one’s feet, getting more embodied. They include going slower. Paying attention. Maybe doing things differently than we have done before. Yoga teacher Carrie Owerko once recommended in class that we take a chance, allow ourselves to make mistakes when we practice, to “get muddy.”

I recently read a memoir called The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn (and now a movie, soon to be released). The author tells of a cataclysmic period in her life, when in the course of a few months, she and her husband lost their home, a small family farm in Wales, and received a frightening diagnosis for long-time shoulder pain that he had been experiencing. In the same week that bailiffs came and possessed their home, Moth Winn’s physician informed the couple that Moth had corticobasal degeneration (CBD), with a life expectancy of eight years from onset (he had been experiencing the pain already for about six years). With no home and no money, with Moth experiencing greater fatigue and worsening symptoms, they are aghast, terrified, all security removed. They have to leave their home in a matter of days. Somehow, Raynor has the idea to let go completely, to put things in storage and live for a while with no roof at all but in a small, lightweight tent, and with only possessions they can carry with them. She suggests they backpack on the South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset:

“We could just walk.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I said it anyway.
“Walk?”
“Yeah, just walk.”
Could Moth walk it? It was just a coastal path after all, it couldn’t be that hard and we could walk slowly, put one foot in front of the other and just follow the map. I desperately needed a map, something to show me the way. So why not? It couldn’t be that difficult. … I didn’t realize then that the South West Coast Path was relentless, that it would mean climbing the equivalent of Mount Everest nearly four times, walking 630 miles on a path often no more than a foot wide, sleeping wild, living wild, working through every painful action that had brought us here, to this moment. … I just knew we should walk.” (The Salt Path, pp. 6-7)

Raynor Winn is a great storyteller, and she vividly recounts beauties, terrors, lovely meet-ups, threatening encounters. She and Moth set up camp in the rain and wind, slide in mud, and encounter literal thorns. One day in a downpour on a cliffside, Raynor slips and slams into a bush:

I stopped spinning and tried to stand, but was pinned into a blackthorn shrub by dozens of barbs. When I was eventually back on my feet, Moth pulled them out one by one, leaving a throbbing pincushion of hands and legs. The non-waterproof was even less waterproof and I was covered head to toe in black mud. (p. 229)

She is so scratched and pricked that she has an allergic reaction, with vomiting and fever, for days.

Raynor is explicit that, at a juncture when they had lost everything, had been handed a death sentence, the path provides them focus. The path is practice. Whatever their confusion or apprehension, they return to the walk. As she writes: “The walk, only the walk.”

In Chapter One, Patañjali gives a list of methods to overcome disturbances of the mind (I.32-I.39). They are familiarly referred to as the “Or’s,” because they are complementary but independent, alternatives. The first offered is eka-tattva-abhyāsa, the practice of one thing.

The South West Coastal Path was Raynor and Moth Winn’s “one thing.” It didn’t make any obvious practical sense as a choice. As Raynor says, it was perhaps ridiculous for two middle-aged people, one who had a dire diagnosis and had been instructed to rest and not exert himself, both bereft of resources, homeless, with only a weekly stipend from the state, barely enough for food, to undertake. Yet it gave them a focus, and this focus proved to be healing.

I am struck by the actual exertion of what they set out to do, by how much that physical effort required body engagement, presence in the feet, in gravity, in the steps. The long daily walks, weighted with a backpack, literally strengthened Moth. He felt better, more agile, able to better function as they walked. (Apparently, they brought evidence of this back to his physicians, who still insisted it would be better for Moth to rest more.) And another kind of healing–mental rejuvenation, emotional balance, spiritual growth–happened. After the two summers it took to complete the Salt Path, they have a plan, a place to stay, and they begin to build a new life. Raynor reflects:

Bad things had hit us in the face like a tidal wave and would have washed us away if we hadn’t found ourselves on the path. Our journey had drained us of every emotion, sapped our strength and our will. But then, like the windblown trees along our route, we had been re-formed by the elements into a new shape that could ride out whatever storms came over the bright new sea. … At last I understood what homelessness had done for me. It had taken every material thing that I had and left me stripped bare, a blank page at the end of a partly written book. It had also given me a choice, either to leave that page blank or to keep writing the story with hope. I chose hope.  (p. 270)

Utkrāntiḥ means to rise up, to levitate. It derives from kram, “to step, walk.” Ut-kram is “to step up.” The long walk along the coast, the heave of the backpack on to the back, the press of the foot down, the anchor into gravity and the ascent from it, step after step, shaped Raythorn and Moth. The walk grounded them in the natural world, connected them to an endless horizon and an abundant ecosystem, unleashed their life force. They came through the water, mud and thorns.

—–

“The functions of the body are performed by five types of vital energy, prāṇa vayus: prāṇa, apāna, samāna, udāna and vyāna. Prāna moves in the thoracic region and controls breathing. Apāna moves in the lower abdomen and controls elimination of urine, semen and feces. Samāna stokes the gastric fire, aiding digestion and maintaining the harmonious functioning of the abdominal organs. Udāna, working in the throat, controls the vocal chords and the intake of air and food. Vyāna pervades the entire body, distributing the energy from the breath and food through the arteries, veins and nerves.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, commentary on III.32

“Yogis distinguish several kinds of energy, including the rising vital energy (udāna) at the level of the throat. This is the energy of spiritual elevation and brings speech and the skill, or faculty, of avoiding and overcoming obstacles. It is also, according to Hindu tradition, the energy that leaves the body through the top of the head at the moment of death.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.40

Questions:
• Has yoga helped you confront difficulties? How would you describe this? Rising above, passing through, entering into?
• Many names of āsanas emphasize going up–utthita trikonāsana, ūrdhva hastāsana, utkaṭāsana, uttānāsana. What are the benefits of up action for you? How does up teach down? How does down create up? What is your experience of gravity?
• Do you have a practice of going outside? What does it give you?
• Have you ever foraged for food–maybe by picking berries, dandelions, mushrooms? Have you harvested vegetable or fruit? What lessons does the plentifulness of nature teach?