rūpa-lāvaṇya-bala-vajra-saṃhananatvāni kāya-sampat
rūpa-lāvaṇya-bala-vajra-saṃhananatvāni kāya-sampad
“Beauty of form, strength, diamond-like brilliance, and dynamic alignment [are] body health.”

Sūtra III.45 states that saṁyama on the physical world–on its various layers, its interconnectedness–brings attunement with the elements (bhūta-jaya). III.46 expands on the blessings and abilities that come from attunement. One of these blessings is kaya-sampad.

Kāya is body and sampad (from sam-, “together,” + pad, “to fall”) is success, fulfillment, prosperity. The compound is often translated as “perfection of the body,” but is perhaps more helpfully understood to mean realization of the body’s potential. I have translated it as body health. (The English word health derives from an Old English word hal, which means “whole.” Thus health carries a sense of wholeness.)

Patañjali gives us the opportunity in today’s sūtra  to pause and consider: what do we mean by body health, and what is its significance to how we live and how we identify.

Do not think of yourself as a small, compressed, suffering thing. Think of yourself as graceful and expanding, no matter how unlikely it may seem at the time.  –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, p. 40

B.K.S. Iyengar taught āsana and prāṇāyāma to the young and old and to all bodies–tight, flexible, athletic, sedentary, injured, afflicted. He lived by this idea: that it matters how we inhabit our body. He often spoke, delightfully, of the mind of the body and the body of the mind, turning topsy-turvy our ideas of what and who shapes what and who.

In the Bhagavad Gītā, Krishna tells Arjuna that the body is the field (śarīram kṣetram, see sūtra II.4). We are the farmers that cultivate the field–and we are the field. B.K.S. Iyengar writes, “If you think you are your body, you are wrong. If you say you are not your body, you are also wrong.” (Light on Life, p. 25)

We are dehavat, embodied beings (deha, “body” + vat, a suffix indicating possession: “ones who have bodies”; see Bhagavad Gītā, XII.5). This is our perplexity. But it is also, as today’s sūtra celebrates, our blessing.

The health of the body, Patañjali writes here, is beauty of form (rūpa-lāvaṇya), strength (bala), diamond-like brilliance (vajra), and dynamic alignment (saṃhananatva). These four attributes weave together.

Rupa means form and lāvaṇya is beauty or loveliness. It is a word associated with the goddess Lakshmi and so suggests wealth and prosperity as well. Key to Iyengar practice (and many other physical disciplines) is a discovery of one’s own anatomy, especially the bony structures that serve as landmarks. We learn form, that is, we learn anatomy, in our own bodies.  We find inner structure that supports us better in gravity, that helps us move with more ease and expansiveness. Structure, indeed, helps us tune to the elements–to the fluidity of water, the force of fire, lightness of air, groundedness of earth, openness of space. I consider my own body to be unexceptional, yet its beauty has been revealed to me every day that I have practiced.

Bala is strength, a property that Patañjali has already mentioned as a focus for saṁyama in III.25 (he specifically mentions the elephant’s strength). How does yoga build strength? There is some element of building muscle, but, significantly, strength comes as well from directing the attention, with the practice of saṁyama itself. The mind builds strength as the body gains clarity. Strength also comes with the movement of prāṇa. There is a refreshment, a revitalization, that comes with practice, as though each cell has been vibrated and comes into better alignment. In āsana practice, we build a structure that supports flow of energy. A completed āsana, Mr. Iyengar has said, is like a tuning fork. No part leaks, or falls out of awareness, but all is brought into the whole.

Vajra is diamond (it also means thunderbolt or a weapon like a thunderbolt), and it indicates a structure that is clear and strong. The diamond is a crystal form of carbon and is a beautiful metaphor to consider the structures and form of the body. The skeleton employs various diamond-like relationships that, when active, support the body dynamically. To illustrate, I will share the instructions given in a workshop on mūla bandha by yoga teacher Ramanand Patel (a longtime student of B.K.S. Iyengar). It centered on the structure of the bones of the pelvic floor. 

Ramanand began by having the class sit in virāsana or on a chair and locate the sitz bones, the tailbone, and pubic bone (four points in dynamic relationship). He gave these directions: Roll the inner thighs down and feel how the sitz bones spread in response. Keep that inner rolling and then, in a counter action, move the sitz bones toward each other. Add to that a movement of tailbone toward the pubic bone and lift the pubic bone up. In the workshop, we repeated these cues in various different poses. The particular muscles used were not the focus, but rather the effect of the directions on posture, on the overall structure. For me, the effect was profound.

Though this was a workshop about the pelvic floor, what we did felt different than Kegel exercises, at least, as I have been taught them. The action of setting up the bones, like building a structure from within, created a movement of energy from the root up. It felt integrated, dynamic; it connected me to gravity and  helped me support myself in gravity.

This, I believe, is the significance of the last of the four qualities: saṃhananatva, dynamic alignment. From sam, “fully,” + han, “to strike or pound,” it means “having the quality of being closely joined, contiguous, coherent.” It could be translated as “well-knit” or “well-put-together.” The marvel to me of practicing yoga (and other physical arts) is that we can indeed learn how to put ourselves together. The body is often ready to do the remarkable thing. It is the mind that gives up.

Yoga has taught me to be a learner. To be open to possibility and to appreciate that my body is ready to teach me.

Mr. Iyengar writes:

It is difficult to speak of bodily knowledge in words. It is much easier to experience it, to discover what it feels like. It is as if the rays of light of your intelligence were shining through your body, out your arms to your fingertips and down your legs and out through the soles of your feet. As this happens the mind becomes passive and begins to relax. This is an alert passivity and not a dull, empty one. –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life (p. 32)

B.K.S. Iyengar made few pronouncements on god or spirit, but shared a method of yoga that teaches through experience. To come into integration, to feel one’s own empowerment, to take responsibility for one self, is to approach the self within. That self, beyond words, is the owner of the field. That self shines in us and through us.

yathā prakāśayati ekaḥ
kṛtsnaṁ lokam imaṁ raviḥ
kṣetram kṣetrī tathā kṛtsnaṁ
prakāśayati bhārata
In the same way the sun
Lights this whole world,
So, son of Bharata, the owner of the field
Lights the whole field.

–Bhagavad Gītā, XIII.33

—–

“As the elements and their qualities are brought under control through yoga practice, the body gains its wealth in the form of beauty, grace, strength and compactness, and shines like the brilliance of a diamond. In short it is śarīra jaya, or loveliness and liveliness of the body.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sūtras, p.101

“Cosmetics alone cannot impart beauty to the body, and yet in the cosmetic industry huge amounts are being invested so that the body-cult may flourish. Patañjali here gives four essential qualities for the excellence of the body. These are rūpa, lāvaṇya, bala, and vajra-saṃhananatvā, meaning form, grace, dignity and agility due to cohesion. There has to be beauty of form, but this alone does not give excellence to the body as is understood today in the modern craze for physical beauty. Along with form there has to be grace in movement, as also strength as expressed in dignity. Added to to this there must be the agility and the elasticity of limbs. Vajra is a weapon of great elasticity, for if it is not elastic it would get broken.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 369  

Questions:
• What has practice taught you about the form of the body? Has practice given you a more vivid sense of the beauty of the body? The wealth of the body? How would you describe that?
• Has your practice brought you strength? Helped you feel more physically integrated, compact, expansive?
• How has yoga affected your relationship with your body? Your understanding of the relation between body and mind?
• Do you identify more or less with the body since beginning yoga practice?