THE DYNAMICS OF INTEGRITY
Yoga posture practice is a process of re-education. One in which learned patterns are relinquished in order to allow the inherent integrity of the human body, and its intrinsic unity with mind and spirit, to resurface freely and fully. Human mobility is based on over 200 joints. Each of which supports not only specific kinds of movements, but at the same time the overall stability of the body. When a joint becomes subject to too much pressure it loses its mobility. When it becomes subject to too much extension it loses its stability.
The human structure, then, requires a balance between stability and mobility. The overt purpose of yoga posture practice is to recover it. This takes training, or practice based on sensitive physical enquiry into the effects of movement on the joints. Enquiry that is based on feeling sensations. Sensations that speak, through the pain-pleasure mechanism, from the inherent integrity of the body. Intimacy with sensation allows the body to recalibrate itself according to the inherent integrity of its own intelligence and design.
This intelligence functions through natural principles of action: the dynamics of integrity. These principles are are organic, innate and indispensable to the natural functioning of the human body, as much as they are to the practice of yoga postures. They are applicable and necessary to all postures without exception and their use can render quantified knowledge as irrelevant as it is unwieldy, and eliminate the need for specific anatomical and structural knowledge beyond that of the posture's shape.
All of the seven functional principles are contained within the first. A deep sensitivity to action and movement within the body will reveal them. The fundamental and indispensable function of yoga posture practice is to re-establish movement and action in the dynamics of integrity.
