How classical dance and yoga complement each other

When the twain meets: Yoga and dance.

In the silence of the music and the stillness of the movement , the expansive space of objectivity unfolds while I dance. In this space, everything seems leisurely, there is no urgency in the unfolding of characters and no visible end to this state of awareness. But as the muktayam plays, the awareness and objectivity diminish to a barely recognisable, miniscule presence within me, and I quickly emerge again with my name, my titles and roles, fully intact.

As a dancer who loved movement, the stillness of the physical practice of yoga was not very pleasurable as a teenager. I was restless and thrived on the physical gains of yoga more than the mental quiet and single pointed attention that it demanded. I was ecstatic with the physical prowess that I developed in yoga class. My balances became more controlled, my legs felt like they had gained an inch with all the stretching and I could contort myself into shapes that seemed a far reach just months earlier. I skipped pranayama class, yoga nidra classes, and any class that didn’t push me enough physically. I wanted only to be challenged physically.

I didn’t realise that years of dancing would bring be back to the same stillness of yoga, even if it was through movement. In a fast-paced tillana, I need the inner leisure and space that yoga was begging to offer me earlier, in order to truly ‘dance’.

Dance and yoga have been intertwined in Indian culture — physically, and philosophically. Yoga and dance have the same deity — Shiva. He is often depicted seated in quiet meditation, or dancing with force, his matted locks creating gusts of wind, jumps causing mountains to erupt and twirls egging the waters of the ocean to rise. These two movement practices seem like contradictions, but in reality, they have the same effect on the mind that is seeking.

Yoga itself contrary to popular culture is not just a physical practice. The Hatha yoga that has become the most popular representation of yoga is misunderstood by many of us. Asana practice, is just asana practice. It has tremendous physical benefits, but I am hesitant to call it yoga in its true sense.

‘Yogaha Chitra vritti nirodaha’ (yoga is the restrictions of the fluctuations of the mind).

People have come to believe in the various paths of yoga that are a means to the same end. But all these paths are intertwined, inseparable like creepers that cling to one another for sustenance.