Note: for those of you who don’t come to class, Buddhist and Yogic principles overlap greatly because before the Buddha was a Buddha, he was a Yogi. Both are highly focused on meditation techniques and practices, with Hatha Yoga employing the use of physical poses, or asana, as a meditative tool.
On the heels of Zen, the Japanese term, wabi-sabi is making its way into the pop-culture lexicon. Check out an issue of Architectural Digest or even #Insta and you’ll see wabi-sabi as a trending design aesthetic. So let’s start there, with “design aesthetic.”
According to @mrphoenixgrey on #Instagram, wabi-sabi, “is clearly the new take on minimalism. ” He calls it a “philosophical approach to imperfect pieces.” Mr. Phoenix Grey coaches followers to put texture at the forefront, such as limewashed walls, wood, stone, etc. “Rich textures contrast the clinical minimalist look and create a cozy effect,” as does asymmetry. Continuing, “Slants, tilts, and adding in that unexpected sense of beauty allows irregularities to make a room feel less sterile.” Every surface added is a rustic element that allows you to “embrace the space and cocoon the room.” Finally, he urges us to “stay away from clean-cut lines” and summarizes the look as “old and fun.”
For a young guy who presents himself as the exact opposite of wabi-sabi, or kirei –young, and very shiny in a tight silk suit–he captures what wabi-sabi means when designing interiors, for sure!
If you’re familiar with the Japanese practice of sashiko (repairing clothing with patches) or kintsugi, (repairing broken solid objects like plates with gold lacquer), you already have a head start on wabi-sabi in that you understand the beauty of imperfect things.
Wabi-sabi is a Zen term. For guidance, we shift gears from #Insta to Suzuki Daisetz, the monk credited with bringing Zen Meditation to the West in the middle of the last century. Translated, wabi means “poverty.” Suzuki Sensei elaborates, “To be satisfied with a little hut, a room of two or three tatami (mats), like the log cabin of Thoreau, and with a dish of vegetables picked in the neighboring fields.” Wabi means not only that you have little, but you’re OK with it. You’ve finally conquered the Buddhist/Yogic pitfall of desire. Your need for accumulation of stuff is in check. You’re the opposite of a hoarder. You’re Marie Kondo, but instead of buying her designer bins, you’re repurposing objects you already own.
Now for sabi. Sabi forms the root of sabishi which can mean “loneliness.” I was familiar with the term early on in my 3 years in Japan. When asked about my family, I would always say I was an only-child. The first reactions were always “sabishi,” in sympathetic tones. However, the word can also translate as “solitude.”. I rarely feel lonely, even when alone. That said, I like quiet company in solitude, gazing at a garden, practicing yoga, and enjoying tea alongside others. Sabi is one of the four principles governing the Japanese tea ceremony — proof you can have togetherness in solitude.
Wabi is useful in describing external objects, while Sabi seems more suitable for the inner state, what Suzuki Sensei calls the “psychosphere.” The ideal frame of mind is then the “realization of the spirit of poverty, devoid of all forms of dichotomy: subject and object, good and evil, right and wrong, honor and disgrace, body and soul, gain and loss.” Sounds a lot like the non-dual yogic quest for nirodha, or a contented equilibrium, as we dance between the poles of opposites.
Yoga means “union” or integration of mind, body and spirit. As with the tea ceremony, it begins with “the careful arrangement of the external.” In the world of Hatha yoga, we begin with a focus on the external: alignment, pose mastery–even outfit selection. Is it any surprise that the main downfall of Hatha yoga is vanity? The Hatha texts and sages warned against vanity –and that was before Eastern Yoga collided with the LA fitness scene of the 70/80’s.
So how do we avoid getting so attached to the external in our Hatha practice? It starts with where you choose to do yoga. If you’re surrounded by mirrors, the temptation to compare yourself to others (or to previous versions of yourself) will always be there. Then we move on to teacher and instruction style. Are you going to take a class where the teacher always demonstrates the “ideal” version of the pose–even though only 20% of the room can/should be doing the pose in that exact way?
While perfect “repeating forms” are aesthetically pleasing and kirei, they’re devoid of Zen. What if we apply the concept of wabi sabi to a yoga class? How would it look different from what has become the norm?
Human bodies are full of asymmetries and extreme proportions: long legs, short arms, large hip sockets, narrow shoulders. We’re not all “Vitruvian Man.” Overlay assorted aches, pains, and injuries and you can see that people have a…patina. Do we try to make it all new and shiny? If you watch Antiques RoadShow, you know that just decreases the value. In yoga, it’s downright dangerous and can lead to injury. It’s no mystery that the styles of practice that mirror gymnastics have the highest injury rates. Yoga Therapist Larry Payne routinely thanks Ashtanga Yoga, the forerunner to Vinyasa Flow, for his house on Maui!
What if, instead of chasing glossy images of perfection, you thought of your body as a treasure, a “flea-market find,” on-trend with wabi sabi–but in need of some TLC? You would want for that body a yoga class that presents poses showing different body types as examples, maybe even yours. You would be thrilled to not hear the word “modifications” again, as though a person with a different build who has to do the pose differently is abnormal. To be honest, what’s presented in most classes is NOT normal–it’s for the 20%, not the 80%!
Learning to scale poses for your body from day one would then free you up to explore the “work-in,” or Suzuki Sensei’s “psychosphere.” Maybe then you’d spend more time in a peaceful state of nirodha or equanimity, vs. constantly chasing some fictional future version of you. You’d be able to get the sabi or content solitude going, Your mind would finally be able to stop thinking so your body could start feeling! And here’s the clincher: when you start feeling good in your body, you think less about how your body should be and start to appreciate the way it is now. In yoga, NOW is, well, everything. The past and future are fiction, stories we write and recall, highly modified by the mind.
Consider this: would a tea ceremony be a ceremony if you chatted with your neighbor like you were at Starbucks, constantly checking your phone for a text about a future meeting? In the same vein, is yoga with the commotion of music, mirrors, and an instructor modeling perfect poses yoga, actually?
Quick, let’s double back a minute to Suzuki Sensei on wabi-sabi, “Zen’s habit of mind is to break through all forms of human artificiality…Zen has no taste for complexities that lie on the surface of life.” He then goes on to almost berate the overly analytical intellect as getting in the way of common sense, inward focus, and enjoying life!
I think you’ll agree, if you want to “break through forms of human artificiality,” interior design and fitness yoga aren’t best bets. That said, if you want a great-looking house and a yoga beach booty, look no further! As someone who comes from a family of designers and likes a good workout, I get it.
Just for fun, please go back and read the bolded words of Mr. Phoenix Grey in the third paragraph–but apply them to the human body vs a house. In Hatha, your body is the house of your spirit, after all.
As a teacher with students ranging in age from 30-70+, I am in awe of their dedication. They sign up for their once-a-week class and show up–in blizzards, heat waves, etc. How do they stay so committed? I suspect the reason is an innate understanding of what I’ll call body/mind wabi-sabi. Without ever hearing the term, they’ve come to accept that yoga is a practice of engaging the body/mind that shows up on a given day. There’s no tracking reps, weight, bmi; but rather, the tracking is for feelings and sensations, whatever arises in body and brain.
There are no mirrors to guide you, just your breath and a few unscripted words (not memorized “cues”), and some gentle hands-on assists to help you feel your way into a shape. We accept asymmetry and laugh a little when one side is so easy and the other so difficult. We’ve learned to work around injuries and share stories about some of our misadventures. Texture? We’ve got it. We’ve lived, loved, read, and traveled…a lot. Putting ourselves out there has caused scars, inner and outer. We sashiko them up unapologetically, knowing they may never heal entirely. We have a sincerity and authenticity that can often be in contrast to our surroundings at work, at committee meetings–even family gatherings. We try keep it simple and aren’t looking to add complexity to superficiality.
To stay true to myself and my students there’s something you won’t see on my website or socials: perfect “repeating forms” photo showing students of similar body types, all styled alike, doing the same pose the same way. To borrow a Zen teaching method, the photo says a thousand words about what classical yoga, the root of all Zen, is not.
