What is the yoga of relaxation?

The answer comes in this beautiful and astonishingly hard-to-find book entitled Yoga: Art of Relaxation (1979) by Wolter Keers et al.

A preliminary and only very partial answer follows:

1. The first suggestion the authors make is that we open to tensions. While the latter remains undefined, we could say that a tension is a superimposition: it’s a sensation plus a concept or label. The sensation, of course, is a raw tingling while the label says, “Here is a contraction.” Or: “Here is gripping or grasping.” Or even: “My jaw is throbbing.”

2. So far, so good. But why open to tensions? The thesis–an elegant, parsimonious one–is two-fold. First, any tension is either indicative of or identical with (the authors do not say) ego. That is, when you find a tension, you’ve discovered an ego-image. And what is ego? For these authors, ego is nothing but defense–more specifically, the defense of an image (or concept or idea). (Ego is a defense of a third-person image that’s been superimposed upon a first-person Reality, the Reality that is I alone.)

3. Second, they posit–it’s a teaching tool, not an ontological claim–that “layers upon layers” of tensions have been laid down over the course of our lives. The implication (and it’s an interesting one) is that each tension is actually unique. When you say, “I often carry stress in my gut,” you’re fudging the matter a bit. Actually, if Keers et al are right, there are uniquely laid down tensions that have “accumulated” over time “in your gut.” What’s quite nice about the layer metaphor is that it invites one to explore this particular sensation not as “another repetition of the same old-same old” but as a fresh experience that’s asking to be experientially understood.

4. In part, the yoga of relaxation will involve various ways of taking note of tensions. Some exercises will invite one to drop weight; others to expand the so-called body; and so on–but all with a view to ultimately revealing not the gross (physical) body but the subtle (energy or light) body. I believe Jean Klein says somewhere that the energy body is “near” or “close to” the loving awareness that you essentially are.

5. As one opens to, while taking note, of a tension, something quite curious may sometimes occur: you might experience a pulse of panic or a flash of fear. This is, in fact, all to the good. As you “let the ego guard down,” there may be some fear: the fear of ego dissolution. Just as one is invited to be with any tension without trying to do anything to it (after all, one is not the doer anyway), so one is enjoined to open to any fear, to listen to it without any attempt to get rid of it, be done with it, or hide from it. Fear is a curious arising. Make friends with it.