Yoga Beyond Poses

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In a neurological ward filled with moaning patients, Kraftsow took up his prayerful meditation. “I think I began doing it when I became aware that I was alive,” he says.

A month after surgery, Kraftsow began experiencing crippling headaches and fevers. Cerebrospinal fluid was leaking through the membrane around his brain. He was in and out of hospitals for six months and underwent a second surgery. “I couldn’t do asana or pranayama or chanting, yet yoga was fundamental to my recovery,” he says. Physical immobility deepened his meditative practice, illuminating his highest priorities.

These days Kraftsow spends much of the year traveling, conducting workshops and training yoga teachers and therapists. He is 54, healthy, and by many accounts a different man than he was before brain surgery. “He’s more gentle, more loving, more present, more clear,” says yoga instructor Kathy Ornish. “I think you fully understand the power of yoga when you can do nothing but watch your breath or touch your fingers. The subtle becomes more profound.”

From a distance, the yoga sequences Kraftsow teaches can appear undemanding, even mundane. A closer look reveals their artistry. They are mosaics of movement, breath control, and chanting. He calls his approach Viniyoga, a Sanskrit term for skillful adaptation. You’ll never catch him molding a student into a textbook version of the triangle pose. Instead, he’ll adapt the triangle to best serve the student.

If you ask Kraftsow how his ordeal changed him, first he will correct you. He will call it an “opportunity.” Then he will raise a fist and slowly unfold the fingers. He will tell you that the most important lesson he learned was “letting go”—embracing the reality that we can’t control everything.

“My desire for all those who have only been exposed to the asana part of yoga is that they have an opportunity to appreciate the depth and breadth of this great tradition,” he says. “When you have a life-threatening or serious condition, you can’t rely on what you could rely on before. Yoga is like a raft that can help you go through these things.

“But in my case it wasn’t asana. It wasn’t even breathing. It was attitude, prayer. These are going to help you when you can’t do anything else.”

Anna Dubrovsky is a contributing editor of Yoga + Joyful Living, a magazine that takes yoga “out of the studio” and explores every aspect of conscious living. This article is excerpted from the Spring 2009 issue; www.yogaplus.org.

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