Direct Experience: Discovery Through Immediate Sense Perception
When Confucius said, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand,” he was describing the value of direct experience. Direct experience is the most effective way to deeply understand something. What is direct experience?
Someone can tell me how to ride a bike. I can watch someone ride a bike. But it is only when I get on a bike and pedal that I truly understand how to ride a bike. Until we’ve had a direct experience of something, our knowing is theoretical and our doing is imitation.
In terms of asana (yoga postures), direct experience is what happens when I am no longer thinking about what I am doing but, instead, am feeling my way through it. I become aware of my physical relationship to the space around me, the earth beneath me and the shape my body parts are making. I become aware of my body experientially - awareness of the body through the body as opposed to awareness of the body through the mind.
One of the first times I had a direct experience was in a yoga class. I remember that a sense of awe came over me. The teacher was not giving much instruction and I could feel what my body “wanted” to do. It wasn’t something I was thinking about and then executing consciously. I was following what felt like requests from my body, without any thought or evaluation; without mental will being actively involved.
When I was no longer simply following my teacher’s verbal direction and/or imitating her movements, I was able to “hear” my body; I was able to follow its instruction. This is direct experience, in the context of asana and, for me, it was the prerequisite to becoming more deeply aware of my unique - and shifting - physiological habits and capacities. Through direct experience I was able to feel my way through postures, finding greater ease and discovering new and more effective ways of moving my body into and out of the different shapes that we call yoga postures.
The magic of yoga is in what happens as we are able to drop into a direct experience of the postures.
Do you give yourself and your students quiet moments in class so that they can discover the magic of direct experience?