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Dasti Yoga © 2015 by Richard Merrill Dasti Yoga Is a Spiritual Practice of Devotion Through Craft and Art, As Well As Other Handwork

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Dasti Yoga © 2015 by Richard Merrill Dasti Yoga Is a Spiritual Practice of Devotion Through Craft and Art, As Well As Other Handwork Dasti Yoga © 2015 by Richard Merrill Dasti Yoga is a spiritual practice of devotion through craft and art, as well as other handwork. The word dasti means “of the hand, or pertaining to the hand.”i It is associated with kriya yoga, or karma yoga, of which there are many variants. Lekh Raj Puriii defines Dasti Yoga as yoga “with the hands,” in such activities as the telling of rosary beads, as well as in the handcrafts and trades. Dasti yoga can involve any activity with the hands, from washing dishes to playing a violin sonata. It is the remembering of God while performing good and useful actions. Its relationship to karma yoga is in the performing of actions as worship, without any desire for benefit or rewardiii. Sri Swami Satchidananda quotes a Hindu saying, ‘ “Man me Ram, hath me kam.” “There is work in the hand, but Ram [God] in the mind.” iv This is the state of one who has realized the goal of Dasti yoga. One example of an ancient Dasti practice is Dasti Attam, or dasi attam, sacred temple dancing once performed as worship in southern India by devadasis, or “servants of God”v. Indira dasi, a classical dancer and authority on the history of the dance arts in India, writes in Classical Indian Temple Dancevi that the devas or demi-gods were sent to earth by their father to perform drama and dance in order to lift a curse that had been placed upon them. They founded the arts as they are known today. This is the mythic origin of the Indian classical dance form Bharatha Natyam, widely recognized as India’s national dance. Worship with the body is an ancient tradition. The devadasis were dedicated or “married” to a temple well before puberty; they led lives of celibacy and devotion to their religion.vii Sometime after the eleventh century, the pure devadasi tradition was lost. The term Dasti as applied to temple dance possibly referred to the hand gestures that are a striking feature of Bharatha Natyam. These gestures, known as hastas or mudras, were almost certainly an important part of temple dance, based on their antiquity and their essential status in Bharatha Natyam todayviii. The hasta-mudras of this classical dance encompass as many as five hundred meaningsix. Yoga, as many will know, can be translated as “union.” The word meaning “yoke” is its root, which itself is based on a word meaning “to join.” The original goal of yogic practices is Self-realization, or union with the Divine Self. The Divine Self is seen in mystical practice as a drop of the ocean of the Supreme Being. The drop is made of the same stuff as the ocean. Thus Self-realization is the same as God-realization. The endeavor of Self-realization requires practical action, of which Yoga is the framework. Meditation is the form of worship of a yogic practitioner. The hatha yoga we know today is a result of a long history of meeting the needs of the body and mind to support a life of meditation. The purpose of the practical aspects of yoga (breathing, postures, diet) is to bring the mind to a state of rest: In The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Sri Swami Satchidananda provides the Sanskrit text for each sutra of Patanjalix, then a transliteration of the Sanskrit. Next he translates each word directly into its English equivalent, and gives a succinct re-wording of the direct translation in English. Sanskrit is a terse language, with few words and much meaning. The first sutra announces that the following sutras will instruct one on the practice of yoga. Patanjali explains what Yoga is in Sutras 2 and 3: Sutra 2: Yogas chitta vrtti nirodhah – The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga. Sutra 3: Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam – The Seer [Self] abides in his own nature. Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati explains sutras two and three more poetically this way: 2: Yoga is the control of the gross and subtle thought patterns of the mind 3: Then the Seer abides in Itself, resting in its own True Nature, which is called Self-realization. xi These days, in English-speaking countries, the term “yoga” usually refers to hatha yoga, a set of exercises that were originally developed to keep devotees fit during their sedentary practice of meditation. Today, Hatha Yoga is practiced for its noted health-giving properties, including flexibility, improved circulation, and an emotional calm that many find almost addictive. In fact, in the UK, the benefits of yoga are recognized to the extent that there is a government policy setting standards for yoga therapy, which begins with the statement, “Yoga is a living practical philosophy. Those who practice yoga regularly and appropriately gain an awareness of themselves and their relationships with others which enables health and well being to be maintained and improved.”xii In India, from ancient times to this day, yoga is a spiritual practice whose goal is the stilling of the mind, the elimination of all mental activity, and to achieve union of the inner Self with the Divine Self. There are many different views of the Divine Self, but most see the Divine Self, or soul, as a particle or drop of the Supreme Being. This means that each of us contains the essence of God. Dasti yoga is a specific form of yogic spiritual practice. It is a personal practice in which handwork or art are performed consciously in a way that keeps the awareness of the craftsperson or artist on the divine source of the craft, the materials, and the person. Dasti yoga is worship with the hands (craft and visual art) or the body (as in dance). Susan Barrett Merrill, the founder of Weaving a Life, and the author of ZATI: The Art of Weaving a Lifexiii, with her Weaving a Life process of weaving seven keyforms or elemental forms in a sequence of exploration, has described a process that is very close to Dasti Yoga. Weaving a Life is a conscious practice of increasing personal awareness of the relationship of inner life and outer action, through the conscious creation of elemental forms. The keyforms are the amulet, bowl, doll, belt of power, mask, sacred bundle, and shawl. Each has a mytho-historical context and ancient associations, allowing the maker to discard preconceptions and allow the form to speak on a deeper level. The therapeutic value of Weaving a Life is evidenced by the number of psychiatrists and psychologists who have sought Weaving a Life credentials to use it in their own practice, the use of the Weaving a Life process in schools for students at risk, and the publication of articles on Weaving a Life in two consecutive issues of the journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapy. The Weaving a Life process can sweep aside emotional barriers to deeper consciousness, and enable one to commit to a spiritual practice. Weaving a Life is a structured process in which the structure supports creativity and individuality, rather than constricting them. It provides a template for ways to choose conscious living and to shed internal blocks in the process, through work with the hands. Weaving a Life recognizes the unique relationship between the mind, heart, and hand in grounding our spiritual awareness in our daily life. In his book The Hand: How It Shapes the Brain, Language and Culture, neurologist Frank Wilson explains how sustained work with the hands creates new neural pathways in the brain that affect our subsequent experience in fundamental ways. He says, “When personal discovery and desire prompt anyone to learn to do something well with the hands, an extremely complicated process is initiated that endows work with a powerful emotional charge. People are changed, significantly and irreversibly it seems, when movement, thought and feeling fuse during the active, long-term pursuit of goals.” This is the physiological basis for the profound meaning the keyforms have for their creators. Wilson goes on to talk about the part the hand plays in the integration of the whole person: “The interaction of brain and hand, and the growth of their collaborative relationship throughout a life of successive relationships with all manner of other selves – musical, building, playing, hiking, cooking, juggling, riding, artistic selves – …marks the fusion of what is physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual in us.”xiv The physical evidence for the mind-body-spirit connection is overwhelming, and is borne out by anecdotal evidence from readers of Barrett Merrill’s book and graduates of the Weaving a Life program. One reader says of the program, “It hasn’t made my MS go away, but it has helped me to accept and deal with it, and my life now, as it has been changed by it, is so much better.” Weaving a Life takes the student through an initial calling-in of constructive and creative forces in the amulet, a practice of self-acceptance in the bowl, connection with inner wisdom in the doll, delineating sacred space with the belt of power, addressing identity with the mask, assembling tools for a life journey with the bundle, and preparing for lifelong practice with the shawl. In each case, the nature of the weaving process is recognized again and again in the horizontal weft threads of daily life woven through vertical threads of belief and values. The simplicity of this concept gives Weaving a Life much of its power. Unlike many self-help step-based systems, which remain entirely mental, the keyforms are concrete creations made in a conscious process.
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