I found several versions of a creation story in Hindu mythology and the one that corresponds to a yoga posture begins with Vishnu reclining on a couch while floating in the cosmic sea of possibility.
Amid the timeless eternities of creation and destruction Vishnu is reclining on his bed which is a coiled serpent named Ananta. The cobra has 1000 heads that cover Vishnu and protect him. In our yoga stories, we learned about another cobra named Vasuki who was wrapped around the mountain while being pulled from both sides by gods and demons. Vasuki and Ananta are brothers. Snakes are a common element in the Hindu mythological stories.
The story continues and a lotus flower grows from Vishnu’s navel and in the lotus is Brahma with a face turned in each direction. All creation as we know it comes from Brahma including the earth, the heavens, sun, moon and planets. All the different animals and all the people come from his mouth, arms, thighs and feet.
But this universe only lasts for one day. A day to Lord Brahma is longer than four thousand million of the years that we know. Every night when Lord Brahma sleeps the world is destroyed. Every morning when he awakes it is created again. When the Lord Brahma of this universe has lived a lifetime of such days the universe is completely destroyed by Lord Shiva.
For an unimaginable period of time chaos and water alone exist. Then once again Lord Vishnu upon Ananta appears, floating on the vast ocean. From Lord Vishnu a lotus flower grows from Vishnu’s navel and in the lotus is Brahma with a face turned in each direction. This cycle continues for ever.
The two yoga postures that accompany this story are anantasana, Vishnu’s repose and padmasana, lotus.
Whether we are doing these featured postures, or any other posture, the creation story gives us a clue as to how to practice. Each day the universe is created. Each night it is destroyed. Each posture is a new creation. We build the structure of it with our body and breathe life and energy into it with the breath. What keeps the structure living and growing is our awareness in the body of how it feels.
If a moving in a posture becomes too automatic then it is essentially dead since the awareness and growth in that moment is gone. This becomes the greatest challenge then to the longtime practitioner, to keep breathing life, attention, awareness into each posture as if it were a new experience each time.
