Conjuncting Africa and Asian Knowledge Systems
Is Ifa Yoga Possible or Desirable?
Questions from Ifa Tuntun
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Ifa Yoga would be the combination of Yoga, an Indian origin discipline, and Ifa, an African origin discipline.
What is Yoga?
Yoga is a system of physical, mental and spiritual discipline used in training body, mind and spirit in order to reach God.
What is Ifa?
Ifa is a discipline centred in exploring relationships between the self and the cosmos in order to live in alignment with God.
These are my definitions, which everyone might not agree with.
What Can Yoga Contribute to Ifa?
Yoga can contribute a system of physical, mental and spiritual discipline empowering the individualistic pursuit of Ifa, focused on the mind, in alliance with the body, rather than the current emphasis on external rituals.
What is Ifa Tuntun?
Ifa Tuntun is made up various efforts to rethink Ifa theory and practice, building on traditional Ifa but developing it it in new ways actualizing potential inherent to Ifa but unactualized in its traditional form.
The idea and practice of Ifa Tuntun was developed by Moyo Okediji and has inspired various efforts to adapt it in terms of diverse but ultimately correlative orientations.
Adapting Yoga to Ifa would be a form of Ifa Tuntun.
What Can Ifa Contribute to Yoga?
Ifa can further demonstrate the universal adaptability of Yoga ideas and practices, as has already been so successfully done with various cultures, such as Buddhism and Western secular civilization.
What Motivates these Questions at this Time?
These questions are motivated by my desire to unify various disciplines I practice to create a whole of mutually influencing constituents.
I have recently returned to the practice of Yoga and have renewed my work on Ifa.
Today, having completed a few Yoga asanas, Yoga physical exercises, I entered into one exercise that sets the stage to move from physical to mental and spiritual Yoga.
I sat in what is known as a half lotus, with my legs crossed beneath me, and performed a breathing exercise which I learnt from the Western esoteric school, the Rosicrucian AMORC.
The exercise involves holding your breath as you concentrate on a part of your body, from your feet to the top of your head or from the top of your head to your feet.
This exercise is good for vitality as it helps one breathe in a richer way than people normally do.
It also assists with emotional regulation because deep breathing helps calm the mind, aids concentration and helps one speak more effectively by calming the mind before speech.
On completing the Over All Body Exercise, as it is called, while still seated in the half lotus, I engaged in another practice associated with Yoga.
I chanted a rhythmic sound, described in Hinduism, the source of Yoga, as being the sound through which the universe was created, the sound OM, intoned in a long drawn out manner, "oooooooooooooommmmmmm".
Whatever one thinks about the belief about the cosmogonic significance of the sound, intoning it has a calming effect on the mind.
According to Harvey Spencer Lewis, AMORC founder, this effect is due to its being a combination of a vowel, O, spoken without any obstruction of the breath as it exits the mouth, and a consonant, M, in which the breath is obstructed as it comes out of the mouth.
I observed that the Ifa name "Odu" is also a combination of vowels "O" and a consonant "D".
Why don't I try chanting it too, I reasoned, particularly since I'm keen on developing a closer relationship with what Odu represents, described by Shoma Rosenberg as the "calabash" or matrix of circumstance from which each moment is born, as perceived in the name "Olodumare ", a Yoruba name for the creator of the universe?
I did and experienced an interesting rhythm in the rise and fall of sound.
It was even more meaningful when, as I chanted the name "Odu, I visualized an image of the opon ifa,the Ifa divination tray and cosmological symbol with an elegant Voodoo symbol in the centre representing for me the sixteen odu ifa, the primary expressions of Odu.
Could one relate oneself better to the idea of Odu through such chanting?
Could one have an encounter with Odu understood as an intelligence and power through such an effort?
One can know only if one tries.
Vistas opened before my inward gaze.
A unification of Yoga and Ifa akin to the unification of Yoga, Buddhism and Bon, the indigenous Tibetan religion, that created the unique power of Tibetan Buddhism.
Aleister Crowley's confluence of Yoga, Western magic and ancient Egyptian mythology to create Thelema.
The images here show figures from the mythical history of Ifa Yoga.
A mythical history of a discipline, school of thought or institution is an imaginative history that, though not factual, may help visualize values associated with that discipline, body of knowledge or institution.
The image shows Odu in meditation in a forest, seeking intimate relationship with nature through body and mind.
She was fed up with sacrifices involving the killing of animals because she loved animals and was seeking a solution, leading her to spend long hours in meditation in the forest.
Gradually, she entered deeper and deeper into the silence as the forest animals saw her as part of the environment, in her silence and stillness.
In that silence, the insights of what have come to be known as Ifa Yoga came to her.
"Why should you kill what is a part of you in order to appease what is a part of you?
Are you different from the orisha or even the ajogun?
Without the orisha,the intelligences and powers that underlie existence, there would be no existence.
Without the ajogun, those powers that generate difficulty, how meaningful would life be?
Your ori, your inward, immortal self, is your primary orisa.
Your second orisa is that one whose food you ate, whose air your breathed, within whose body you lived, as you grew from a spark between sperm and ovum into a creature of bone and flesh and entered the world.
The two primary orisha who brought you into the world of air and sun, your mother and father, are represented by your left and right big toes, they are with you, always, they are intertwined in those qualities that contribute to making you who you are.
All that exists are your family beceause they are part of the relationships that makes your existence possible.
All orisa are within you.
To reach them, look within.
Within yourself.
Within nature.
Oju inu. The inward eye.
Looking within what exists and what does not exist .
Odu then constructed the opon Ifa representation depicted in the cover of this piece as a guide to meditation.
Successive adherents developed the inward looking, contemplative approach of Odu into what is now known as Ifa Yoga."
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