The image of a knot is decidedly the most suited archetype for the health industry in the 21st century. Ironically, the antidote is the knot of the practice of yoga, examined and performed religiously. The knot, and the mind; their natures are intricately linked. There are knots that burden - as paths in a maze , labyrinths or as built up tension in the body. Perhaps the art in a doodle, line, a pattern, a scratch has the therapeutic power to remove knots... psychosomatic knots.

Head to Knee
Elbow Pressure
Noose
1st Scorpon
Cow
Crocodile
2nd Upward Bow
Cobbler
Firefly
Great Scorpion
Sage Viranchya
Turtle Asleep
Upward Bow
Womb
Wheel
Peacock Feather
UNDO knots that burden

A large part of the human life is making something out of the tangled mass that life throws us into, both within ourselves and in the world around us. In 333BC Alexander the Great “untied” the knot that was tied to an ox cart by the first knot theorist, a Greek peasant by the name of Gordius, the father of Midas. Alexander sliced the knot with his sword giving rise to the proverbial term “solving a problem by bold action,” the metaphor for intractable problems, solved by a bold stroke. This ancient story also gives rise to the principal problem facing knot theorists today. 1 How difficult is it to untie a knot?

The term knot can refer to any complication in rope that has the potential for the rope to act differently than if it were not there. The term disease, meaning “dis” ease or “lack of ease,” is a disorder or disposition regarded as adversely affecting the person. One does not feel at their optimum state of balance and comfort. Any knot within the body becomes a complication and creates “dis” comfort. These knots come in different forms, sizes and severity. For a tree, similarily, the knots materially affect checking (cracking) and warping, ease in working, and cleavability of timber.2 They are defects which weaken timber and depreciate its value for structural purposes where strength is an important consideration. The knots in the human body appear as tense or tightened muscles due to tension or nervousness, hard lumps of tissue, constricted feelings in the body like trigger points (hyperirritable spots in skeletal muscle). Also, the many different types of cramps, such as, smooth muscle contractions which lie at the heart of the cramping pain of internal organs and menstruation also is highly likely to cause cramps of varying severity in the abdomen. Within the subtle, unseen realm the energy centers (chakras) can be knotted and blocked but, most lethal of all, are mental knots, the instigators for the knots of the body.

Freud stated so eloquently – anatomy is destiny. Anatomical process is a deep and powerful wisdom giving rise to internal feeling images.3 Feelings are the glue that holds a person together, yet they are based upon anatomy. Without anatomy, emotions do not exist. In the “Emotional Anatomy” it is stated that feelings have a somatic architecture. The structure of yogic postures similarily instigate archetypes of our inner and outer life as well as the internal structure of nature. In this book the chapter, entitled ‘Patterns of Emotional Distress’ is devoted to the story of how each individual’s shape reflects genetic emotional inheritance in interaction with societal “shoulds” and personal ways of self-organizing. Each person’s response to the world marks him, creating his unique emotional shape. This shape gives rise to individual consciousness. Yoga attempts to erase the scars or samskaras, mental impressions of the past, that have made a mark on the psyche and, in turn, the body. Each asana offers a shape that will serve to purify, a therapy for the emotional anatomy.

The shapes and forms of postures and knots go back in history. The earliest cordage materials were both of plant fibers and parts of animals. Early humans must have been inspired to tie their first knots by what they saw around them. Spider webs, bird nests, fish entangled in underwater growth, and even the complex structures of many plants. Nature was a great teacher as it was likewise, within the world of yogic postures. Just as with asanas, the lists of knots is extensive (monkey’s fist, figure eight, hangman’s, ocean plait braid, etc. with some names providing clues about what they meant to our ancestors and others referring to professions (archer, weaver, fisherman). Naturally, common properties allow for a useful system of categorization for both asanas and knots. In yoga this appears in a therapeutic categorization of postures into hip-opening, back-bending, twisting, strengthening postures.40 In addition, within Celtic designs, the shape of the design often determines the “meaning” of a knot-work design which also reflects the shapes of the universe i.e. trefoil are regarded as bird, fish and animal designs; circles represent unity or eternity; spirals reincarnation or cycles, etc.

1Knot theory is a branch of topology inspired by observations, as the name suggests, of common knots, abstract properties of theoretical knots. Modern knot theory has extended the concept of a knot to higher dimensions i.e. inquiries whether two strands of DNA are equivalent without cutting.

2During the development of a tree the lower limbs die, but may persist for a time--often for years. Subsequent layers of growth of the stem are no longer intimately joined with the dead limb, but are laid around it. Hence dead branches produce knots which are nothing more than pegs in a hole.

3Emotional Body, p.xii Keleman, Stanley. Emotional Anatomy (Berkeley, CA:Center Press, 1986)