You said, "You have to steal the adjustments." Can you explain this vice or virtue?
Yes. There are several things. "Stealing the adjustments" because you have heard from Guruji, "to move a part, you have to move the whole. To move a part, you have to hold the whole" and you will do that only when you are stealing. If you do something very conspicuously, open the sternum and you open the sternum, then you have disturbed so many parts! Do you understand the difference between opening the sternum in Tadasana and opening the sternum in Ujjayi Pranayama? You can afford to give a jerk in Tadasana to open your sternum; you can't afford to give a jerk in Ujjayi Pranayama sitting. Why do you do that? How do you do the sternum lift in your sitting pranayama? You do delicately, you steal. The adjustment is stolen. You steal the adjustment in such a way that other parts will not even know. Not only are they not disturbed, they should not even know that the sternum is lifted. What is that? When you're trying to do something which should not be noticed by others, it's a stealing. And that is to be developed in your practice. When you are doing asana, adjustment is not a jerk, it's process, because so many things are involved. Our body is like a bootlace system.
You know what a "bootlace system" is? Bootlace means the lace of the shoes. If you move the lace in one hole, you are moving in all the holes. You can't move the lace only in one hole. If you move the lace slightly, even in one hole, you are equally moving it in all the holes. So, in the body, if you do something somewhere, you are creating movement everywhere. The body is a bootlace system. If you work on the respiratory system other systems are influenced; if you work on the digestive system, others systems are influenced. In asana, you can't just say, "I'm working on the respiratory system, only on the skeletal, the muscular system." You can't do that. You are working on all the systems.
When you are making an adjustment, you should know that. In some aspect, you are not supposed to disturb other parts and also move all the parts. You must be circumspect. Adjustment should not be a "Big Bang." Adjustment is a process and therefore you should be stealing, like a thief. You know what is stealing is? The thief is circumspect. I said in class that if you have ten thousand rupees in your right pocket, you are watchful about it all the time; your mind is there all the time. But still you are pick-pocketed. And the thief, when he pickpockets, is concerned about the people around. He takes care that nobody notices him, nobody knows that he is stealing and that's how he steals. That is how you should make adjustments. It is stealing adjustments.
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