This entry was posted on Dec 31, 2024 by Charlotte Bell.
Earlier this 12 months, I wrote a submit about the way to simplify your yoga cues. For those who’ve ever been in a yoga class the place the cues have been coming at you quick and furiously, chances are you’ll understand how complicated it may be. I really like listening to lecturers clarify observe in methods I’d by no means imagined. However generally fixed cueing can go away no area for our personal exploration. Yoga cues are crucial, for college kids’ security and for his or her progress. But when I might solely give one yoga cue in my lessons it will be this: Loosen up into the place you might be.
A Yoga Cue for Mastery of Asana Follow
This yoga cue aligns with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Of the 196 yoga sutras, these three are involved with asana observe (as translated by Alistair Shearer):
- 2.46: The bodily posture must be regular and cozy.
- 2.47: It’s mastered when all effort is relaxed and the thoughts is absorbed within the Infinite.
- 2.48: Then we’re not upset by the play of opposites.
In Sutra 2.46, we study that asana is a observe of steadiness—balancing stability and ease. The third niyama, tapas (inside hearth) evokes us to be regular in our dedication, and powerful and steady in our expression of the poses. However we steadiness this with a way of ease, by no means pushing ourselves to the purpose of ache or wrestle.
Balancing these two qualities opens the door to mastery. What Sutra 2.47 tells us is that mastery of asana has nothing to do with pushing our our bodies to the max, or practising “superior” poses. Mastery arrives once we are in a position to calm down into the place we’re. Once we are in a position to calm down right into a pose simply as it’s—no matter what it could seem like from the skin—our minds and our bodies turn into one. We turn into absorbed within the ever-changing sensations arising in every second of a pose.
Our potential to relaxation in every second of every pose, it doesn’t matter what sensations occur to be arising, yields probably the most life-changing good thing about asana observe. Sutra 2.48 states that when we now have mastered asana on this method, we’re in a position to navigate the ups and downs of our lives with extra grace.
Intentions for a New 12 months
I’ve typically stated once we’re practising a seated ahead bend in my lessons, “Enlightenment doesn’t come from touching your head to your knee. Loosen up into the place you might be.” In fact, that doesn’t imply prompt enlightenment will occur once we calm down into our poses simply as they’re. However maybe, for a couple of moments, we will contact into our inside useful resource of calm and peace once we enable ourselves to easily be in our poses with out judgment or ambition. We will shift from the realm of doing to the realm of being.
Working towards asana on this method may also help us domesticate a behavior of enjoyable into the place we’re in different areas of our lives. All of us expertise nice and unsightly experiences in our lives. Peace doesn’t come from avoiding the disagreeable experiences; it comes from assembly them with each stability and readability. Once we observe this yoga cue on the mat, it turns into a talent we will entry off the mat.
As we head into a brand new 12 months, might you calm down into the place you might be proper now. Might you domesticate stability and ease and benefit from the pleasures of merely being.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.
