I’m a big fan of prop use – you would know if you’ve been witness to some of my more indulgent classes requiring hours to clear the room of blocks, chairs, straps, bags and blankets. But seriously, prop use within reason is a good way to work in to poses that may not be easily available in your body, or to apply manual pressure and support into areas of the body like the upper back that could do we a prolonged and even poke (couldn’t we all, actually).

I’m glad we’re finally starting to realise that the human body is not made of legos or otherwise square – and rectangular blocks with flat edges aren’t always suitable.

The new unBLOK has rounded curves on top and side which are good for a more comfortable hand grip for standing pose support use. Unlike other curvy blocks, this one has a flat bottom to ensure stability. The curves are also great to place underneath the back and rest supine as a chest opener.

Here’s a look at me giving it a go.

Try some proppage in your practice.

Shouldering a heavy load?

The resting state of our shoulders is a strong reflection of our emotional health. This sounds like a typical, grand yoga teacher pronouncement – but I believe there is a lot of truth in it. Acting as a bottle cap of sorts, the shoulders can roll inwards, holding stress and tension in the upper spine and prevent it from being released from the body. Paradoxically, the more low we feel, the more we allow the body to turn into itself – trapping that negative energy within. Conversely, we can spend our day with shoulders totally rolled backwards, chest fully presented with the heart melting away like some Al Gore powerpoint gone wild. Although this may in the short term be a feel good corrective, if habitual it leaves the body destabilised and emotionally leaky – all strength presented and offered externally – nothing held back for the self.

Knowing that the use of the shoulders (and the upper spine) is so tied to the workings of our spirit, it is a good physical focus for practice. To be more specific, in practice this week, I’ve been seeking to explore the dynamic between stabilising actions of the shoulder and arm, in relation to a release and stretch that does not signal collapse or retention of stress. In this exploration I seek to create a great amount of heat and strength within the centre, but with a mindfully placed pressure release valve in the gateway of the shoulders – to allow for a balanced postural and emotional experience.

For whatever reason, I keep hearing and seeing this song as I’ve practiced (maybe it’s thinking about the Fosse shoulders).  ”I’ve got ::cling cling:: fsssss steam heat. /But I need your love to keep away the cold.” All that heat we build in practice needs a calm and loving heart to regulate it properly through the body – balancing, releasing, stabilising as much as a posture or our heart needs.

Explore the practice of stability

The practice of stability keeps the shoulder blades down on the back and heat and energy functioning alchemically within the torso. Chest stays in balance with the pelvis, meaning ribs do not poke out and lower back does not arch.  Energy moves through the limbs, but is directed internally to the centre. In a stabilising practice, this alignment is sought in every pose.

• Bring the hands together in prayer. Press the palms strongly together and bring the forearms in a straight line from elbow to elbow. Allow the shoulder blades to move down the back and together. Notice the internal direction of energy and grounding.
• Release the hands from prayer and bring the hands by your side. Open the palms forward and lift the hands out to the side and then above the head, extending the arms up whilst keeping the shoulders down as much as possible (it is impossible to keep the shoulders down completely, but try your best to limit). Avoid arching your back.
• Come to downward-facing dog pose. Bring weight slightly forward, so that arms root into shoulders and shoulders move back and down away from the ears. Feel the stabilised energy in the back. Feel the space between shoulder and ears.

Explore the practice of release

In a releasing practice, we seek to actively move the shoulder blades up and out, while maintaining strength and lift, thereby avoiding collapse and a feeling of malaise. We allow energy to move outwards expressively. Often a backbend brings focus to the heart and a feeling of emotional expansiveness.

• From prayer pose, point the fingers forward and stretch the arms forward allowing the shoulder blades to round forward in the direction of the fingers. Keep that length and raise the arms over the head. Allow shoulder blades to lift up near the ears. Elbow may come behind ears and chest may expand and rise. Notice the energetic feeling of energy rising up!
• In downward-facing dog pose, press the floor away and lengthen the arms as far out of the shoulder as possible. Feel strength develop in this open state. Feel the focus move towards the heart and emotional release. Similarly in plank, press the floor away and feel the rounding across the shoulder blades and the sense of release and opening through the back.
• Handstand! Press the floor away, feel energy move in a whole new way through the shoulder girdle.

Explore a balanced practice

In this practice we hold on to a mindful balance of internally and externally directed energy through the shoulder gateway. Express in this area whatever you need structurally and energetically on any given day.

• As you raise your arms over your head, find the placement between shoulders descended and lifted that gives you the feeling of release, tempered by a need for stability and internal focus.
• In poses like side angle, feel how the bottom arm may stabilise (shoulder moving back and down away from the ear) while the top arm may stretch more freely shooting energy out.  Feel the difference!

This week I’ve asked you to play with extremes in movements through the shoulder gateway.  Be curious to the differences and then seek the balance in your practice and your life.

Us harried city folk are often seeking a quiet refuge when we come to the mat – be it in the studio improvised corners of our homes. As a former New Yorker, I’ve been lately softened by a London where people at least have the politeness to keep their inner rage and aggression to themselves. But after a trip back to see some friends in the Big Apple, I realised I sort of like the noise. Maybe it’s me, but a rather ordinary looking woman dressed for work screaming at total strangers at 8:30am to ‘get the fuck out of her way’ on a crowded train gave me a sense of nostalgia for my former life in Manhattan and Queens. This video o f a different and much more wild subway incident is legendary – granted I wouldn’t want to be there, but it’s classic New York.

I can’t help it. I know there’s a lot of rage and anger here, as well as Spaghetti, but I lived in New York too long – I love the insanity, I love the life, I love the pulse of a big city. I like the museums too. That’s me. You’ll have your own reasons.

However, a great deal of yoga philosophy, practice and sentiment is set up for a hermitic life of monastic solitude somewhere in a cave or penthouse apartment with good double glazing.  And that’s a choice that I haven’t made. If you come to my classes in London, most likely you’ve made the choice to be in a big loud city with a demanding career. And it is a choice, so you shouldn’t resent it or rebel against it. The trick is learning to live with it without becoming a spaghetti fighter. So for us city yogis, there is a constant dynamic between noise and silence. We can go into a studio and pretend it’s quiet, but outside is that wonderfully deafening pulse of life.  What to do? How to practice?

I was struck by this passage in Chogyam Trungpa’s classic Meditation in Action.

If we are meditating at home and we happen to live in the middle of the High Street, we cannot stop the traffic just because we want peace and quiet. But we can stop ourselves, we can accept the noise. The noise also contains silence. We must put ourselves into it and expect nothing from outside, just as Buddha did. And we must accept whatever situation arises. As long as we never retreat from the situation, it will always present itself as a vehicle and we will be able to make use of it.

This noisy world is our reality that we have chosen to accept, instead of a practice of solitude. So we must work with it. Go into it. Not avoid.

This week I’ve been working on creating an inner foundation of silence and breath to hold onto when everything else is loud and chaotic. This is what I suggest:

• Begin your practice with some breath work. Slow it down. Try the technique of a counted breath (inhale 2-3-4, pause, exhale 2-3-4, etc.) to lay the foundation of an inner stillness before adding layers of complication on top.
• Feel the foundation of your feet and hands in each posture.  Try pausing before coming into the complete shape and just feeling where it begins. Make sure it is focused and sturdy.
• As you work into deeper twists, feel how the breath is constricted. It’s just a natural part of the pose. Learn to stay calm and still breathe within that smaller space.  Good practice for life.
• Try more ‘advanced’ or ‘complicated’ poses.  These are essentially ‘noisy’ poses with lots going on. Can you find the silent focus within the complicated noise of the posture? You don’t have to do it to Yoga Journal cover ability to practice this this skill. Just go to where your body takes you today.

Give it a try. And then go outside and enjoy your wonderful city life whilst staying in your breath and calm foundation. See where the practice and the noise takes you. See what it teaches you.

And if you don’t like it, move out! Everything is a choice.

Varieties of postural extremes lead to tension and weakness

When I used to have my desk job, I would have a continue struggle with sitting comfortably in front of the computer. I would often find myself totally leaning forward, reaching my head out, engaged in the most important email or phone call in the world (if not successfully completed, we’d all die). Or, I’d be bored and disengaged rounding back and sinking into myself. Physically, I’d often ache in my back, or develop a headache that would last into the evening. I’d try every manner of ergonomic instrument to make my seat more comfortable.  Pads under my bum, my back, my wrist. Monitor up, monitor down. Standing, kneeling, or even having a brief love affair with a bouncy ball.

Beyond the physical, I was also resisting the present moment of where I was, because I knew it wasn’t the right job for me. I was uncomfortable in the seat of the present moment.

I believe this is not an uncommon scenario. Posturally, we have discomfort sitting up straight or standing up straight. Lower back pain is common as are tension headaches from ‘forward head.’ Emotionally and spiritually we may also have problems being in the present moment and accepting it for it’s good or bad.  Finding a sense of comfort and acceptance so one can face challenge or opportunity with clarity can be particularly tough.

Practically, in my yoga practice, I believe finding a comfortable seat within a posture is creating a stable and spacious base through the pelvic bowl and deep core. From this stable base, the spine can lengthen, bend and twist allowing freedom of movement and breath. With this space and mobility, you can balance the curves of the back into a state of dynamic opposition and support. The body has the experience of opening from the inside out. Each yoga posture, especially as they become more complicated and asymmetrical, becomes an opportunity to test finding a comfortable seat within the physical challenge.  This physical challenge thus provides a rehearsal for finding comfort within the emotional and spiritual challenges of life.

To put into practice, try the following exploration:

Learn to balance the natural curves of the spine around an upright central axis and neutral pelvis.

1. Stand with the feet slightly wider than hip-distance apart.
2. Softly bend the knees – keep them bent to allow mobility for pelvic tilting.
3. Bring one hand just below the belly and one hand flat to the lower back
4. Stick the bum out and feel the exaggerated sensation of the anterior or forward tilt of the pelvis. Notice the curve in the lumbar spine/lower back. Notice the potential displacement of the lower ribs forward.  Feel the disengagement through the core.  Ask yourself if this is an integrated position in which you can breathe and feel the length and power of the spine evenly.  Probably not!
5. Do the opposite.  Tuck the bum under and feel the exaggerated sensation of the posterior or backwards tilt of the pelvis. Notice the curve in the lumbar spine flatten.  Notice the potential rounding of the mid back. Feel the disengagement through the core. Ask yourself again if this is an integrated position in which you can breathe and feel the length and power of the spine evenly.  Yes? Actually, probably not.
6. Repeat a few times and notice any emotional effect.  You’re not gonna cry, but there may be a different ‘feeling’ attached to each exaggeration.
7. Now find the still point between these two exaggerated sensations – leaving just a subtle natural curve in the lower back.  This is a neutral pelvis. Most likely you’ll have to engage a bit through your core to lift pubic bone to navel to find this balanced position. It’s a bit like zipping up a tight pair of jeans.
8. See if you can keep this stance while straightening the legs.  Probably not as easy as described
9. In all poses where the torso is upright, can you recreate this stable and neutral pelvis? That means poses like Warrior I, Warrior II, Triangle and so on.  Each pose will offer a different challenge. But learning to keep your stable and calm center through the challenge is what the practice is all about and is the perfect rehearsal for the challenges of life.

P.S.: The use of the pelvis gets more complicated as we forward and back bend. But, that’s for another day!

Even in the still body, there is a dynamic undercurrent of physical and emotional movement

Relax and trust the movement of life

Erich Schiffmann wrote these words, and they have been the guidance for my practice this week. I think this is better expressed through practice than words, so below is a short meditation, based on Schiffmann, that has been a major component of my yoga this week.

1. Begin either seated or on your back with knees bent and soles of the feet on the floor.  Choose a position in which you can stay 5-10 minutes comfortably without exertion. Close the eyes
2. Calm the mind and body first through a ‘countdown’ breath.  Starting with a count of twenty, inhale ’20′, exhale ’19′ and so on until you reach zero.  Each breath should be even and through the nose.  Avoid pushing or pulling the breath.  Let it move slowly and freely.
3. After calming the mind and body through this breath, bring your hands flat to your heart. Hands need not be on the anatomical heart, but can be wherever you feel your emotional and spiritual heart. This may be at the top of the chest or lower. Follow your instinct.
4. With hands on the heart, relax and just feel and trust the movement of life rolling through you. You may first just feel the movement of breath or the anatomical heart beat. You may get a sense of the blood flowing, digestion happening and other subtle rumblings. Revel in the sensations of being alive in the body
5. Beneath the physical sensations, sense for any undercurrents of emotion or passion. Let surface level thoughts drift away with the breath and focus instead on the residual emotional feeling underneath. What passion is flowing through you waiting for an expression? Is there hollow space waiting to be filled?
6. Feel the multitude of physical, emotional, and spiritual movement through the body. Relax, trust and let it flow freely.
7. After 5 minutes or more, slowly let the hands come by your side and open your eyes.
8. As you practice, see if you can express this flow of life and energy through the postures. As you leave the mat, can you remove obstacles that prevent it from being expressed?

Remember that roots grow deep

Most likely the problem with and the solution for any difficult yoga posture lies within its foundation. Usually that means the feet, hands, or both in varying combinations. But what is our foundation and how do we use it? It’s easy, especially if we’re seeking a strong experience or practice to think we need to push like hell into the feet or hands to engage the muscles. Through this strong downward push and corresponding muscular ‘propping up’ you’ll probably feel a lot, sweat a lot and get the sensation that you are really in the pose. But you’re probably working too hard in a way that is rigid, stressful to the nervous system, and potentially bad on joints like the wrist. Instead, can you try a relationship to gravity and yoru foundation that allows a moderate yield and push to the floor, and an energetic lift in response.  Simply, movement is not unidirectionally down, but moves downward first and then upward in response.

I find the image of a tree particularly helpful. Imagine in any pose yourself as a tree – roots growing down deep into the earth. These roots will be strong – breaking through earth and rock. But they move downward to find energy to draw upward. And then what ever shape that posture, that tree expresses, it comes from a downward rooting and upward lift. This exploration carries on throughout the practice in many forms.

For example, you do not lift your arms unless it comes from energy that begins at your foundation. (Most likely this energy is routed through your centre, your core, but that’s a different dialogue for another day)

Remembering that the mat provides a rehearsal ground for life, this rooting and expression of energy has emotional and spiritual relevance. As in propping up a physical posture, we can resist the reality of the present moment, even if it’s good – retaining a separation. But instead we can learn to set our roots in the reality of the present moment – expressing its good and transforming its bad. Remember, as you practice, the deep meaning of your foundation and roots, both structurally and spiritually.

Practically: 

1. Sit cross-legged or kneeling. Close the eyes and let the weight settle downwards. Let it be heavy, dead weight. The back may round and the head roll down. Imagine your roots growing deep, like a tree, then gather energy up as you begin to lengthen back upward to a more upright seat. Let the exhale root your down and the inhale lift you up.
2. Stand with feet hip distance apart. Press strongly down, pushing against the floor. Feel the unidirectional movement down and its rigidity. Then soften, bend the knees and let weight softly yield to the floor. With the inhale, re-straighten the legs and feel both the movement downwards and the upward lift in response.
3. In Warrior II. Press down rigidly in the pose, getting the sense of movement going downwards.  Bend and yield, even the lengthened back leg, while you bring the hands down to the hips.  Press gently through the legs, re-lengthening the back leg and lift the arms back up as you ride the upward lift back into the pose.
4. In every pose feel your roots, feel the emotion of the moment. Express the good, transform the bad.  Breathe and enjoy.

Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad
But the world goes ’round
Sometimes you lose every nickel you had
But the world goes ’round

Sometimes your dreams get broken in pieces
But that doesn’t alter a thing
Take it from me, there’s still gonna be
A summer, a winter, a fall and a spring

And sometimes a friend starts treating you bad
But the world goes ’round
And sometimes your heart breaks with a deafening sound

Somebody loses and somebody wins
And one day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins
But the planet spins, and the world goes ’round-
But the world goes ’round
But the world goes ’round

Fred Ebb wrote these words for Liza Minnelli, and at first they can sound pessimistic and grim.  But in the beat of the drums, the persistence of the music, and the triumphant delivery of the vocal, there seems to be something else going on. For me, its the realisation that there are of course ups and downs in anyone’s life…and we survive them. Sometimes, even, you get hit with emotional nuclear bombs. But, nevertheless, life goes on and you can reclaim your footing on a world that’s spinning madly around you. But to make peace with all that is changing, like Liza finding the tune of this song, you need to be deeply connected to something deeper and unchanging. This is where the variety of religious and spiritual experience can come into play (I can’t help it if I turn to Guru Liza, and you’ll have something else), but on an everyday practical level you can feel this physically within the body.

The posture practice, with all its challenges and twists and turns, can be a rehearsal for the twists and turns of life. If you can learn to feel centred and grounded within a complicated posture, you’ll be better prepared to face the stresses that life will throw at you. You can learn to find your breath while challenged. You can find length and space when everything makes you want to curl up and hide.

When everything spins and changes, can we feel into the deep central line of the spine to find our grounding?

So, how on earth do you connect to something deeper and unchanging in the body?  Not as profound as it sounds. As a focus, this week I’ve been trying to feel that deep inner space – that central axis of the body from which everyone operates, moves, breathes, and charges electrically. Simply put, the spine.

I begin my practice by lying on the floor in child’s pose. With my eyes closed, I picture my body from above and mentally paint a line down my back in my favourite colour.  I see that line straight down my back. Slowly it is absorbed deep into the body, but I still can see it. Not only can I see it shining from within, I can feel that line – now in a gentle curve within the child’s pose.  As I move up into Dog I feel it lengthen and de-compress.  My mind stays there.

Each pose now gives me an opportunity to see how that deep central line moves, lengthens, curves, and spirals. Never do I lose contact with it. It is easy to become distracted and focus on the direction in which the pose is moving, or the place it came from.  But rather, stay in the deep centre of it.  Stay in the present moment experience of it. The practice moves ’round and ’round that central line, often with one half of the body moving in the opposite direction as the other, but the deep centre stays active, focused and calm. This is the practice.

Here’s a quick look at how Warrior II twists around that central line and I learn to make peace within the centre of all that movement.

Very pretty, but (potentially) unstable poses

The posture practice is an opportunity to explore our ranges of flexibility and mobility throughout the joints.  Often, a person can get chronically tight in the hips or shoulders and needs the therapeutic opening that certain poses can provide.  As we explore this mobility and opening, however, we must be sure that we always do so from a place of stability.  This particularly applies to those who are already quite flexible.  In addition, if you are very open in one area, it is highly likely that you are chronically constricted in an opposing area.  So, if you mindlessly just go into the areas in which you are flexible you’ll make yourself susceptible to over-stretching and destabilising the joint as well as fail to address the tight areas of your body that may be holding stress, emotional baggage and the potential for pain.

If you are not particularly flexible or mobile, when you work towards a reasonable amount of opening in constricted joints, you must also do so from a place of stability as it will be very easy for you to unintentionally move the movement into an area where you are open that doesn’t need the stretch and can in time set you up for injury or pain. But do keep it real and realise you don’t need to be this flexible to live a happy life:

When you move through your practice without stability, consciousness, and technique you will overstretch and ‘give’ it all away.  As mentioned before this can destabilise the joints and lead to injury, but it also creates a sensation of emotional leakiness – everything is directed outwards to external sensation rather than a deep grounding into the centre. On the other end of the spectrum, without stability, consciousness, and technique you may also fail to open at all, and just ‘take’ the hardness and muscularity as the preferred sensation.  This will encourage a practice that does not address areas with limited mobility and will also create an emotional sensation of guardedness and exclusion. We should aim for the balance of strength and flexibility, giving and taking, protection and vulnerability – being in the shape and the moment and the joy.

Ram Dass, offered this bit of wisdom on twitter this week.

Being love, rather than taking or giving love, is the only thing that provides stability.

You could chew and meditate on that nugget for a while. I believe it’s about finding a richer experience that is not reliant on external sensation or internal control. But in the terms of the posture practice, what does stability mean? How much mobility is good? How can you be in a pose?

Firstly, try these practices to explore mobility:

• Shoulder strap circles. Hold two ends of a strap and raise your arms above your head.  As you exhale, keep your arms straight and the hands gripped on the strap and bring the arms behind you.  Inhale and raise the arms back over the head.  Exhale, bring the arms in front.  You may have to adjust your grip on the strap to allow the arms to stay straight and the back to stay neutral as the arms circle up, over, and back 15-20x.  After a while you may be able to change the grip.  Feel the sensation of the arm in the shoulder socket.  Hold longer in areas that feel tight.
• Hip Circles.  Lay on the floor on your back and hold one kneecap in each hand. Lift the shins up and spin the knees out in little and then big circles – like the thighbones are spoons in a big pot of stew.  Feel the movement of the thighbone in the hip socket.  Change directions.
• All 4s circles.  From all 4′s lift one knee up like a pee-ing dog.  Try to get the knee higher than the foot as the thigh externally rotates.  Then reverse, bring the knee lower than the foot as the thigh turns inward.  Explore the range of motion on both sides.

Exploring Stability:

• Stand with feet hip distance apart and knees slightly bent.  Feel the weight and centre of gravity come into the pelvis.  Stick the bum out, and then tuck it under – feeling the extremes of motion as the pelvis rocks forward and back.  And then find the position in the middle where the pelvis feels neutral and centred.
• Repeat the above explorations keeping a neutral pelvis.
• Be aware of the movement travelling beyond the intended area of focus and try to limit it to the area in which we are currently working.  Is it easy to work in this area or very difficult.  If easy, make sure to not overdo the movement and send all your energy and focus there – spread evenly throughout the body.  If this motion is difficult, try to soften into it instead of pushing and be patient and kind to the body.

Being in the pose:

• After practicing moving with stability and a focused and balanced centre, add the practice of breath and meditation.
• Focus your attention on the non-moving parts – keeping a non-rigid stability and open-container for breath and energy.
• Neither chase sensation, nor avoid it.  Invite yourself to be in the sensation.  Ensure the sensation is spread evenly and not just in one point.  Revel in the sensation and the connection to the pulse of energy that connects everyone and everything.

Week Seven in the Womb

Pensioner as body curls back inward

Emotional development mirrors this physical process.  We begin sheltered in our home, eventually rebel like pissy little teenagers and separate ourselves, then realise its not so great and turn back towards home life, and on and on.

The yoga posture practice acknowledges and works with these spirals, changes, and rotations as they appear in the limbs in multiple variations within numerous poses.  So often in practice we focus on the external – the external rotation of the thigh, the opening of the hip, the external rotation of the upper arms in Down-dog and so forth.  But this week, I’d like to instead focus on the inward turn – specifically in the legs.

The Practice

1. Begin lying on the floor, knees bent, soles of the feet on the ground and allow the breath to settle and the mind to focus on the present moment.  Become the observer of the breath and the body.  Commit to making your practice about the internal sensation and not the external shape.
2. Within your practice try poses that turn the back leg inward: Warrior I, Parvottanasana, lunges, revolved triangle, etc. Set aside temporarily poses that open the hips more: Warrior II, Triangle, Side Angle, Half Moon. Observe the difference in the physical and emotional experience of your practice.  Acknowledge if you are frustrated physically or emotionally by it and just want to open the hell up.  Stick with it.  Give yourself a release valve if you need it.
3. Use an internally rotated pose like Warrior III to investigate the dual spirals of the limbs in the standing poses.  Usually, the front leg is rotating outward muscularly while the back leg is rotating internally.  Learn to bring these opposing forces into balance.  Let these poses be a rehearsal for bringing other opposing forces in your life into balance – knowing that our lives have these twists, turns, and spirals from day one.

Many of the classes on my schedule are some variety of a flow class.  On one level that simply means that the transitions between postures are valued, and we work to find a healthy and productive balance between movement and stillness.  But, digging deeper, I think that finding flow may be the most important part of the practice, and that doesn’t mean we have to keep moving.  It means that through the practice, both on and off the mat, we learn to accept and work with the ups and downs of life.  We no longer resist and hope to change the things we cannot, we accept and flow with the good and bad.

The scientific fact that the universe, to oversimplify, is just an arrangement of energy is explored through many yogic texts. We’re implored to ride the waves of this energy, without resistance or attachment to good or bad waves (again this is all oversimplification). However, this does not mean we just flop about like drunk holidayers destined to have a face plant.  This is not complacence or laziness.

As I’m told, when surfing waves, you learn quickly which ones to take and which ones to let go on without you.  You learn how to support yourself and stay upright riding the wave and how to gracefully exit.  For my own purposes, I like to think of riding the waves on a jet ski – meaning I have a bit of control, consciousness and clarity, but still have to ride the general currents. Sometimes they will be good, sometimes they will be bad.

If we resist the direction our life is taking us, we’re sure to encounter the painful friction of resistance. There are always signals and signs that we’re moving in the right or wrong direction, but if we’re listening to hard enough to hear them, we often don’t act on them. Practically, within posture practice, we have a bit of rehearsal of learning to interact with waves of energy both internally and externally generated.  We move our body as an expression of how our body feels and what it needs therapeutically on any given day.  We move our body and our breath to provide support and comfort through the negative waves and strength and confidence to hold on to the positive waves. This posture practice helps bring us the awareness and practical techniques to face the more important challenges off the mat.

Try these step to seek flow within your practice:

1. Ride waves of breath and energy.  Inhales usually lead to opening, release and expansion, exhales to closing, supporting and contraction.
2. Try a new way of moving from one pose to another.
3. Ask yourself if the pose you’re about to do is resisting where your energy wants to go today.  Are you just plowing ahead, or backing off because that’s your habit?
4. Remember that the transition is also a pose, requiring as much focus, breath, and curiosity
5. Move on your mat with no set direction or posture – just see what happens.  Don’t be embarassed.

When we come to the close of our practice, in savasana or meditation, it’s very tempting and easy to think that everything has stopped.  That the flow has ceased.  But actually, I think coming into stillness is coming into the most powerful relationship with flow – to the power and movement of the universe.  Erich Schiffman says it best:

Stillness is like a perfectly centered top, spinning so fast it appears motionless. It appears this way not because it isn’t moving, but because it’s spinning at full speed. Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in – when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing.

This is a tall order, but an intelligent flow practice can help move us in this direction.