This entry was posted on Dec 31, 2024 by Charlotte Bell.
Earlier this yr, I wrote a submit about easy methods to simplify your yoga cues. In case you’ve ever been in a yoga class the place the cues had been coming at you quick and furiously, you might know the way complicated it may be. I really like listening to academics clarify observe in methods I’d by no means imagined. However typically fixed cueing can depart no house 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 courses it could be this: Calm down into the place you’re.
A Yoga Cue for Mastery of Asana Observe
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 comfy.
- 2.47: It’s mastered when all effort is relaxed and the thoughts is absorbed within the Infinite.
- 2.48: Then we’re now 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 (internal hearth) conjures up us to be regular in our dedication, and powerful and secure 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 battle.
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 training “superior” poses. Mastery arrives after we are in a position to loosen up into the place we’re. Once we are in a position to loosen up right into a pose simply as it’s—no matter what it might appear to be from the skin—our minds and our bodies turn out to be one. We turn out to be 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 essentially the most life-changing advantage of asana observe. Sutra 2.48 states that when we’ve got mastered asana on this means, 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 mentioned after we’re training a seated ahead bend in my courses, “Enlightenment doesn’t come from touching your head to your knee. Calm down into the place you’re.” In fact, that doesn’t imply immediate enlightenment will occur after we loosen up into our poses simply as they’re. However maybe, for just a few moments, we are able to contact into our internal useful resource of calm and peace after 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.
Practising asana on this means can assist us domesticate a behavior of stress-free 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 are able to entry off the mat.
As we head into a brand new yr, might you loosen up into the place you’re 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 instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide 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 Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards.
