Flow

• Penned during the Covid19 Pandemic

Your eyes. Shut them.  Go on.  Do it. 

Listen to the sounds around you.  Hear your heartbeat, your breath, the sounds in your space that accompany you every day – that are so present that you have to strain to find them again.

Feel your body in space.  The air as it lands gently on your skin as you create movement.  The temperature. The featherlight graze as you place your fingertips on the ground while moving into a forward fold.

Your senses continue to heighten as you take in the aromas of your surroundings.  The scent of your skin, the room, what may be brewing in the kitchen nearby.

Settle.  Trust.  Be right here, right now.  You do not need to see it to be it.

Now more than ever we are defaulting to visual learning.  With the majority of yoga classes conducted online while we work through this pandemic, we are craning our necks, peering into a screen to “see” what is being taught.

Nothing wrong with that if done in moderation.  But here is the thing:  Relying on one sense to guide you through your practice robs you of an awakening experience.  You get so focused on what the instructor is doing that you do not even hear what they are saying.  Nor do you feel it.

Back before this pandemic closed yoga studios (many for good) to in person instruction, yoga was taught with an instructor walking around verbally cueing the sequence with the exception of demonstrating a few poses that may be new to the group.  You couldn’t see us at every moment during class.  We hovered and glided around you, then disappeared to the back of the room to watch from another angle as we brought you into the next pose. All of you listened to the instructor’s voice, heard others’ inhales and exhales, and transformed that instruction into your physical beauty.

More and more students have lost trust in their ability to flow.  Sequencing via live stream has resorted to the instructor doing every asana planned from one position in the room.  The spot in front of the camera.  That static location that confines our instruction.  We can’t see what you are doing.  Even if we have a few Covid spaced students in the room, we can’t go near them either.  We are stuck – craning our necks to see what is going on around us. We too, as constant students, default to our eyes, but really need to hear.  We have to listen to those few who our in our orbit while we are dual instructing to many via a camera, to gauge what is working and what is not.

Our voices are our power.  We have learned to modulate our pitch, our inflection, to bring excitement while approaching a peak pose to bringing you down by softening our tone.  We can’t hear your breath quicken as you ramp up, or decelerate as you come back into your body, into your surroundings.  But we can take you there via our experience through our voice and energy.

It is so ingrained in every fiber of our being to strive for perfection.  We constantly question how our alignment “should” be.  Am I doing it right?  Am I good enough?  Am I perfect?  This unconscious drive battles with and overcomes our innate sense of being in the moment, our intuition if you will of just knowing that this is this and it is all good.

Remember that space where the rhythm just moves you?  You are so fully immersed that you forget time, dropping into the pleasure of the moment where you have an out of body yet fully embodied experience?

Aside from safety and making sure that certain habits do not cause structural issues later on down the road, there is no standard way to do poses.  Poses present differently in every body.  You may see me in Cobra with my feet wider apart as that is what feels better for my lower back, while another will keep the feet closer together.  Both are the way they should be for that person.

Just move.  Let your breath and body guide you.  Ignite your intuition, opening up to new possibilities.  Play.  Just play.  Allow the flow to bring you into another state of awareness that is right now. Embrace the moment.  Laugh when you fall out of a pose.  Give yourself permission to find joy in every movement, even if you hate the pose. No restrictions.  No conditions.  No judgement.  Fluid. 

And see where that takes you in other areas of your life.