Yoga

janice-in-postureYoga is a practice that I have been attracted to, and most of my teaching and learning came from Jana Titus and Mary Dunn, both of whom had their own unique approach to the practice of asana. And in both cases, I was drawn to their work because of the depth and clarity of the imagery and the definition of the physical alignment as it related and relates to breath. When I teach yoga, I am always looking at the whole.

How can the asana bring us into center, how can it teach us about our energy, and what can we learn about ourselves as we approach the practice? As I continue to evolve in my path, I continue to find specific tools that help re-define how the energy travels in the body. For instance, right now, I am very interested in how the spirals in the practice design an inner architecture of spiral movements energetically. And I continue to find those energetic spirals moving up and down the spine in whatever posture I investigate. Yoga is an ongoing, long term, deep investigation into not just the physical body, but the mental body as well. So, as we track the energy, we are actually inviting our bodies into a deeper sense of alignment from within, and as we explore the posture, the asana, we are invited to ground deeply. As we open our hearts and as we release energy out our heads, the whole entire structure from the soles of our feet to the crown of our heads is engaged.

Because yoga is a perennial teaching, a wisdom of the ages, I look to scripture. I look to the language of the sutras to more deeply understand what was intended. As we age, my practice has become softer, I am actually now re-investigating qi gong, which was a study I did many years ago and looking at how to adjust my physical practice as I am getting older and my needs are different and what I can do is different. I am no longer using yoga to strengthen and clarify my stability. I am using my practice to give me greater understanding of my interiority, my inner landscape. Using it to help with my monkey mind, using it to open my heart more deeply in gratitude. Each practice is an opportunity to re-define the boundaries, to clarify the skeletal structure and to investigate the breath.

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