Imagine more fully inhabiting your body and feeling more connected to who you truly are. This is the purpose of yoga. Multiple branches of yogic philosophy and spirituality provide different paths in pursuit of the same destination, liberation from our conditioned mind and communion with the Sacred. Those paths are ancient, while the physical practices that have come to define contemporary postural yoga began developing around the turn of the 20th century. Although the focus in modern yoga is on the body, there remains opportunity to go deeper, to slough off our conditioning and connect with our True Essence.
Yoga offers many benefits to the physical body—strength, stamina, flexibility, stress-relief, relaxation, restoration. Beyond this, yoga is being used therapeutically to address all manner of difficulties physical, emotional, and mental in nature. That is because while you can build strength and flexibility through many different systems and approaches, yoga is intended to be different. It purposefully invites you to bring your attention to the present moment of your current lived experience and to love and accept yourself and your body just as you are. That is a radically countercultural idea.
Yoga offers many benefits to the physical body—strength, stamina, flexibility, stress-relief, relaxation, restoration. Beyond this, yoga is being used therapeutically to address all manner of difficulties physical, emotional, and mental in nature. That is because while you can build strength and flexibility through many different systems and approaches, yoga is intended to be different. It purposefully invites you to bring your attention to the present moment of your current lived experience and to love and accept yourself and your body just as you are. That is a radically countercultural idea.
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Our culture conditions us to live in our heads, to identify with our thoughts, ideas, memories, emotions, reactions, and patterns of all of these. The vestiges of outmoded science and medicine still encourage the model of separation—the belief that our mind is separate from our body is separate from our emotions. I believe the phenomenal growth of yoga in recent decades is fueled by an innate need to identify with our whole selves. We are physical matter. We are thinking and emotional beings. We are energy and spirit. All combined, inseparable, holistically functioning. Contemporary postural yoga invites us to expand our awareness by inhabiting the physical body more fully. From there we can quiet down and listen to the wisdom of our hearts, and ultimately attempt to recognize the beauty of our innermost existence. It's a different route than what yogis intended when they developed spiritual theories and practices millennia ago, but it can still lead us toward liberation.
Hatha is the most basic and broad form of yoga and what most people envision when they hear the word. Physically, it focuses on both strength and flexibility. Yin is one of the many newer yoga styles, although it is more connected to the ancient ideas in terms of having relatively few postures and being focused more on contemplative practice. Yin yoga involves building a posture (almost always while sitting or lying down) and remaining in it for some minutes. It is not a muscle-strength building practice but rather is intended to build strength in connective tissues—fascia, ligaments, and tendons. These are strengthened through slow, persistent stress rather than the active, repeated stress with which we build muscle tissue. |
My classesI strive to make all my classes accessible, emphasizing that you can practice yoga just as you are. You are enough just as you are. You can accept yourself just as you are. And through this you can discover more of who you are. Or you can practice simply because yoga is fun and it feels good to take care of yourself. The choice is always yours.
I currently teach small classes in my home, a Yin class on most Tuesday evenings and a Hatha class on most Saturday mornings. Subscribe at right to my newsletter on Substack in order to receive the latest teaching schedule. |
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More About Yin Yoga
Yin Yoga if full of life lessons that we can take with us from our yoga mats into our lives. In Taoist spirituality, Chinese medicine, and Eastern philosophy, Yin is related to being, stillness, quiet, cool, effortlessness, surrender, and passivity, among other things. It exists in conjunction with Yang, which is about doing, movement, activity, heat, striving, overcoming, assertion, and intensity. Yin and Yang always exist in conjunction with one another. In Yin Yoga, we use Yin techniques (stillness, mindful attention, etc.) to stimulate a Yang sensation in the body (the intensity of sustained stretching and stressing). I love teaching and practicing Yin Yoga because it feels great and helps me experience effortlessness and surrender as powerful forces. A Word About Trauma The disinhabiting and judging of our bodies that our culture promotes can be a source of chronic stress, creating a low-level form of trauma. Additionally, many of us have experienced trauma in the form of assault and abuse, being forced to give up control of our bodies to others wielding power and force. As a step toward making my classes more trauma sensitive, I use the language of invitation rather than direction. You are always in control of what you choose to do with your body and are encouraged to listen to your own body as you incorporate the instructions I share. If you have particular concerns related to ensuring your emotional safety in my classes, please let me know. |
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Breathing is integral to yoga.
This excerpt from Valarie Kaur's memoir
speaks to it's power on many levels.
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"Breathing is life-giving. In every breath, we take oxygen into our bodies to nourish and sustain us. We inhale the molecules we need; we exhale what we do not need. Breath is constant: Its rhythm moves within us whether or not we are aware of it. Buddhist, Hindu, and many other wisdom traditions have taught conscious breathwork for centuries: When we pay attention to our breath, our minds are called to the present moment. Not the past, not the future. Here and now. Inhale. Exhale. Breathing creates space and time to be present. Present to emotion. Present to sensation. Present to surroundings. Present to one another. Present to ourselves.
Deep breathing, and paying attention to sensations in our bodies as we breathe, increases our resilience. Shallow breathing makes us more vulnerable to stress and illness. Breathing from the diaphragm engages the parasympathetic nervous system and vagus nerve, inducing calm in the body. It changes our blood pressure and heart rate and reduces the risk of inflammatory diseases, including those caused by social trauma and chronic stress. Breathing is perhaps the most universally available wellness tool. Try it now: Take one deep breath. Notice the sensations in your body as you do this. The ability to notice and slow down our breath connects us to a sense of agency: Even in dire circumstances, even when we cannot control anything else, we can consciously take one breath, and then another. Breathing creates space in our lives to think and see differently, enliven our imagination, awaken to pleasure, move toward freedom, and let joy in. For those of us who live in bodies that are denigrated by society, breathing like this is a political act. The world sends a barrage of signals that our bodies—as women, people of color, women of color, queer people, trans people, and disabled people—are not beautiful or strong or worthy of love. Taking the time to breathe—literally and metaphorically—is a way to assert that our bodies are worthy and beloved. Loving our bodies is the first and primal act of loving ourselves." Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: a Memoir and Manifest of Revolutionary Love, 2020, p. 216-17. |
Resources
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Kristine Kaoverii Weber is my favorite yoga teacher to follow. I've not yet been able to learn from her in person but have taken a few courses online. I also apprecitate her blog. Her trademark is Subtle Yoga, and she focuses on the neurological and subtle/energy body aspects as well as the historical roots of yogic philosophy and spirituality. Her website has a number of free videos and downloadable pdfs.
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Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (2010), by Mark Singleton. This is a great resource for understanding how yoga came from being a system of philosophical and spiritual theories and methodologies originating in India 4000+ years ago to today's global phenomenon that in the mainstream is focused on physical health and fitness.
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Bodies Are Cool (2021), by Tyler Feder. This children's book is a recognition and celebration of the vast diversity of bodies that we have collectively and that we observe individually. It creates a stark contrast to what is normally represented in children's literature, or in media more broadly (even as we see that shifting). I believe it is impactful and healing for all ages.
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"It is said that a revolution begins in the mind—an alternative to our present circumstances
must first be imagined before we can be moved to fight for it.”
Stephanie McMillan
Michael Sala Imagine Better Eden Prairie, MN 952-201-7461
