Happy March!
I hope that your life and practice are continuing to be fulfilling and full of love.
I am jazzed up about my new offerings that have been germinating in the soil of deep winter the past few months.
I am constantly inspired and informed by the practices that I give you. It is exciting to be putting them into a some live, intensive formats.
Read on for:
- more on Adi Amar’s and I’s Fire, Rewire, Transform Mexico retreats
We learn how to make a particular shape, do an activity such as skiing or yoga asana, by taking in information from a teacher, then asking or telling our bodies to do something.
Along with instruction, I offer methods to make the postures come even more alive by several means:
- Opening up the feedback loop between mind -> body, body -> mind.
- Learning through principles in order to bring more juice, pulsation and even expand into new places in yoga asana.
- Anatomy to improve functionality
1~Feedback loops:
How many times a day do you ask your body to do something compared with how many times you ask it for sensation, feedback, how it feels? Most of us have developed the pathways from the mind to the body to do the things we do and especially exercise. Spending time “listening” to the body that “strengthens” the feedback loop between body to mind open. The more we practice with the neural networks any direction they get stronger. Through practicing the side of awareness of how the body feels we get more information coming from the body to the brain which enriches and enlivens and with more information in the networks. In addition to adding more sensory awareness, one also experiences more depth and movement gets better.
2~Principles:
Similar to rules, but not to be practiced in a rigid or dogmatic way - principles guide us in how to do and be in a shape.
Principles, like yoga philosophy is not to be believed, rather experienced. The principles are a map to experience the terrain of your body pointing you in the direction of aligning more deeply with reality. They, just like the teachings of yoga, are to be experienced so that you can have a more clear, aligned and easeful life.
I teach the Universal Principles of Alignment of Anusara Yoga as means to balance, strengthen, open the body and to deeply align and collaborate with the pulsation of the breath.
3~ Anatomy:
My meditation and spiritual teacher Paul Muller-Ortega has taught me that knowledge and understanding/wisdom are two wings of the same bird:
As knowledge increases, embodied wisdom increases
As embodied wisdom increases, knowledge rises accordingly
In these non-dual Tantrik traditions we honor deep study in order to fully recognize what we feel in practice (and vice versa). Though my upcoming course is not a course on the view of Tantra, it does inform and infuse these teachings because they work the same!
The anatomical work is not just about learning names though there is some of that to make sure we have a common language as a baseline.
Feeling into and learning how your anatomy functions through the support of Franklin Methodology is incredibly supportive for your intimacy into yourself as well as learning nuances about your body.
“Embodying function improves function” Eric Franklin
We also use imagery to support good movement and function, and anatomical imagery is very helpful for a person who wants to support intelligent movement. It is also helpful for teachers to find cues based on anatomical imagery. (ps. all imagery is good to improve movement if it does).
