This weekend I’ve enjoyed the privilege and delight of practicing yoga with friends and students.
Visitors from Sydney, Carol, Martin and Peter joined Mitchells Island local, Maggie, Daniel and me for a yoga session on Sat. morning. There’s such a lovely feeling of conviviality and camaraderie when kindred spirits practice yoga together. We form a temporary community, “fill our boots” (as Judy says), and then go our ways, happier for the experience.
I also like the experience of practicing alone. There are physiological, mental, spiritual nuances about my yoga practice that whisper to me in the peace of the Yoga Shed. I’ve come to think of these intimations as emanating from the “inner body” – the level that is more than the skeleton and muscles; it is energetic. In a quiet space it’s possible to have more of the felt experience of a pose, rather than thinking about how to do it properly or what it should look like. Sensing what is going on in a pose means I can adjust to release tension and stabilize my breath. I’m describing a dance between adjusting one’s anatomy with vital feedback from the inner body – that is the inner organs and systems.
Yoga is usually associated with imposing control and using discipline, and this is true, especially in early stages of learning. At intermediate and advanced stages, one starts to loosen the reins enough so yoga practice is unforced, in no way mechanical, and yet still infused with the body’s intelligence.
Then there is what B.K.S. Iyengar calls the Art of Yoga: poetry.